Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Most of those listed ARE top 15 schools - check out the list on USNWR. But, there should also be a similar measure for top liberal arts schools where lots of kids prefer to go.

I think this list short changes diverse schools like TC or FCPS schools like Stuart. Their SATs are not going to be as high homogeneous schools The top students at those schools can compete with top students at Sidwell or TJ for that matter. This list sounds like a conspiracy on the part of private schools and the magnets for more applications.

Anonymous wrote:wow...

Anonymous wrote: Private high schools have managed to effect an astonishing change in the psychosocial dynamic. It has become taboo to discuss any objective measure of academic performance. In the extreme version of the anti-numbers argument, parents and children are told to choose a school solely on the basis of how the school makes them "feel." Detest the data; trust the glossy brochure, the fancy website, the slick administrator. (Do we act so irrationally when we buy a car or a house?) If we believe that private schools are mere country clubs, that they do nothing to educate our children, that's appropriate. In that case, they're 4-year, $160,000 babysitting services that do nothing for the mind and happen to send "graduates" to fancy colleges afterward.

I know... FOS if you ask me.

wow...

Anonymous wrote: Private high schools have managed to effect an astonishing change in the psychosocial dynamic. It has become taboo to discuss any objective measure of academic performance. In the extreme version of the anti-numbers argument, parents and children are told to choose a school solely on the basis of how the school makes them "feel." Detest the data; trust the glossy brochure, the fancy website, the slick administrator. (Do we act so irrationally when we buy a car or a house?) If we believe that private schools are mere country clubs, that they do nothing to educate our children, that's appropriate. In that case, they're 4-year, $160,000 babysitting services that do nothing for the mind and happen to send "graduates" to fancy colleges afterward.

Anonymous wrote:this list only gave SAT scores! this list didn't buy me a pony! this list didn't give me a candy cane! F minus!

don't you have HW to do?

this list only gave SAT scores! this list didn't buy me a pony! this list didn't give me a candy cane! F minus!

Anonymous wrote:This is silly and arbitrary. It relies purely on test scores - the SAT for Presidential Scholar candidates and the scores themselves, PSAT for National Merit - which isn't surprising for a test prep business.

Even worse, the data are unreliable. The privates do not report their SAT scores. The public schools claim different/higher scores than the College Board. The ranking table includes a percentage for the average number of students who go on to a top 15% college, but it doesn't include the number in the ranking. This number is not reported by any of the schools, so there is no reason to believe that it is particularly accurate. Even sillier, the top 15 college list doesn't include Stanford or Columbia.

Please don't use junk lists like this to figure out which private schools make sense for your child. Visit and talk to other parents.

plus the list doesnt account for all the legacies graduating from these schools to go on to pay full rides at mommy and daddys alma maters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Wouldn't every school's % in the top 15 be higher too? You don't get to change the rules for just TJ, you know ....

True, but I think TJ sends relatively large number of students to these schools each year especially Michigan (around 28), CMU (around 24), Stanford (around 10), Berkeley (around 10) definitely more than LACs.

Maybe, but I suspect most of those schools send relatively large numbers of students to all of those colleges. Michigan seems to be a pretty popular safety school among the private high schoolers.

I'm sure if we had perfect information about all the colleges attended by every high schooler, then each school could game the list to maximize its percentage by cherry-picking which colleges to include. But that seems like a pointless exercise, IMHO.

I am not sure if Michigan could be considered as a safety school for private high schoolers. Maybe for those in the top 10% but not for most of the students.

Agree. Shows PP's clueless.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Wouldn't every school's % in the top 15 be higher too? You don't get to change the rules for just TJ, you know ....

True, but I think TJ sends relatively large number of students to these schools each year especially Michigan (around 28), CMU (around 24), Stanford (around 10), Berkeley (around 10) definitely more than LACs.

Maybe, but I suspect most of those schools send relatively large numbers of students to all of those colleges. Michigan seems to be a pretty popular safety school among the private high schoolers.

I'm sure if we had perfect information about all the colleges attended by every high schooler, then each school could game the list to maximize its percentage by cherry-picking which colleges to include. But that seems like a pointless exercise, IMHO.

I am not sure if Michigan could be considered as a safety school for private high schoolers. Maybe for those in the top 10% but not for most of the students.

Hey Sam,

This is Mike from Lotus Prep - a parent just sent me the link to this thread. I'm a bit surprised by your message here. I asked you before publishing last November if we could include some of your data in a research paper and on a website, and you said yes. You said, "I'm here for the data, not the glory. Indeed, I'd prefer to remain anonymous!" I wrote back:

"Are you sure? I'm going to publish a smaller part of my analysis, a ranking of schools, on a commercial website. Right now I have you credited as a data source in my second and final paragraphs as 'education researcher Sam Tuo.' Do you want me to remove that? Thanks for your work, by the way - it's fantastic and deserves a wider audience."

