According to the WSJ, Collegiate School is Best Ivy Feeder > Ivy League, wsj

According to the WSJ, Collegiate School is Best Ivy Feeder

by Hal Parker | November 30, 2007 at 9:00 pm

No, actually that headline is totally false. It belongs to the more interesting article the WSJ should have written. But in any case Collegiate does have the highest percentage of students who enroll in either "Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins" in case that motley group means anything to you.

In this article, which is clearly aimed at soliciting the self-satisfied clucks of its affluent readership, the WSJ employs what is possibly the most dubious methodology of all time in order to produce a fancy ranking of high-schools. See if this exercise makes any sense to you:

Weekend Journal looked at the freshman classes at eight top colleges -- Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins -- and compiled a list of the students' high-school alma maters. The survey ranked the high schools based on the number of students sent to those eight colleges, divided by the high school's number of graduates in 2007, limiting the scope to schools that had senior classes of at least 50. The "success rate" column represents the percentage of students in each high-school's graduating class that attended one of our chosen colleges.

Pomona, seriously? In any case, all of the usual suspects put in an appearance, NYC private schools (Collegiate, Trinity, Chapin, Brearley), New England boarding schools (Andover, Exeter, Groton, Deerfield), the famous magnet schools (TJ, that school in Illinois that's like TJ) , and the schools that make local sense (Princeton High School) But there are also some schools nobody saw coming, like Daewoo Foreign Language High School, located in Seoul.

After the jump -- the chart of schools, with juicy glosses like, "The school, founded in 1635, sent 25 kids to Harvard--more than any other high school on our list," and "Many students at the Jewish day school spend a year in Israel before college, which the school says may affect its numbers in our survey."

