Anonymous
10/08/2015 16:20
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.
They are lower than expected.
Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore
CMU national acceptance rate = 23.6%
Bethesda rate = 22.9
Swarthmore national rate = 12%
Bethesda rate = 10.3%
They seem fine to me. Of course, I don't believe that Bethesda kids should somehow magically far exceed the national acceptance rate at the most highly selective schools
The acceptance rates are lower than the national rate and that is surprising since Montgomery County is one of the best public school system in the country and these 7 schools are supposed to be the best in the county. So, the rate should be substantially HIGHER! They can't even get into Howard.
Eh, maybe they're just not that good. Looks like some suburban Baltimore schools did better on National Merit this year and you don't hear them talking about how great they are.
Walt Whitman - 1,928 students, 9 NMSF
Dulaney (Timonium) - 1,875 students, 12 NMSF
BCC - 1,992 students, 6 NMSF
Towson High - 1,442 students, 6 NMSF
Is there any reason acceptance rates for Bethesda students should be HIGHER! than it is for these Baltimore-area students?
Anonymous
10/08/2015 15:44
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.
They are lower than expected.
Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore
CMU national acceptance rate = 23.6%
Bethesda rate = 22.9
Swarthmore national rate = 12%
Bethesda rate = 10.3%
They seem fine to me. Of course, I don't believe that Bethesda kids should somehow magically far exceed the national acceptance rate at the most highly selective schools
The acceptance rates are lower than the national rate and that is surprising since Montgomery County is one of the best public school system in the country and these 7 schools are supposed to be the best in the county. So, the rate should be substantially HIGHER! They can't even get into Howard.
Anonymous
10/08/2015 15:39
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.
They are lower than expected.
Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore
CMU national acceptance rate = 23.6%
Bethesda rate = 22.9
Swarthmore national rate = 12%
Bethesda rate = 10.3%
They seem fine to me. Of course, I don't believe that Bethesda kids should somehow magically far exceed the national acceptance rate at the most highly selective schools
Anonymous
10/08/2015 13:24
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Yawn.....who cares?
Go back to sleep.
Anonymous
10/08/2015 13:21
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
I have a feeling if schools were race and region blind, these numbers would be higher.
They are lower than expected.
Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore
They are lower than expected.
Especially for schools like Carnegie Mellon and Swarthmore
Anonymous
10/08/2015 09:27
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Yawn.....who cares?
Anonymous
10/08/2015 09:26
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The following is a chart of the colleges and universities where 2015 graduates from seven Bethesda-area high schools applied and were accepted, based on data provided by the schools over the summer.
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2015/College-Admissions-Chart/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc
This is pretty unimpressive showing for the top high schools in MoCo. I would imagine similar results for the top high schools in Fairfax.
LOL
Princeton 20 out of 216 - 9.3% acceptance rate. National - 7.0%
Yale 15 out of 190 - 7.9% acceptance rate. National - 6.5%
Harvard 4.6%. National - 5.3%
Stanford 6.9%. National - 5.1%
Looks like they're doing pretty well to me. Unless you think MoCo is so special that it should far exceed the national averages.
Not the PP, but, yeah, I would actually expect that the 7 high schools representing one of the richest and best educated portions of the entire country would beat the spread by more than that.
I think you need to keep in mind what proportion of the overall national acceptance rate is private schools. What would be really interesting is comparing these seven MoCo schools to the average acceptance rate at these schools for all other public school applicants.
Some private schools are worse than most public schools.
Some public schools are worst than the national average.
IME, the acceptance rates (%, not necessarily absolutely numbers) from the local top private schools are much higher than those from the local excellent public schools. However, competition locally and nationally is stiff and increasing. I have had kids in both public and top 3 private and think both environs provide superb educations. We are fortunate in the DC area to have diverse options. I think the Bethesda numbers are good given the level of competition and the times.
Anonymous
10/08/2015 09:13
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The data for Winston Churchill looks pretty good!
