Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

Almost everyone of these have $50k-100k per year counselors right from 8th grade.

No, they do not. The schools themselves provide the college counseling. I personally know a kid well at one of the privates going to HYPSM with zero outside help. What he does have is 1580 on the SAT that he got at one sitting the summer before his junior year, a 3.95 GPA and a niche major that is his true interest and intended course of study.
The rigor at those schools is insane. Their students are extremely well prepared for college and do very well.

Don’t let these schools totally fool you. These kids are not infinitely more impressive or working infinitely harder than dc kids. I know many. They have hooks well beyond just run of the mill legacy. Many have real f’u $ and many do hire private counselors.

They aren’t sending 8 a class to Yale bc they are working these kids harder and colleges are impressed by the rigor.

Private school kids are not smarter, nor are they more impressive. It's not really about the hooks, though, for the majority of the class getting into T20. Their schools are feeders that don't focus on testing (some of these schools don't even have grades). Instead, they focus on the whole person, often hyper-focused on intellectual independence, creativity, and curiosity, which creates strong analytic thinkers with strong communication skills. That is the difference.

- signed non-DMV private school parent

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

This is insane to me. Someone posted SA matriculation and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a school with such great exmissions. And SA has no grades or GPA!

The private school exmissions are driven by hooks. Donations, celebrity connections, golf games with university board members, etc. And URM. I've heard it sucks to be an unconnected kid at these schools - if they've got 6 connected kids applying to, say Princeton, they'll tell you to your face that they won't support your unconnected child's application there.

Unhooked private here. One at Ivy; other private T20. Full pay.

You don’t need to listen to secondhand stuff (“you’ve heard”). It just depends on your private school. At some private schools what you say is true and it does suck. Buyer beware.

Key for us: understand the (hooked) competition in your class and what it would mean to your application to overshoot. There are plenty of great schools in the top 20 or 25. No need to cluster around the top five.

Also, our HS sends a lot of kids to WashU. I can attest that it is an attractive option for someone in the lower half part of the class. I know it sounds shocking when I type this. Sometimes 10% of the class gets in regular decision.

Is this HS in NYC?

Im not that PP, but its not surprising. WashU is very much like UChicago for private high schools. We see a lot of WashU admissions from our non-DMV private as well. Its considered a "backup":

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1c6j73v/where_the_elite_study_the_t30_for_selective_prep/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a s/o of the Duke vs Northwestern post below.

Here is what I've noticed at our selective NYC public:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Columbia + Penn (Wharton, VIPER or Engineering) .
--High stats, missing national level ECs or hook: Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Brown, Penn
--High stats + normal ECs OR some flaw on their record (like a bad grade or two) - Cornell, Chicago, JHU - these kids do very well with ED to the latter two.
--Mid to lower stats + no hook - public school or T50 possibly with merit. Most parents won't pay full for that level.

S and M are rare (most commonly high stats URM); no one gets into Dart or Vandy, for whatever reason

Curious if this is similar to other selective/feeder schools.

OP here reporting back from this year now that waitlists are (mostly) finished. Here is how it panned out:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Penn + MIT
--High stats, very strong ECs but not national level: Columbia, Georgetown, Northwestern (RD), Brown, Cornell, WASP
--High stats + normal ECs - Cornell, Northwestern (ED), Chicago (ED)
--None to S or V or WashU (the advice about knowing which colleges like your HS is good advice...)
--A handful of high stats kids passed on one or more of the above in favor of a full ride (a real full ride - tuition + housing + stipend) from a T50. Good for them!

Its doesn't seem like this year was very different for your school? Did your school see a lot of WL movement? What were the most popular WLs?

Not very different. A few differences at the margin:
--Columbia did not get the tippy top kids. Columbia admitted several from the WL.
--Cornell seemed to have a stronger cohort in general, maybe just a coincidence, maybe due to more shutouts at the HYP level.
--Penn also admitted several from the WL. I was surprised to see that. Ditto Michigan.
--A lot more high stats non-hooked kids opted for ED1 or ED2. Chicago and Northwestern commits nearly doubled. More LAC commits as well. I think a lot of kids/parents have gotten the message (whether rightly or wrongly) that T10 RD is a game of chance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a s/o of the Duke vs Northwestern post below.

Here is what I've noticed at our selective NYC public:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Columbia + Penn (Wharton, VIPER or Engineering) .
--High stats, missing national level ECs or hook: Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Brown, Penn
--High stats + normal ECs OR some flaw on their record (like a bad grade or two) - Cornell, Chicago, JHU - these kids do very well with ED to the latter two.
--Mid to lower stats + no hook - public school or T50 possibly with merit. Most parents won't pay full for that level.

