Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An example of a missing school from Andover's list for 3 years of matriculation is a hard partying, super Greek, misogynist school Southern LAC. Makes me think that Andover's college admissions officers are carefully guiding and advising their students.

I think W&L is just not on the radar of those kids. It’s not a big attraction for northern kids. They can get the same school closer to home.

Sorry for the ignorance, but W&L is known for being a misogynist school? Tell me more...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are more than 25,000 high schools in America. And 99 percent of 15 and 16 year olds have no say whatsoever about where they go to high school. For schools like Princeton to assume talent only comes from a few schools like Andover or Exeter or Dalton or Harvard-Westlake has always been ridiculous. To their discredit. I think they are belatedly catching up to reality and moving on from "traditional" feeders - about three decades too late. It's a big country with a lot of talent out there. And the prevalence of expensive feeder high schools is another reason why some of the Ivies have taken a big reputational hit in recent years. That's how you get mediocrity. And everyone has noticed.

This, I wholeheartedly disagree.

50 years ago, when these elite high schools are full of offsprings of wealthy and powerful families, yes they produce mediocrity.

Nowadays, entrance to these elite high schools becomes high competitive, sometimes more competitive than ivy colleges admission. The students selected to enroll in these elite high schools are absolutely top performers. The funny thing is, once these elite high schools became merit based, the ivies started to take less (much less) from PAA and PAE.

But again, it's such a tiny, tiny percent of high school students that are applying to boarding schools like Exeter and Andover. It's not a good representation of the talent out there. And colleges recognize that these days and cast a wider net.

It always strikes me as interesting that the only people talking about this kind of stuff are the people whose kids don’t go to the schools in question. Same with people who critique private schools. Honestly, who cares. Mind your own business.

If your kids are at these schools, you have better places to get this information from then a random DC parents website. And if your kids aren’t at these schools, it shows me exactly how weird and myopic the readership is here. No reason to really share my personal private high school experience given the demographics and the critique.

You don’t really want to hear from anyone from the inside, do you? You just want to hear yourself talk and pontificate about the way you assume and believe things to be.

Anonymous wrote:What I find most interesting about elite prep boarding schools such as Andover, Exeter, St. Paul's, & Groton plus others is highly ranked colleges & universities where few to no students matriculate. Everyone understands the attraction to Ivy League schools, Chicago, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and several others, but I am both surprised and comforted when I notice top 30 schools at which few to no students from elite prep schools matriculate.

Such as…

Anonymous wrote:There are more than 25,000 high schools in America. And 99 percent of 15 and 16 year olds have no say whatsoever about where they go to high school. For schools like Princeton to assume talent only comes from a few schools like Andover or Exeter or Dalton or Harvard-Westlake has always been ridiculous. To their discredit. I think they are belatedly catching up to reality and moving on from "traditional" feeders - about three decades too late. It's a big country with a lot of talent out there. And the prevalence of expensive feeder high schools is another reason why some of the Ivies have taken a big reputational hit in recent years. That's how you get mediocrity. And everyone has noticed.

You are aware that the vast majority of these 25,000 high school have an average sat of 1000, right? Feeder schools like Andover or Exeter or Dalton or Harvard-Westlake have 1500 and above, with a few at 1550.

Anonymous wrote:There are more than 25,000 high schools in America. And 99 percent of 15 and 16 year olds have no say whatsoever about where they go to high school. For schools like Princeton to assume talent only comes from a few schools like Andover or Exeter or Dalton or Harvard-Westlake has always been ridiculous. To their discredit. I think they are belatedly catching up to reality and moving on from "traditional" feeders - about three decades too late. It's a big country with a lot of talent out there. And the prevalence of expensive feeder high schools is another reason why some of the Ivies have taken a big reputational hit in recent years. That's how you get mediocrity. And everyone has noticed.

This, I wholeheartedly disagree.

50 years ago, when these elite high schools are full of offsprings of wealthy and powerful families, yes they produce mediocrity.

Nowadays, entrance to these elite high schools becomes high competitive, sometimes more competitive than ivy colleges admission. The students selected to enroll in these elite high schools are absolutely top performers. The funny thing is, once these elite high schools became merit based, the ivies started to take less (much less) from PAA and PAE.

But they do like the money.

There are more than 25,000 high schools in America. And 99 percent of 15 and 16 year olds have no say whatsoever about where they go to high school. For schools like Princeton to assume talent only comes from a few schools like Andover or Exeter or Dalton or Harvard-Westlake has always been ridiculous. To their discredit. I think they are belatedly catching up to reality and moving on from "traditional" feeders - about three decades too late. It's a big country with a lot of talent out there. And the prevalence of expensive feeder high schools is another reason why some of the Ivies have taken a big reputational hit in recent years. That's how you get mediocrity. And everyone has noticed.

Anonymous wrote:An example of a missing school from Andover's list for 3 years of matriculation is a hard partying, super Greek, misogynist school Southern LAC. Makes me think that Andover's college admissions officers are carefully guiding and advising their students.

I think W&L is just not on the radar of those kids. It’s not a big attraction for northern kids. They can get the same school closer to home.

An example of a missing school from Andover's list for 3 years of matriculation is a hard partying, super Greek, misogynist school Southern LAC. Makes me think that Andover's college admissions officers are carefully guiding and advising their students.

What I find most interesting about elite prep boarding schools such as Andover, Exeter, St. Paul's, & Groton plus others is highly ranked colleges & universities where few to no students matriculate. Everyone understands the attraction to Ivy League schools, Chicago, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and several others, but I am both surprised and comforted when I notice top 30 schools at which few to no students from elite prep schools matriculate.