You told me again you were not interested in any credit, but let me know if you'd like credit on the site now.

As I told you last year, your work is excellent, and you've done a real service for DC families. We updated a substantial portion of your statistics and added our own, mostly after talking to administrators and teachers.

BTW, happy to share the new info we found if you'd like to update your Google spreadsheet.

----

Also, thanks to the people who have pointed out the very few typographical errors in the report; we'll update those shortly. We only published numbers for which we had a real, documentary source. If anyone sees an incorrect number, and can point to a real, documentary source showing it's wrong, please send that over and we'll correct that number. Please don't write anonymously about hearing something else fifth-hand.

That said, I think it's ridiculous that this resource even needs to exist at all. Private schools should be forced to reveal this information.

The contrast:

For the public schools, information was available publicly. Administrators from the public schools in a few cases even sent us reports from the College Board that were more up-to-date than what was publicly available.

For the private schools, the research process was more like Bob Woodward's parking garage meetings with Deep Throat. To their credit, Maret and a few other schools publish this information publicly. Most do not. We had to obtain statistics from Sam, from private meetings with parents and teachers and administrators, from obscure out-of-print books, and from reports the private schools had accidentally published in public (this was how we verified the figures for NCS). For some schools, we could find no information.

Private high schools have managed to effect an astonishing change in the psychosocial dynamic. It has become taboo to discuss any objective measure of academic performance. In the extreme version of the anti-numbers argument, parents and children are told to choose a school solely on the basis of how the school makes them "feel." Detest the data; trust the glossy brochure, the fancy website, the slick administrator. (Do we act so irrationally when we buy a car or a house?) If we believe that private schools are mere country clubs, that they do nothing to educate our children, that's appropriate. In that case, they're 4-year, $160,000 babysitting services that do nothing for the mind and happen to send "graduates" to fancy colleges afterward.

I don't believe that. I think there are real performance differences between schools. It's hard to measure those differences, but average SAT score and NMSF proportions are excellent proxy measures for a student body's academic preparedness. Some people stick their fingers in their ears when they hear this, but the correlation between SAT score and first-year college grades is obscenely high, even after adjusting for socioeconomic variables. The only reasonable counterargument is that average SAT may not be entirely a school performance measure. It may instead be that a school is selecting students with off-the-charts fluid intelligence who would get a 1600 even if they were locked in a dark closet for 4 years. Maybe. Either way, I'd rather know the numbers than not know.

In the end, just as no one is choosing a car solely on the basis of horsepower, no one is selecting a school *solely* on the basis of average SAT.

These numbers are useful information to consider alongside the fancy school tour and brochure, alongside the conversations with counselors, alongside the conversations with parents.

As long as the private high schools in the area are publishing glossy brochures, I'll be publishing the honest numbers, wherever they can be found.

-Mike

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, I think that LotusPrep site pulled my data sets from the DCUM FAQ. I don't have any connection to LotusPrep and don't know anything about them. As I've explained in many threads, I think the data is useful but needs to be used with caution and context. HTH

Sam2

These are not accurate stats. I calculated, and the % going to those top 15 schools at my DC's school is significantly higher than it says on that list.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Wouldn't every school's % in the top 15 be higher too? You don't get to change the rules for just TJ, you know ....

True, but I think TJ sends relatively large number of students to these schools each year especially Michigan (around 28), CMU (around 24), Stanford (around 10), Berkeley (around 10) definitely more than LACs.

Maybe, but I suspect most of those schools send relatively large numbers of students to all of those colleges. Michigan seems to be a pretty popular safety school among the private high schoolers.

I'm sure if we had perfect information about all the colleges attended by every high schooler, then each school could game the list to maximize its percentage by cherry-picking which colleges to include. But that seems like a pointless exercise, IMHO.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Wouldn't every school's % in the top 15 be higher too? You don't get to change the rules for just TJ, you know ....

True, but I think TJ sends relatively large number of students to these schools each year especially Michigan (around 28), CMU (around 24), Stanford (around 10), Berkeley (around 10) definitely more than LACs.

Anonymous wrote:TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.

Wouldn't every school's % in the top 15 be higher too? You don't get to change the rules for just TJ, you know ....

TJ's % in top 15 colleges would be significantly higher (maybe 16 - 22%) if Columbia, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern, CMU were added.