HIGH SCHOOL	CITY	STATE/ COUNTRY	SENIOR CLASS SIZE	STUDENTS SENT IN 2007	SUCCESS RATE	CURRENT TUITION	COMMENT
Collegiate School	New York	N.Y.	50	13	26.0%	29,100	Just over 600 boys make up the student body from Kindergarten through 12th grade at this small private school.
Brearley School	New York	N.Y.	51	12	23.5%	31,300	The all-girls school says on its Web site that it sent a total of 93 kids to the Ivy League in the last five years.
Chapin School	New York	N.Y.	58	13	22.4%	29,100	Kindergartners at this all-girls school learn creative writing; third-graders study yoga.
Polytechnic School	Pasadena	Calif.	87	17	19.5%	23,750	School sent 9 kids to Stanford last year, more than to any other college.
University of Chicago Lab Schools	Chicago	Ill.	113	22	19.5%	20,445	College counseling office recently hired a former University of Chicago admissions officer.
College Preparatory School	Oakland	Calif.	86	15	17.4%	26,850	School's director of college counseling worked in the University of Pennsylvania admissions office for eight years.
Trinity School	New York	N.Y.	116	20	17.2%	30,120	School will celebrate its 300th birthday next year.
Phillips Academy	Andover	Mass.	327	52	15.9%	29,000*	School says that about 10% of its students are from outside the U.S. and 35% are students of color.
Delbarton School	Morristown	N.J.	116	18	15.5%	23,600	Independent school for boys is led by an order of Benedictine monks; about 30% of students are non-Catholic.
Phillips Exeter Academy	Exeter	N.H.	317	47	14.8%	28,200*	This year Exeter announced it will waive tuition for students whose family income is under $75,000.
Milton Academy	Milton	Mass.	184	27	14.7%	31,175*	School requires seniors to take a course on transition to adult life. Students do mock college interviews
Groton School	Groton	Mass.	83	12	14.5%	31,530*	Students are required to write two college essays summer before senior year, which are critiqued by faculty.
Daewon Foreign Language High School	Seoul	South Korea	78	11	14.1%	05,000	School is divided into two separate programs; one for students planning to attend university in South Korea, the other for those bound for U.S. colleges. Our class-size figure reflects the U.S.-bound track
Lawrenceville School	Lawrenceville	N.J.	239	33	13.8%	32,110*	School sent 16 kids to Princeton last year; since 2003, it says it has sent 59 students there.
Kent Place School	Summit	N.J.	59	8	13.6%	26,818	Director of college advising worked in undergraduate admissions at Columbia and Georgetown universities.
Hunter College High School	New York	N.Y.	177	24	13.6%	0	The public school, administered by Hunter College, limits 7th grade applicants to kids who scored at least 90% in reading and math on standardized tests.
Rivers School	Weston	Mass.	74	10	13.5%	30,500	Applications to Rivers increased 20% over the past year, and ninth grade applications rose 27%, school says.
Saint Ann's School	Brooklyn	N.Y.	76	10	13.2%	25,500	School has an arts-centered approach; poetry teacher starts working with kids as young as 5.
San Francisco University High School	San Francisco	Calif.	92	12	13.0%	28,725	Last year's seniors scored about 10% higher on SATs than previous class, says director of college counseling.
Menlo School	Atherton	Calif.	139	18	12.9%	29,400	School offers a program that pairs kids with parents to discuss college, careers and community service.
St. Paul's School	Concord	N.H.	150	19	12.7%	39,300	The boarding-only school now offers a "gut check" for seniors, with faculty reading college essays in three minutes, as a college admissions officer might.
Harker School	San Jose	Calif.	167	20	12.0%	29,894	Five studentsfrom Harker were selected as a youth delegation to the G8 conference in Germany this year.
John Burroughs School	St. Louis	Mo.	97	11	11.3%	18,575	School has one of the lowest tuitions of the U.S. private schools in our study. Midwestern schools generally cost less than those on the coasts.
Rye Country Day School	Rye	N.Y.	92	10	10.9%	27,500 (11-12th grades)	School says that since 1996, 97% of kids taking the Advanced Placement BC Calculus course received perfect scores on the AP exam.
Korean Minjok Leadership Academy	Gangwon Province	South Korea	133	14	10.5%	16,000	School in South Korea's Gangwon-do province requires students to speak only English for many classes.
Buckingham Browne & Nichols	Cambridge	Mass.	115	12	10.4%	31,440	School opened $26 million visual and performing arts center this year.
Princeton High School	Princeton	N.J.	299	31	10.4%	0	This year, school sent 19 kids to Princeton University, which is across the street from the high school.
Ramaz Upper School	New York	N.Y.	100	10	10.0%	20,000	Many students at the Jewish day school spend a year in Israel before college, which the school says may affect its numbers in our survey.
Stuyvesant High School	New York	N.Y.	674	67	9.9%	0	Selective public high school specializing in math and science says it sent 17 kids to Harvard last year.
Head-Royce School	Oakland	Calif.	81	8	9.9%	25,590	School opened a new building devoted to world languages this year, and recently added Mandarin classes
Regis High School	New York	N.Y.	125	12	9.6%	0	Tuition-free Catholic boys school says it drew more than 2,300 prospective students to recent open houses
Blake School	Minneapolis	Minn.	127	12	9.4%	19,900	Minnesota school has both alpine and nordic skiing teams.
Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy	Aurora	Ill.	203	19	9.4%	0	School requires kids to participate in an "intersession" in January, a break from regular studies with courses like "Exploring the Meaning of Life: Why It All Matters."
Hotchkiss School	Lakeville	Conn.	172	16	9.3%	32,400*	New headmaster is a former head of schools in Botswana and Wales.
Bishop's School	La Jolla	Calif.	120	11	9.2%	24,400	A Bishop's graduate won the Olympic trials in laser sailing-competing in a small single-handed boat-and will participate in the Olympics in China next year.
Thomas Jefferson High School For Science And Technology	Alexandria	Va.	428	39	9.1%	0	Competitive magnet school for science-minded kids sent 13 students to MIT this year.
Lakeside School	Seattle	Wash.	132	12	9.1%	22,160	Students can't graduate without at least 80 hours of community service and a weeklong outdoor program.
Deerfield Academy	Deerfield	Mass.	188	17	9.0%	27,642*	School asks parents to submit anecdotes about their kids to inform college counselors' recommendation letters.
St. John's School	Houston	Texas	122	11	9.0%	16,825	Students can take educational summer trips with faculty to places like Indian monasteries or the French Alps.
Boston Latin School	Boston	Mass.	381	33	8.7%	0	The school, founded in 1635, sent 25 kids to Harvard--more than any other high school on our list.