S and M are rare (most commonly high stats URM); no one gets into Dart or Vandy, for whatever reason

Curious if this is similar to other selective/feeder schools.

OP here reporting back from this year now that waitlists are (mostly) finished. Here is how it panned out:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Penn + MIT
--High stats, very strong ECs but not national level: Columbia, Georgetown, Northwestern (RD), Brown, Cornell, WASP
--High stats + normal ECs - Cornell, Northwestern (ED), Chicago (ED)
--None to S or V or WashU (the advice about knowing which colleges like your HS is good advice...)
--A handful of high stats kids passed on one or more of the above in favor of a full ride (a real full ride - tuition + housing + stipend) from a T50. Good for them!

Its doesn't seem like this year was very different for your school? Did your school see a lot of WL movement? What were the most popular WLs?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

Almost everyone of these have $50k-100k per year counselors right from 8th grade.

No, they do not. The schools themselves provide the college counseling. I personally know a kid well at one of the privates going to HYPSM with zero outside help. What he does have is 1580 on the SAT that he got at one sitting the summer before his junior year, a 3.95 GPA and a niche major that is his true interest and intended course of study.
The rigor at those schools is insane. Their students are extremely well prepared for college and do very well.

Don’t let these schools totally fool you. These kids are not infinitely more impressive or working infinitely harder than dc kids. I know many. They have hooks well beyond just run of the mill legacy. Many have real f’u $ and many do hire private counselors.

They aren’t sending 8 a class to Yale bc they are working these kids harder and colleges are impressed by the rigor.

Private school kids are not smarter, nor are they more impressive. It's not really about the hooks, though, for the majority of the class getting into T20. Their schools are feeders that don't focus on testing (some of these schools don't even have grades). Instead, they focus on the whole person, often hyper-focused on intellectual independence, creativity, and curiosity, which creates strong analytic thinkers with strong communication skills. That is the difference.

- signed non-DMV private school parent

The HS rigor is much different though. I was a Ffx co public school kid. My kids did k-8 public in strong DMV school district. They then went to private HS in DC. They received 5s on all 10 AP exams with no outside studying or prep. They scored a 35 and 36 ACT- each first sitting. Not only did they excel in STEM, but they came out as excellent writers. They were taught to think, question and solve.

My attic is overflowing with the required books —literally shelves, upon shelves. The amount of novels in one year, the lit reading in Spanish - honors , etc. Oldest is at an Ivy and was very very well prepared.

Privates/Ivies do look at HS rigor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

Almost everyone of these have $50k-100k per year counselors right from 8th grade.

No, they do not. The schools themselves provide the college counseling. I personally know a kid well at one of the privates going to HYPSM with zero outside help. What he does have is 1580 on the SAT that he got at one sitting the summer before his junior year, a 3.95 GPA and a niche major that is his true interest and intended course of study.
The rigor at those schools is insane. Their students are extremely well prepared for college and do very well.

Don’t let these schools totally fool you. These kids are not infinitely more impressive or working infinitely harder than dc kids. I know many. They have hooks well beyond just run of the mill legacy. Many have real f’u $ and many do hire private counselors.

They aren’t sending 8 a class to Yale bc they are working these kids harder and colleges are impressed by the rigor.

Private school kids are not smarter, nor are they more impressive. It's not really about the hooks, though, for the majority of the class getting into T20. Their schools are feeders that don't focus on testing (some of these schools don't even have grades). Instead, they focus on the whole person, often hyper-focused on intellectual independence, creativity, and curiosity, which creates strong analytic thinkers with strong communication skills. That is the difference.

- signed non-DMV private school parent

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a s/o of the Duke vs Northwestern post below.

Here is what I've noticed at our selective NYC public:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Columbia + Penn (Wharton, VIPER or Engineering) .
--High stats, missing national level ECs or hook: Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Brown, Penn
--High stats + normal ECs OR some flaw on their record (like a bad grade or two) - Cornell, Chicago, JHU - these kids do very well with ED to the latter two.
--Mid to lower stats + no hook - public school or T50 possibly with merit. Most parents won't pay full for that level.

S and M are rare (most commonly high stats URM); no one gets into Dart or Vandy, for whatever reason

Curious if this is similar to other selective/feeder schools.

