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Anonymous wrote:I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

Why would you conclude that TJ students (or Blair/Whitman/Churchill for that matter) don't have a parent who attended HYPS?

How many Princeton legacies do you think go to public school at TJ?

I always look for schools that do not have any legacy preference as a gauge. MIT, JHU, CalTech, CMU, Amherst, Berkeley (and all the UCs), Michigan. Other than Michigan, there’s significantly less acceptances to all of these schools across the board, both public and private, leading me to believe legacy is a big factor in all the admissions stats.

Anonymous wrote:The advantage of the top privates is that they have relationships with the top colleges...and colleges understand that a 3.8 at a private would mean a higher GPA at a public.

Also, a school like Sidwell with an established name for educational rigor...that is kept in mind at colleges.

The downside is that the high school students compete amongst their fellow school students...and there are so many smart students at the top privates that the competition for college spots is rough.

Toss into that legacy and connections/power/money, the top privates statistics get a bit skewed.

Everyone always talks about students competing against their classmates. Maybe for titles like Class President and valedictorian, but multiple college AOs have confirmed you’re competing against everyone in your region, not your school. If schools had a quota then 40+ kids from one school (Sidwell) wouldn’t get into Ivy+, including at least 12 for U Chicago. If any one high school has 6 kids that are the most highly qualified and a good fit for that college, they’re going to take those 6 over less qualified kids from other schools in the region, whether public or private.

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Anonymous wrote:Don't know about Whitman and Churchill, but TJ and Blair magnet are mostly Asians, so they are less likely to be legacies.
Legacy is a wealthy, white privilege thing.

LOL no. That may have been true, like several decades ago.

Do you realize how many Asians from the DC area graduated from HYPS and now have kids of their own?

I went to a not-so-great public school many years ago. The only two kids (siblings), probably in the history of our school, to go to Princeton were Asian and legacy. (Not knocking their qualifications, they were also probably the best students our school ever had). Even in the 90s and 2000s there were Asian legacy kids. When I went to college our school was around 40% Asian… imagine how many now have kids who are legacies!

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Anonymous wrote:I call bull****. In 2025, Jackson-Reed didn't send a single student to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. PolarisList.com . If you are just going to make up stuff, you have to keep your claims vague and not capable of easy verification.

Given that Jackson-Reed doesn't send ANY students to Harvard, Princeton or MIT, your DC's chances there are essentially zero. Granted, your DC's chances at a top private are maybe only 3 percent, but those private school chances are still better. Each family has to decide for itself whether a nominal increase in chance is worth a few hundred thousand dollars, but it is b.sh__ that chances are better in publics, even in top publics.

JR has at least one student going to Princeton this year.

Even if you accept this rumor, 1 in a graduating class of 500 would be awful results.

The overwhelming majority of privates get 0/500 into Princeton.

And yet Sidwell, GDS, STA, NCS, Maret, WIS, Bullis, and Potomac all manage to keep Princeton on their 4 year matriculation list multiple times over... and oh yea 4 years would put them right at the 500 mark for the most part... 🤔

Are you under the impression that TJ doesn't?

Why do people not read the quote that people are responding to? I was responding to a comment about private schools, not TJ (a public school)... and while I believe TJ students do get in, not nearly percentage wise as the top privates.

5 TJ students got into Princeton in 2025. That's about 1%.

What's the percentage at these schools you mention? You don't think that's close?

What would it be without athletic recruits or legacy? I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

STA got in 3 with only 95 kids in the class sooo a bit more than 3%

It depends, a large and competitive suburban public high school is the worse place to apply to top 20 colleges. An urban magnet school or a a small rural school, the best place for this.

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Anonymous wrote:Don't know about Whitman and Churchill, but TJ and Blair magnet are mostly Asians, so they are less likely to be legacies.
Legacy is a wealthy, white privilege thing.

LOL no. That may have been true, like several decades ago.

Do you realize how many Asians from the DC area graduated from HYPS and now have kids of their own?

Still true. Asians may have graduating from HYPS, but legacy is still a white privilege thing.

That makes no sense.

We know many legacy kids, both white and Asian, not get in.

