What tier is Trevor day and Columbia Grammar

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of these kids are legacies, FGLI's (these schools love prep for prep kids), plus mix in a few athletes? The numbers are still very impressive but this thread shows they know exactly what they are doing.

When we were interviewing at these schools we made it very clear that we are proud and active alums of Ivies. We don't donate a lot but our kids do have an edge. I don't know if this mattered at all (we had mixed results) but it would be dumb not to try, as long as you don't do it in an over-the-top, offensive way.

Does legacy even matter anymore? Other than for big donors (and I’m talking 8 figures, which will count the same legacy or not), I’ve heard that run of the mill legacy is basically irrelevant in today’s college admissions.

Depends on the school. But many of these families are wealthy enough to be consistently making 5/6/7 figure gifts which will definitely still move the needle at a lot of top schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chapin has a 34% ivy acceptance rate over for years which is also great…. That’s just scooting to ChatGPT so that is very unofficial. LOL

Matriculation or acceptance? That percentage seems really high considering their performance in the last 2-3 years

NP. Just looked it up. For last 5 years, Chapin sent 78 to ivies, so less than Spence’s 91 and much less than Brearley’s 124, but a little more than Collegiate’s 71. Seems to be about 25% of class if you assume similar class size to those others.

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of these kids are legacies, FGLI's (these schools love prep for prep kids), plus mix in a few athletes? The numbers are still very impressive but this thread shows they know exactly what they are doing.

When we were interviewing at these schools we made it very clear that we are proud and active alums of Ivies. We don't donate a lot but our kids do have an edge. I don't know if this mattered at all (we had mixed results) but it would be dumb not to try, as long as you don't do it in an over-the-top, offensive way.

Does legacy even matter anymore? Other than for big donors (and I’m talking 8 figures, which will count the same legacy or not), I’ve heard that run of the mill legacy is basically irrelevant in today’s college admissions.

Anonymous wrote:Chapin has a 34% ivy acceptance rate over for years which is also great…. That’s just scooting to ChatGPT so that is very unofficial. LOL

Matriculation or acceptance? That percentage seems really high considering their performance in the last 2-3 years

Anonymous wrote:(and certainly makes it seem worth it to try to get your kid into one)

The problem there is always post hoc ergo propter hoc - how much of this is kids getting into Ivies because they went to that school versus kids who were going to get into an Ivy anyway regardless of which high school they attend.

There are two basic "costs" to going to a TT school like HM or Brearley:

1) The actual financial cost, the impact of with varies wildly but which I think for most of the people posting here is a non-trivial burden; it is, however, more-or-less the same at every private school.

2) The burden and opportunity cost for your kid of going to a school with a heavy academic workload.

Of course the second would also apply going to an SHSAT high school.

So the basic questions you have to ask are:

a) Will my child's college admissions prospects be improved by going to *a* private school;
b) Will my child's college admissions prospects be improved further by going to *this* private school;
c) Will this improvement be enough to offset the costs/downsides of going to this school, some of which can end up impacting college as well.

Remember that they also have to grow as a person in the 4 or 7 years we're talking about; if maintaining a good GPA at Brearley and paying $70k/year in tuition means sacrificing other things that contribute to that growth, it might well not be worth it.

What percentage of these kids are legacies, FGLI's (these schools love prep for prep kids), plus mix in a few athletes? The numbers are still very impressive but this thread shows they know exactly what they are doing.

When we were interviewing at these schools we made it very clear that we are proud and active alums of Ivies. We don't donate a lot but our kids do have an edge. I don't know if this mattered at all (we had mixed results) but it would be dumb not to try, as long as you don't do it in an over-the-top, offensive way.

Chapin has a 34% ivy acceptance rate over for years which is also great…. That’s just scooting to ChatGPT so that is very unofficial. LOL

Anonymous wrote:For comparison, HM publishes 3-year stats but (by coincidence) they had 124 out of 539 graduates in the last 3 years attend Ivies, so 23% versus Brearley's 41%.

Of course it's also the case that they had 539 graduates in the past 3 years - half again as many girls as Brearley et al, then double it by adding boys - so relative to the difficulty of getting in it's still a pretty good deal.

20-30% to ivies is amazing for these TT schools (and certainly makes it seem worth it to try to get your kid into one), but 40+% is bordering on unbelievable in the current college admissions environment. There must be something in the water over at Brearley.

Anonymous wrote:I do also think it's worth noting that Ivy % specifically is not a great metric because a) individual Ivies often wax and wane in their fondness for a particular school (remember that in most cases all of the NYC files are going through the same admissions officer) and b) there's not really a difference exclusivity-wise between say Cornell/Penn and Duke/Northwestern, but some schools might apply a certain amount of pressure to go to Ivies specifically.

We could break it down by top 10 or top 20 schools, but that would be more work. I think it’s just what some use as a proxy for elite college admissions and gives an idea directionally. But agreed it’s not science.

Sta*n*ford, oops

(going by, say, just HYP + MIT + Stamford helps with the second problem but worsens the first)

I do also think it's worth noting that Ivy % specifically is not a great metric because a) individual Ivies often wax and wane in their fondness for a particular school (remember that in most cases all of the NYC files are going through the same admissions officer) and b) there's not really a difference exclusivity-wise between say Cornell/Penn and Duke/Northwestern, but some schools might apply a certain amount of pressure to go to Ivies specifically.

Anonymous wrote:You’re incredible. Can you do Dalton and Trinity too?

Dalton: 173 out of 523 (33%) over 5 years

Trinity: I can't seem to find a list of those stats, all they publish on their website is a map of schools with at least 1 student (which is honestly a bit suspicious, particularly given their supposedly weak showing in the current year).

For the other school in the TT debate, Riverdale lists 219 out of 686 over 5 years, or 32%.

Anonymous wrote:For the posters interested, I have a daughter in middle school with friends at Chapin, Spence and Brearley. They literally cover the exact same material.

We've looked at this *a lot* and the only schools that seem to go noticeably beyond the standard 7th grade pre-Algebra / 8th grade Algebra I track for math (which was also the standard track 30 years ago when we were all in middle school) are Dalton, Horace Mann (if you take + pass the skip-a-grade exam before 6th grade), and Speyer. A number of schools that don't offer AP exams and hence don't have a specific set of things they need kids to get through by the end of 11th grade do it in a sort of blurry nebulous way, where there's no explicit honors track and you can move up/down every year but some kids get through all of Algebra I in 8th grade and some kids only get through 2/3 of it and it doesn't matter because they've learned the bits they need for 9th grade math.