(Full disclosure: various editors attended Andover and Ramaz)

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66 Responses to “According to the WSJ, Collegiate School is Best Ivy Feeder”

keggy Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:07 am
The HTML formatting on the chart’s “comments” section is trippin’ me out. Poor kids slated to enroll at Harvard, they’ve no idea of the shitshow “instruction” they’ll be getting. Better-off at Williams/Swarthmore, but then of course, you can’t whore the names out as well.
Columbiatch Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am
Harvard kids smart. They don’t need a good education to succeed. Hell, half of them don’t even need an education.
Wow. Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:15 am
http://www.collegiateschool.org/program/college/matriculation.asp?bhcp=1
dartmouth Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 8:38 am
“Harvard kids smart. They don’t need a good education to succeed.” Succeed at what?
a proud alum says Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I love that they refer to “the prestigious Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, NY”. This article is completely absurd.
Eph Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hah! Second Williams mention on IvyGate.

/waits for the flames
Cornell/Louisiana Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Show’s the endemic discrimination against people from the deep south. These schools will continue to give preferential treatment to the rich spawn of New England Black doctors, lawyers, and professionals, and ignore poor southerners, be they white or black–and then pretend that they’re truly “diverse.”
@ "Wow" Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:23 pm
You’re obviously a high-school freshman at that school who thinks it’s a big deal. It isn’t.
Brown from Loomis Chaffee Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
You have to be drinking to say that the Collegiate School is better than any school in the “Ten Schools Admission Organization” or the “Big Nine.” Loomis Chaffee, which never gets much attention, has a larger endowment and better matriculation than Collegiate by far.
Andover Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Andover sent 83 kids to the ivies plus Stanford and MIT last year, they have a 700+ million dollar endowment, and their valedictorian goes to Oxford. Are you telling me that the middle-class bullshit factory known as the “Collegiate School” is better? And Exeter, our rival, has a billion dollar endowment!
dartmouth and yale Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 1:33 pm
“Andover sent 83 kids to the ivies plus Stanford and MIT last year, they have a 700+ million dollar endowment, and their valedictorian goes to Oxford. Are you telling me that the middle-class bullshit factory known as the “Collegiate School” is better? And Exeter, our rival, has a billion dollar endowment!” Thank you for reminding us all what it is that can suck so much about the Ivy League. There is nothing more obnoxious than a Phillips monkey working until the wee hours of the morning on an organic chemistry exam three weeks before it is to be taken, shooting nasty looks at anybody who dares to laugh or demonstrate any kind of happiness at being alive. Do us all a favor, forgo higher education, and just work for your dad. That’s where you’ll end up, anyways.
princeton2009 Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Does Andover send kids to Ivies because of their reputation or because they actually train their kids sufficiently to look good individually on an application? I know reputation and training go hand in hand, but if a kid had accomplished the same extracurricular and academic feats that he had at Andover, and the “Andover” name was removed from his/her college application, would he still get into an Ivy?