There are more rich white donor kids who may or may not be legacy.

Things may change in the future with all the Asian billionaires from Asia.

DH and I both went to HYP. We have kids in both public and private. Oldest is still in high school. Our kids are significantly stronger than DH and me when we were the same age. We are not so obsessed with college admissions. We expect our kids will end up somewhere that fits them.

Anonymous wrote:The advantage of the top privates is that they have relationships with the top colleges...and colleges understand that a 3.8 at a private would mean a higher GPA at a public.

Also, a school like Sidwell with an established name for educational rigor...that is kept in mind at colleges.

The downside is that the high school students compete amongst their fellow school students...and there are so many smart students at the top privates that the competition for college spots is rough.

Toss into that legacy and connections/power/money, the top privates statistics get a bit skewed.

I agree with you except the end. Legacy is equivalent at the top local area publics (Im talking about inner burbs with huge concentrations of Ivy League degrees, welcome to DC), and money doesn’t mean anything at the top universities, because not even most Sidwell families can afford to make it into the donor box - it’s $1+ million - at most of the schools we are discussing. BigLaw doesn’t get you there nor does your fancy medical practice.

The advantage of the top privates is that they have relationships with the top colleges...and colleges understand that a 3.8 at a private would mean a higher GPA at a public.

Also, a school like Sidwell with an established name for educational rigor...that is kept in mind at colleges.

The downside is that the high school students compete amongst their fellow school students...and there are so many smart students at the top privates that the competition for college spots is rough.

Toss into that legacy and connections/power/money, the top privates statistics get a bit skewed.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't know about Whitman and Churchill, but TJ and Blair magnet are mostly Asians, so they are less likely to be legacies.
Legacy is a wealthy, white privilege thing.

LOL no. That may have been true, like several decades ago.

Do you realize how many Asians from the DC area graduated from HYPS and now have kids of their own?

Still true. Asians may have graduating from HYPS, but legacy is still a white privilege thing.

That makes no sense.

Fighting about one year of TJ vs Sidwell is such a dumb argument, because I can always find outlier years that prove one side or the other.

I go back to my point above: the difference in the elite private schools has to do with consistency and relative volume. You consistently have a better chance at an elite private than you do at an elite public, given class size. Having been in a rich inner public school for many many years, I do not for a second believe that there are fewer smart kids in public, that there are fewer legacies, and that there are fewer athletes -- I'm talking DC specifically here.

Beyond class size, the elite institutions know and respect the preparedness of the private school kids. The grades have real meaning and there is transparency about where kids actually stand. It's difficult for elite universities to know the differences between all the valedictorians in APS for example. It's very unclear who the Top Students truly are, because the school isn't communicating that clearly. And also, the elite privates can write recommendations differently because the same small group of adults is involved; they can represent, this child is the best this year, the best in five years, the best we've ever seen, for math for english for whatever. They can make meaningful representations that the elite institutions rely upon, not in some sketchy secret way but due to the volume and rigor and history. And elite institutions track the kids, they know that the kids who come from the privates are extremely well prepared and they want those kids. It's not true always and in every case, but generally speaking they know that if you've been trained to write at elite Big 3 whatever and you earned stellar writing grades you can write. They don't have that confidence coming from big public, because of the track record of students who come before.

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Anonymous wrote:I call bull****. In 2025, Jackson-Reed didn't send a single student to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. PolarisList.com . If you are just going to make up stuff, you have to keep your claims vague and not capable of easy verification.

Given that Jackson-Reed doesn't send ANY students to Harvard, Princeton or MIT, your DC's chances there are essentially zero. Granted, your DC's chances at a top private are maybe only 3 percent, but those private school chances are still better. Each family has to decide for itself whether a nominal increase in chance is worth a few hundred thousand dollars, but it is b.sh__ that chances are better in publics, even in top publics.

JR has at least one student going to Princeton this year.

Even if you accept this rumor, 1 in a graduating class of 500 would be awful results.

The overwhelming majority of privates get 0/500 into Princeton.