So, do all the others, including, *gasp* non W schools like RM and Blair. Yea, I know, they have magnets.
1/4 of the Princeton acceptances were from Churchill alone
Because Princeton is the end all that be all? Blair and Churchill had 5 accepted; RM had 6.
Churchill had 0 accepted to Harvard. Wootton also. All the others had 1 or 2 accepted.
Yale: 2 from Churchill, 4 from Blair, 6 from RM
Playing your game, seems to me RM and Blair did better.
Anonymous
10/08/2015 09:00
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Of course they know the rankings (or strengths) of the high schools.
Anonymous
10/08/2015 06:34
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The following is a chart of the colleges and universities where 2015 graduates from seven Bethesda-area high schools applied and were accepted, based on data provided by the schools over the summer.
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2015/College-Admissions-Chart/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc
This is pretty unimpressive showing for the top high schools in MoCo. I would imagine similar results for the top high schools in Fairfax.
LOL
Princeton 20 out of 216 - 9.3% acceptance rate. National - 7.0%
Yale 15 out of 190 - 7.9% acceptance rate. National - 6.5%
Harvard 4.6%. National - 5.3%
Stanford 6.9%. National - 5.1%
Looks like they're doing pretty well to me. Unless you think MoCo is so special that it should far exceed the national averages.
Just because PPs said national, the applicant pool to many colleges, and especially the four pulled out above, is global.
The acceptance rate for the Bethesda-based HS is 33% higher than the overall acceptance rate for Princeton (to use one example); I would call that far exceeding the Tigers' overall acceptance rate.
Right, and 35% higher for Stanford, the most selective school in the country. Wouldn't you say that an acceptance rate one-third higher than the national average is good?
It is a little shocking when you see the raw numbers of only 20 out of 216 accepted to Princeton, and then realize that's significantly better than the overall acceptance rate. Also a good reality check.
You can sugarcoat it as much as you want but the data is depressing with most kids ending up at local schools and regional schools.
What would be a non-depressingly appropriate acceptance rate for local kids at Stanford? Three times the national average at 15%? As special as our kids all are, I'm not sure they're 300% more special than every other population of kids across the country.
Montgomery/Fairfax schools are supposedly in the top 1% of all public schools in the country. One would expect more admissions to the top 50 schools than slightly/somewhat higher than "national average".
Why? Colleges don't look at a high schhol's ranking.
Anonymous
10/07/2015 20:52
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The data for Winston Churchill looks pretty good!
So, do all the others, including, *gasp* non W schools like RM and Blair. Yea, I know, they have magnets.
1/4 of the Princeton acceptances were from Churchill alone
Anonymous
10/07/2015 20:49
Subject: Re:College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
Yup, the applicant pool to the elite schools is a pretty self-selecting bunch. Basically, to make the first found of application cuts, most kids need an unweighted GPA of 3.9 or higher, SATs of 2200 or higher (2200 is going to be lower 1/4 at most of these places), and some pretty stellar ECs. It also helps to have rich parents, because the Ivies don't offer merit aid, FA is tough for middle class families (unless this is Harvard) and being full pay usually increases a kid's chances of acceptance anyway. Your typical kid looking at all this is going to decide it's not really worth writing all the supplemental essays ("Why I want to go to Harvard") unless you think you have an actual chance at being one of the 5-10% accepted at these top universities/colleges.
As a result, the pool of HYP applicants from Whitman probably doesn't look all that different from the pool of applicants from the rest of the country. There's no reason to think that being from Bethesda is going to confer an advantage over being from Scarsdale. Unless your parent is a Senator or something.
Right. I don't see any reason to assume that the quality of the students applying to top colleges should vary much by high school, since it's a self-selected group of kids who think they have a realistic chance of getting accepted. A high school with high average student achievement will lively have more kids applying but not necessarily a better acceptance rate.