I went from public to Princeton. There are maybe 5 kids out of the last three years’ 2000 kids who have gotten into Princeton. BUT those 5 kids have done very well, probably better than most kids from Collegiate. Maybe that would be a better study…
collegiate alum Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
i’m just glad no one from my “middle-class bullshit factory” is engaging in this ‘my high school is better than your high school’ argument. that is so 10th grade.
dartmouth Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:14 pm
“There are maybe 5 kids out of the last three years’ 2000 kids who have gotten into Princeton.” That’s pretty high for a public school. Public schools in rich communities are often much better than private schools. I don’t think that coming from a public school necessarily gives you any “street cred.” The question is: are Ivies admitting students who excel at poor, underfunded, and perhaps less challenging public schools? It depends on the Ivy. Only 40% of Yale students and only 50% of Princeton students are on financial aid, whereas over 60% of Dartmouth students receive aid. I find it staggering that nearly two-thirds of all Yale students’ families can afford about $160,000 in tuition over four years for one child.
@ dartmouth and yale Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Your bit of evidence that “their valedictorian goes to Oxford” is not at all impressive. Any shmuck can get into [i]some[/i] college at Oxford from the US – the colleges use international students to supplement their funding.
proud blazer Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Well, the magnet at Montgomery Blair is only 100 out of 800 students per grade – but if you count only those 100, you get a “success rate” (using this bogus formula) of 16.5%.
@ @dartmouth and yale Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Do you know what quotation marks are?
public school Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 4:59 pm
im so glad i went to public school
Cayuga Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Me thinks the WSJ should do this for community colleges.
disgusted Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 5:45 pm
The poster who referred to Collegiate as a “middle-class bullshit factory” is what is wrong with the Ivy League. I am a graduating senior at Cornell.

And no, I did not attend Collegiate.
Cool-umbia '08 Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 6:44 pm
One interesting thing to take from Wow’s stick-up-ass post is where these kids from Collegiate go. On the 8-year list, of course HYP is tops, but Columbia #4? I would assume most snotty kids from Collegiate would go somewhere with a little more street cred.

Also, thank you WSJ for creating a bullshit article of sensationalism to draw in boring, rich parents. I know people from some of those high schools who are normal, and boy do they hate the other pricks who they had to sit in school with for 4 years.
Yale Alum Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 7:26 pm
If you name the best private schools and don’t list Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, Choate, Groton, and Loomis first, you are a fool.

Whoever called called Collegiate “Middle-class” is fuck*ng correct.
just to reiterate Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 8:26 pm
did everybody get that? Collegiate is middle class. I just wanted to make sure everyone got that. Now that that’s been established can we find out who, besides these two douchebags, gives a shit?

@Brown from Loomis, and Yale “Douche” Alum:
Maybe you’ll practice reading and see that Collegiate is at the top of the list because it put more students in a small list of top schools — an objective measure to be sure, which did not factor in the preppy arrogance of spoiled alums from Loomis (which didn’t make the list – or Brown, which again, was not a part of the list). So you see, it’s biased. Now go fuck yourselves.
loomis chaffee? Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:59 am
i went to neither loomis or collegiate, but knew many, many people from both schools. although the WSJ article’s way of ranking is ridiculous, any objective viewer would not be able to question collegiate’s supremacy. their boys do extremely well, while loomis…not so much. my collegiate friends are at schools like harvard and pomona, while my loomis ones are at universities like the new school and nyu.
@ Andover Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 am
NOBODY GIVES A SHIT, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
@ the first Dartmouth Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:25 am
Check your facts. Less than 60% receive FinAid at Dartmouth, not “more than 60″. And yes, all you high schoolers go away for a while.
my $29,000 on the subject Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:13 am
If your issue with the methodology of the survey is the inclusion of Pomona and not statistical significance, then I think you’re missing something major about the way in which this relates, objectively, to the admissions process.

The “use” of this study should only be to turn people on to the candidates for best school. But the confidence interval for 50 people and one year of samples is shitty.

So what’s this about: bragging rights? In which case what is the point? Get a life. Everybody’s always going to think their high school or a high school like their high school was the best– or think that their college was better than this college and that college is better than that college. But look, someone has to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and it’s the Wall Street Journal–not you.