And yet Sidwell, GDS, STA, NCS, Maret, WIS, Bullis, and Potomac all manage to keep Princeton on their 4 year matriculation list multiple times over... and oh yea 4 years would put them right at the 500 mark for the most part... 🤔

Are you under the impression that TJ doesn't?

Why do people not read the quote that people are responding to? I was responding to a comment about private schools, not TJ (a public school)... and while I believe TJ students do get in, not nearly percentage wise as the top privates.

5 TJ students got into Princeton in 2025. That's about 1%.

What's the percentage at these schools you mention? You don't think that's close?

What would it be without athletic recruits or legacy? I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

You want to nitpick on down to one year for one school to school and have it compared to that same year for 8 different schools and expect one person to be an expert on all of them??? You are delusional... give the overall numbers. How many applied to Ivy+, how many got into Ivy+ from TJ and maybe someone who has access to information from each of the schools can give you an actual comparison. Otherwise you are just running straw-man arguments hoping something will turn out in your favor.

It's just the most readily available info on
https://www.polarislist.com/best-high-schools-in-virginia

It’s lazy reporting. This website only focuses (inexplicably) on three universities. This discussion is about the twelve Ivy+ universities. If you don’t have the range for this discussion, please just say that and exit.

Check the thread, we were talking about princeton for the last several posts because nobody wants to track 12 colleges at all these schools.

The claim was that TJ does not do nearly as well percentage-wise as the top privates. I'm pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about.

The TJ camp came up with Princeton on their own when they were moving goal posts around, we just pointed out that even with that one alone, you are still wrong, though now also looking at micro data. As someone who works in marketing data, micro data is the quickest way to skew data the way you want it, as evident that TJ chose a year they sent 5 kids to Princeton when they only had 15 in the past 4 years, but still didn't work out for them cause at the end of the day, we can play those games better because we have more data on our side...

And what are those percentages? Show me how Sidwell blows TJ out of the water.

Face it, the fact that you have to do all this explaining means that its not as overwhelming and clear as you seem to want everyone to believe. If you take differences in privilege into account, I'm starting to get concerned about the sidwell kids because they should be doing much much better. Are they OK? Maybe it's not too late to transfer to Trinity.

Scroll up I already did 🙄, you just chose to ignore it because you only want to see what you want to see...

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Anonymous wrote:I call bull****. In 2025, Jackson-Reed didn't send a single student to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. PolarisList.com . If you are just going to make up stuff, you have to keep your claims vague and not capable of easy verification.

Given that Jackson-Reed doesn't send ANY students to Harvard, Princeton or MIT, your DC's chances there are essentially zero. Granted, your DC's chances at a top private are maybe only 3 percent, but those private school chances are still better. Each family has to decide for itself whether a nominal increase in chance is worth a few hundred thousand dollars, but it is b.sh__ that chances are better in publics, even in top publics.

JR has at least one student going to Princeton this year.

Even if you accept this rumor, 1 in a graduating class of 500 would be awful results.

The overwhelming majority of privates get 0/500 into Princeton.

And yet Sidwell, GDS, STA, NCS, Maret, WIS, Bullis, and Potomac all manage to keep Princeton on their 4 year matriculation list multiple times over... and oh yea 4 years would put them right at the 500 mark for the most part... 🤔

Are you under the impression that TJ doesn't?

Why do people not read the quote that people are responding to? I was responding to a comment about private schools, not TJ (a public school)... and while I believe TJ students do get in, not nearly percentage wise as the top privates.

5 TJ students got into Princeton in 2025. That's about 1%.

What's the percentage at these schools you mention? You don't think that's close?

What would it be without athletic recruits or legacy? I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

You want to nitpick on down to one year for one school to school and have it compared to that same year for 8 different schools and expect one person to be an expert on all of them??? You are delusional... give the overall numbers. How many applied to Ivy+, how many got into Ivy+ from TJ and maybe someone who has access to information from each of the schools can give you an actual comparison. Otherwise you are just running straw-man arguments hoping something will turn out in your favor.

It's just the most readily available info on
https://www.polarislist.com/best-high-schools-in-virginia

It’s lazy reporting. This website only focuses (inexplicably) on three universities. This discussion is about the twelve Ivy+ universities. If you don’t have the range for this discussion, please just say that and exit.