It would be interesting to see how many kids from each high school actually attended each college, to give an idea of whether it is a small group of kids getting accepted at a bunch of top colleges or whether it is a broader group getting accepted to a few.
FWIW the table at the bottom of this school profile lists all colleges where 10 or more TJ students were accepted in the Class of 2014:
https://www.tjhsst.edu/abouttj/schoolprofile/docs/2014-15TJHSST%20Profile.pdf
I don't know if similar lists are available for other FCPS schools but it is safe to assume that a substantial percentage of FCPS prestigious college acceptances come from TJ.
Anonymous
10/07/2015 15:36
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
It would be interesting to see the same comparisons for DC's top privates. We need two pieces of info to do the Bethesda Magazine calc:
(1) How many are accepted/matriculate. We probably have a decent idea about this from the DC high schools themselves and from DCUM for Sidwell. In fact, it looks like the top colleges each take maybe 1-6 kids from each top DC school per year, with lots of variation within the years.
(2) How many applied. That's the key bit, and it's what we (or at least I) have little idea about.
With the caveats that the private HS figures are probably going to be a lot more volatile from year to year. Also, to do a really fair comparison with public school kids, you'd have to know how many of the private vs. public HS kids were full pay vs FA, which does make a difference in admissions.
(1) How many are accepted/matriculate. We probably have a decent idea about this from the DC high schools themselves and from DCUM for Sidwell. In fact, it looks like the top colleges each take maybe 1-6 kids from each top DC school per year, with lots of variation within the years.
(2) How many applied. That's the key bit, and it's what we (or at least I) have little idea about.
With the caveats that the private HS figures are probably going to be a lot more volatile from year to year. Also, to do a really fair comparison with public school kids, you'd have to know how many of the private vs. public HS kids were full pay vs FA, which does make a difference in admissions.
Anonymous
10/07/2015 15:27
Subject: Re:College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Not the PP, but, yeah, I would actually expect that the 7 high schools representing one of the richest and best educated portions of the entire country would beat the spread by more than that.
By and large, students who apply to elite schools come from similarly wealthy and educated families all around the country. It's not like the pool of applicants to Harvard/Stanford/Yale/etc. is particularly representative of the general population of college applicants. Do you really think the kids from Bethesda are that demographically different from those coming from Lexington MA or Winnetka, IL or Scarsdale, NY or Palo Alto, CA?
Yup, the applicant pool to the elite schools is a pretty self-selecting bunch. Basically, to make the first found of application cuts, most kids need an unweighted GPA of 3.9 or higher, SATs of 2200 or higher (2200 is going to be lower 1/4 at most of these places), and some pretty stellar ECs. It also helps to have rich parents, because the Ivies don't offer merit aid, FA is tough for middle class families (unless this is Harvard) and being full pay usually increases a kid's chances of acceptance anyway. Your typical kid looking at all this is going to decide it's not really worth writing all the supplemental essays ("Why I want to go to Harvard") unless you think you have an actual chance at being one of the 5-10% accepted at these top universities/colleges.
As a result, the pool of HYP applicants from Whitman probably doesn't look all that different from the pool of applicants from the rest of the country. There's no reason to think that being from Bethesda is going to confer an advantage over being from Scarsdale. Unless your parent is a Senator or something.
Anonymous
10/07/2015 10:46
Subject: College Admissions for 7 Top Montgomery County High Schools
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The data for Winston Churchill looks pretty good!
So, do all the others, including, *gasp* non W schools like RM and Blair. Yea, I know, they have magnets.
Some college acceptances:
Bowie State University 4/37
Bucknell University 21/98
Chapman University 3/11
Christopher Newport University 9/20
Claremont McKenna College 1/21
Colorado College 7/33
Delaware State University 5/11
East Carolina University 15/30
Florida Atlantic University 3/9
Frostburg State University 47/123
George Mason University 131/191
Gettysburg College 16/42
Harvey Mudd 5/27
Haverford College 5/31
Howard University 20/70
Lehigh University 26/87