As for you haters, you’re a bunch of proper douche bags. Go fuck yourselves. Do you know these 14-18 year old boys you’re judging? You don’t. They’re very young men and children, and they absolutely don’t deserve the bullshit they get from soooooo many people.

As to the fat cat “power elite” characterization, it’s worn. We alleviate our social conscience by donating millions of dollars towards financial aid that allows over 20% of our students (a greater proportion is concentrated in high school) to attend on financial aid. We also have not committed white flight from our school districts– so our tax money is not super-concentrated in wealthy suburbs. Our parents pay 29,000 a year for their kids, income taxes for schools and more for the other children– they are great parents and, even for the upper 1% of the income population, this is an ENORMOUS sacrifice that they’re making for their kids.

And if you don’t believe that these schools are good, you’re crazy. By any measure of how much people learn, people whose parents spend 28-35,000 dollars to have their children educated generally will learn more. Representation is key, but you will never convince Ivy League colleges that they don’t want to do away entirely with the process of filling up 20-40 slots a year from 5 or six schools, with extraordinarily talented New Englanders who have already read Beckett or taken a seminar on Ulysses. In my opinion, it is a silly thing to ask for.

Finally, if you ask a Collegiate kid what he’s proud of he won’t tell you it’s admissions. You’d have to be there to get it. The school has a history of, and hopefully will continue in the future with a uniquely democratic and liberal character, by which I mean our lack of censorship and an excellent balance of power between teachers, students, trustees, and administrators.

Looking back, having gotten a sense of what was accepted elsewhere, I was amazed at what faculty were allowed to say/assign, what we were allowed to say and read. I had a lot of fun there, I am still close in age to there, and I can really say that most students have an unusually deep regard for an unusual number of teachers.

Most people get one one-in-a-lifetime teacher, we get 3 or 4 in high school. I’ll add that you can say this about Brearley, Chapin, Trinity, and Saint Anns as well.

That’s my own $29,000 on the subject.
29k Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:22 am
I didn’t mean to end suggesting that the schools i mentioned are inclusive of all the places where great teachers are– I just know people who sing their praises from high school and college. And I still find this amazing: kids who don’t think their high school sucked? WTF!
Old Wykehamist Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:59 pm
American private schools are a joke. If you know what a Wykehamist is, you’ll know why.
Old Wykehamist Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
American private schools are a joke. If you know what a Wykehamist is, you’ll know why.
Old Wykehamist Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
American private schools are a joke. If you know what a Wykehamist is, you’ll know why.
wah-hoo-wah Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
A friend of mine goes to winchester. It’s cool, if you’re into an oppressive campus and obscene amounts of work. I’ll let you in on a little secret: most of the Americans who get into Oxford probably worked half as hard as their counterparts from across the pond… Overkill? You tell me.
feshdid Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
what? no Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Darmouth, Caltech…but Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore give me a break. Incidentally, year after year, St. Paul’s School has always had the highest rate of acceptance to Ivy League with close to 30%
feshdid Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
what? no Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Darmouth, Caltech…but Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore give me a break. Incidentally, year after year, St. Paul’s School has always had the highest rate of acceptance to Ivy League with close to 30%
dartmouth Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
You all suck so much, it’s almost unbearable. The only solace is that you’ll live miserable and unfulfilled lives fawning with self-pity over your own reflections.
Cornell / Louisiana Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Show’s the endemic discrimination against people from the deep south. These schools will continue to give preferential treatment to the rich spawn of New England Black doctors, lawyers, and professionals, and ignore poor southerners, be they white or black–and then pretend that they’re truly “diverse.”
@Cornell/Louisiana Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
…sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?