Check the thread, we were talking about princeton for the last several posts because nobody wants to track 12 colleges at all these schools.

The claim was that TJ does not do nearly as well percentage-wise as the top privates. I'm pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about.

The TJ camp came up with Princeton on their own when they were moving goal posts around, we just pointed out that even with that one alone, you are still wrong, though now also looking at micro data. As someone who works in marketing data, micro data is the quickest way to skew data the way you want it, as evident that TJ chose a year they sent 5 kids to Princeton when they only had 15 in the past 4 years, but still didn't work out for them cause at the end of the day, we can play those games better because we have more data on our side...

And what are those percentages? Show me how Sidwell blows TJ out of the water.

Face it, the fact that you have to do all this explaining means that its not as overwhelming and clear as you seem to want everyone to believe. If you take differences in privilege into account, I'm starting to get concerned about the sidwell kids because they should be doing much much better. Are they OK? Maybe it's not too late to transfer to Trinity.

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Anonymous wrote:I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

Why would you conclude that TJ students (or Blair/Whitman/Churchill for that matter) don't have a parent who attended HYPS?

How many Princeton legacies do you think go to public school at TJ?

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Anonymous wrote:I call bull****. In 2025, Jackson-Reed didn't send a single student to Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. PolarisList.com . If you are just going to make up stuff, you have to keep your claims vague and not capable of easy verification.

Given that Jackson-Reed doesn't send ANY students to Harvard, Princeton or MIT, your DC's chances there are essentially zero. Granted, your DC's chances at a top private are maybe only 3 percent, but those private school chances are still better. Each family has to decide for itself whether a nominal increase in chance is worth a few hundred thousand dollars, but it is b.sh__ that chances are better in publics, even in top publics.

JR has at least one student going to Princeton this year.

Even if you accept this rumor, 1 in a graduating class of 500 would be awful results.

The overwhelming majority of privates get 0/500 into Princeton.

And yet Sidwell, GDS, STA, NCS, Maret, WIS, Bullis, and Potomac all manage to keep Princeton on their 4 year matriculation list multiple times over... and oh yea 4 years would put them right at the 500 mark for the most part... 🤔

Are you under the impression that TJ doesn't?

Why do people not read the quote that people are responding to? I was responding to a comment about private schools, not TJ (a public school)... and while I believe TJ students do get in, not nearly percentage wise as the top privates.

5 TJ students got into Princeton in 2025. That's about 1%.

What's the percentage at these schools you mention? You don't think that's close?

What would it be without athletic recruits or legacy? I suspect there were no legacy or athletic recruits among the TJ admits.

You want to nitpick on down to one year for one school to school and have it compared to that same year for 8 different schools and expect one person to be an expert on all of them??? You are delusional... give the overall numbers. How many applied to Ivy+, how many got into Ivy+ from TJ and maybe someone who has access to information from each of the schools can give you an actual comparison. Otherwise you are just running straw-man arguments hoping something will turn out in your favor.

It's just the most readily available info on
https://www.polarislist.com/best-high-schools-in-virginia

Ok so by your narrow path of decision making, privates hit that 5 in 2025 with Sidwell, GDS, and STA alone with a total combined graduating class size of of just 358... adding in Potomac to get closer to the 500 mark gets us 6 Princeton admits at 473... sooooo even when you give us the most narrow of a pick and chosen sample sizing... yea, privates can still beat your precious TJ when looked at with an educated eye...

The claim wasn't that privates beat TJ. The claim was that "TJ students do get in, not nearly percentage wise as the top privates."

I mean it seems pretty close and I still maintain there is more legacy and athletic preference going on at the privates than at TJ.

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Anonymous wrote:Don't know about Whitman and Churchill, but TJ and Blair magnet are mostly Asians, so they are less likely to be legacies.
Legacy is a wealthy, white privilege thing.

LOL no. That may have been true, like several decades ago.

Do you realize how many Asians from the DC area graduated from HYPS and now have kids of their own?

And you think their kids are going to public school at TJ?

DP I not only know some, but I'm related to them, we are family... so yup!