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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If your catholic (active) then you have a 75% chance of getting in. [/quote]

Fake News.  Acceptance rate is around 20%.  This rate is for Catholics as well as non-Catholics.  I know several Catholic parish school kids who were straight A students in Honors classes and did not get into Prep (they also played sports and were good kids).  Truth is Prep is hard to get into.  Easiest avenue appears to be for Mater Dei students, everyone else has to be a top student at their middle school.[/quote]

The average acceptance rate of 20% may be factual, but not very helpful in guiding people assessing their own son’s chances of being accepted at Prep.

As you point out, Mater Dei seems so get almost 100% of its boys into Prep. And the high number of Mater Dei students who attend Prep doesn’t include those who were accepted and chose to go to another school (almost always Gonzaga). Mater Dei, of course, is in the Prep sweet spot. (Catholic, lots of legacies, full-pay). The two schools have a long history of interdependence and trust between them with lots of informal communication about the suitability of candidates.

Other traditional feeder schools (Holy Redeemer, Mercy, Blessed Sacrament, St. Barts, DeChantal, etc.) seem to always send boy’s to Prep and historically these have frequently included the top students at these schools. These schools do counsel their students on their chances at the various high schools they want to apply to.

So if you are Catholic, a good student, strongly recommended by your Catholic middle school, full-pay, a legacy of have a family connection, a good enough athlete to play on one of the teams and Prep is you absolute number one choice, the odds are high you’ll be accepted. 75? Maybe.

If, on the other hand, you are far afield from the school’s core constituencies and are just casting a wide net hoping to decide which private school you want after seeing where you are accepted, then your odds are lower. If you really would prefer St Albans and Prep is just a safety school, the experienced Admissions staff will sniff that out pretty quickly.

This “likelihood to attend if accepted” explains some of the curious admissions results in which seeming great candidates are denied admission at schools and granted admission at similar or even more competitive schools.
[/quote]

Finally someone with some real knowledge. [/quote]

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