I agree that the colleges selected for this study are a bit suspicious. Has it occured to anyone that even the WSJ is a business, and may have been asked to conduct a “study” in which Collegiate came out on top? I mean, is this really even news-worthy if they don’t include all the top 20 colleges that highschool seniors apply to?
harvard09 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
The WSJ did this same thing a few years ago. Does anyone know if that older survey is online? It would be fascinating to compare the two and see which schools have gone up and which have gone down…
harvard09 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
The WSJ did this same thing a few years ago. Does anyone know if that older survey is online? It would be fascinating to compare the two and see which schools have gone up and which have gone down…
d08 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
unfortunately, HGHS receives an unfair poke–in my year (class of 04) we sent about 25 kids out of 270 to ivies–that’s a lot more than the 3.5% WSJ cites who attend that shitty bucket of schools, which includes hellholes like U Chicago and JHU. not including yale? wtf?
dartmouth Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
“It would be fascinating to compare the two and see which schools have gone up and which have gone down…” Would it really, though? Would it?
batbarf Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
“Would it really, though? Would it?”

Me thinks not, but who am i to judge?
dmouth09 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I find it hard to believe that these private schools are worth it. I guess maybe if your family is rich enough to fund the 120K plus 160K for college and high school, or if you get a good enough job upon graduating to recoup the costs. But honestly, if you’re capable of doing the work that a private school puts you through, you could easily do it on your own at a public school, probably end up with a higher class rank and GPA, and get into a good college anyway. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be talking, because I’m paying to go to a private college right now. Still, I feel like the benefits you get out of a private college are far greater than those of a private high school. I don’t mean to insult people simply because they go to private schools; it just seems to me like an example of why the rich have a much greater advantage when applying to college. It sounds to me like paying 120K for admission.

Oh, by the way, hi Schlosser. How’s Yale?
Penn '07 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
I love how “middle-class” is used as an insult in this thread.

Thank God I went to public school.
stupid stupid stupid Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Never mind the ridiculous ranking mechanism – the numbers (at least some of them) are just wrong. Off the top of my head I can count thirteen Regis grads from last year who matriculated to Harvard, Williams and Princeton – not counting the other eight colleges, and that’s already above the “twelve” reported by WSJ.
pali9 Says:
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:19 pm
First, everyone’s right that the colleges selected are ridiculous. Second, very surprised not to see Harvard-Westlake on here. They send like 30 kids to Yale every year it seems.
very true Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 am
@pali9: That’s so true. Harvard-Westlake is a lot better than all of those California schools up there.
<3 ivygate <3 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:00 am
i’m totally using “middle class” as an epithet from now on.
Cool-umbia '08 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:50 am
I’m just happy to see people attempt to solve America’s socioeconomic divide problem on IvyGate’s comments.

Public school or bust!
brown Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:54 am
“Still, I feel like the benefits you get out of a private college are far greater than those of a private high school.”

And you know this how? In fact, I’d argue the opposite, having been to both myself…
d08 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:24 am
the benefits of a private college are far larger than a private high school because employers and grad schools don’t give a shit where you went to high school if you went to a quality college, and nearly all of those are private. the opposite is not true–no one who went to SUNY Brockport via Collegiate is getting a job except through his/her parents
@ d08 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
You’re missing the part where the benefits are not JUST my future employment. My prep school had a greater influence over who I am, my academic abilities, and my goals than Brown has ever had. For me, it wasn’t about college admissions or grad school or future employers. It was about an invaluable opportunity in and of itself.
who cares? Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Andrew Schlosser??
why08 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I know for a fact I got much more out of my private school than I did from my education at Yale. I don’t know whether it’s fair to compare a high school and a college, as I do believe the law of diminishing marginal returns holds at least somewhat in education – at least within the same field. But I’d say quality of instruction was certainly superior back in school and said school had much more of a positive influence over my identity than college did. As for job benefits, I was unpleasantly surprised at how little the Yale name gets you in a shitty job market straight out of school, especially through on campus recruiting.
2006 Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
WSJ used to do its high school ranking using acceptance to IVY LEAGUE schools where St. Anne’s in Brooklyn, Dalton, Collegiate, Horace Mann, Exeter and Andover sent ~30% and above to Ivy League schools.