OP here reporting back from this year now that waitlists are (mostly) finished. Here is how it panned out:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Penn + MIT
--High stats, very strong ECs but not national level: Columbia, Georgetown, Northwestern (RD), Brown, Cornell, WASP
--High stats + normal ECs - Cornell, Northwestern (ED), Chicago (ED)
--None to S or V or WashU (the advice about knowing which colleges like your HS is good advice...)
--A handful of high stats kids passed on one or more of the above in favor of a full ride (a real full ride - tuition + housing + stipend) from a T50. Good for them!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

Almost everyone of these have $50k-100k per year counselors right from 8th grade.

No, they do not. The schools themselves provide the college counseling. I personally know a kid well at one of the privates going to HYPSM with zero outside help. What he does have is 1580 on the SAT that he got at one sitting the summer before his junior year, a 3.95 GPA and a niche major that is his true interest and intended course of study.
The rigor at those schools is insane. Their students are extremely well prepared for college and do very well.

Don’t let these schools totally fool you. These kids are not infinitely more impressive or working infinitely harder than dc kids. I know many. They have hooks well beyond just run of the mill legacy. Many have real f’u $ and many do hire private counselors.

They aren’t sending 8 a class to Yale bc they are working these kids harder and colleges are impressed by the rigor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

Almost everyone of these have $50k-100k per year counselors right from 8th grade.

No, they do not. The schools themselves provide the college counseling. I personally know a kid well at one of the privates going to HYPSM with zero outside help. What he does have is 1580 on the SAT that he got at one sitting the summer before his junior year, a 3.95 GPA and a niche major that is his true interest and intended course of study.
The rigor at those schools is insane. Their students are extremely well prepared for college and do very well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not an Emory or Tufts or Wash U booster but people on this board do not seem to realize that these are reaches for top 10%, 1500+ average excellent unhooked kids for non-feeder privates and publics.

It all depends on your high school. None of the advice here applies to everyone.

Anonymous wrote:This is a s/o of the Duke vs Northwestern post below.

Here is what I've noticed at our selective NYC public:

--Top 10% or high stats + hook: HYP + Columbia + Penn (Wharton, VIPER or Engineering) .
--High stats, missing national level ECs or hook: Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Brown, Penn
--High stats + normal ECs OR some flaw on their record (like a bad grade or two) - Cornell, Chicago, JHU - these kids do very well with ED to the latter two.
--Mid to lower stats + no hook - public school or T50 possibly with merit. Most parents won't pay full for that level.

S and M are rare (most commonly high stats URM); no one gets into Dart or Vandy, for whatever reason

Curious if this is similar to other selective/feeder schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard Trinity in NYC this year has 9 kids going to Brown? that's wild!

NYC kids are typically very impressive and often with hooks too. I think there are 6-8 girls at The Spence School going to Harvard this year out of a class of 60! Half of Brearley’s class is going to Ivies + Stanford & MIT. Saint Ann’s, Dalton, Hunter, Stuyvesant all have excellent outcomes too. Nothing new there. These are their results (almost) every year.

This is insane to me. Someone posted SA matriculation and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a school with such great exmissions. And SA has no grades or GPA!

The private school exmissions are driven by hooks. Donations, celebrity connections, golf games with university board members, etc. And URM. I've heard it sucks to be an unconnected kid at these schools - if they've got 6 connected kids applying to, say Princeton, they'll tell you to your face that they won't support your unconnected child's application there.

Unhooked private here. One at Ivy; other private T20. Full pay.

You don’t need to listen to secondhand stuff (“you’ve heard”). It just depends on your private school. At some private schools what you say is true and it does suck. Buyer beware.

Key for us: understand the (hooked) competition in your class and what it would mean to your application to overshoot. There are plenty of great schools in the top 20 or 25. No need to cluster around the top five.

Also, our HS sends a lot of kids to WashU. I can attest that it is an attractive option for someone in the lower half part of the class. I know it sounds shocking when I type this. Sometimes 10% of the class gets in regular decision.

Is this HS in NYC?

Im not that PP, but its not surprising. WashU is very much like UChicago for private high schools. We see a lot of WashU admissions from our non-DMV private as well. Its considered a "backup":

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1c6j73v/where_the_elite_study_the_t30_for_selective_prep/

Anonymous wrote:Also, our HS sends a lot of kids to WashU. I can attest that it is an attractive option for someone in the lower half part of the class. I know it sounds shocking when I type this. Sometimes 10% of the class gets in regular decision.