Reply to Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The posts linked don't see consistent with the information on STA's website, unless the class of 2012 had none of the disappointing results.

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The one post lists where everyone in the class of 2012 matriculated.  The STA website has a five-year list of all schools at which at least one student matriculated:  http://www.stalbansschool.org/page.aspx?pid=722.  So I don't think there's any inconsistency.  I would argue that given the many students who seem to matriculate at Harvard and Yale, St. Albans' five-year list actually underplays the strength of the results by not giving the aggregate amount of students attending the schools on the five-year list.  (If you look at the 2012 list posted privately, the number of very top schools was much higher than schools seen as non-selective.)  I would imagine philosophically they are trying to downplay the matriculation issue and not raise expectations unduly.

I don't actually think STA parents -- or whomever is posting -- are trying to hide results.  Everyone familiar with private schools knows that (1) there is a wide range in student ability even at the most prestigious/rigorous/selective (pick your adjective school); and (2) that the college admissions will reflect that range.  People do seem to want to know about the percentage of students who get into top schools, however defined, so generally there is more focus on that.  People who want to know about "middle of the pack" results as well as top results are asking good questions, but there is at least one poster (maybe a few?) who seem to say that if anybody at St. Albans goes to a less selective college, that is proof that St. Albans was a waste of that family's money, or doesn't give good college counseling, or whatever.

Overall, this is probably a good discussion to the extent it dispels any illusions that merely attending a prestigious/selective high school will automatically get you into a prestigious/selective college (and just attending a selective/prestigious college won't be automatically good enough for grad school, and just attending a prestigious/selective grad school won't automatically get you the job you want).  But there seems to be an unpleasant tone pervading it that doesn't need to be there.[/quote]

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