JHU, Pomona, and U Chicago?

Seems like one of the WSJ people wanted to get his son into Collegiate

( most boarding schools are hurt because they are so big; ie horace mann sends something like 10 kids a year to harvard which is like roughly 10% of its class, wherease exter would have to send a huge amount of kids like 50 for that percentage)
29k Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Agreed with Brown. I go to Columbia at the moment and I feel like I learned a comparable amount at high school. If you want to talk about value: I had all PHDs in every class… at college I’ve had 90% TAs. What can you do?

As to Cornell/Louisiana, I think it is you who has the entitlement problem. It is a university’s business to accept whoever they damn well please.

“Discrimination,” just so you know, is when a more qualified candidate is chosen over a less qualified candidate because of prejudice: an assumption, based on something external to what is on paper, about who a candidate is.

Southerners are not discriminated against. They are preferred by geographic distribution. You can say that they are not “preferred enough” but that would sound like whining, wouldn’t it?

The real losers are new yorkers who don’t go to private schools. They get discriminated against by geographic distribution and don’t get PHDs teaching them. Not only that, but it is NORTHERN BLACKS, not southerners, have to vie for the area distribution spots with your proposed problem group of northern black doctors.

Sorry for talking down to you, but it’s only because I legitimately believe you’re a jackass. Allow me to educate you:

The real problem, which is plain to anybody who’s not busy stroking a hard on of righteous indignation is that southern schools suck. They just suck. Huge balls.

At the end of the day, a university can try to take people when possible, but they will not ever ever fill their class up with people who got 1000 on the SAT just to be “fair” to you.

This is not to blame the poor for being poor. Though the south must be blamed for not teaching evolution in science classes (which is only symptomatic of larger scale censorship of curriculum by religious idiots). Science is the basis of reason, which is all that the SAT is. Kids are going to fuck up on tests if they go through life thinking “Jesus did it” is an acceptable relationship between cause and effect.

Cause and effect.

The funding of school districts is based on local property taxes. Richer neighborhoods will tend to have better schools because they are better funded. Additionally, even if you do not have that deterministic problem, rich people will actually MOVE INTO and GENTRIFY a neighborhood the moment they start sending kids to ivies in better proportions. External pressure is forced upon the poor by taxation. Better schools=increased property value=higher property taxes= you have to move.

So much for the “solution” in improving public schools.

We need to approach a problem with a sense of cause and effect, and the commitment to accept what is and to change it. Pointing the finger at black lawyers isn’t solving the problem.

Also, I might add, that you fail to understand that northern private schools are selective. Collegiate selects from dozens of other schools and takes top candidates. So there are levels of filtration above “rich.” The private schools on this list not only hand pick their classes, but also they throw out those who fail to keep up. If your average southern school only accepted people with 99% percentile scores in middle school, then kicked out 10% of its class that couldn’t cut it after assigning upwards of 4 hours of homework per night, you can bet your sweet ass they’d send about the same number of kids to harvard.
brown @29k Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Yes.
Anonymous Says:
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Is Collegiate really that “middle-class”? There are lots of rich bankers, private equity and hedge fund guys in NYC, and I doubt that they all send their kids to the New England Prep Schools. What am I missing? Then again, I suppose a household with $1,000,000 yearly salary would qualify as middle class by Manhattan standard.
Frog Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I would have to argue that the Journal article is biased in its selection of schools. Stuyvesant, one of the few public schools on this list primarily feeds several of the other ivy’s (Cornell, Penn, Columbia) not present in the study. Few go beyond the region (Pomona, U Chicago, Hopkins). Study also does not include schools such as Stanford, Duke which would balance out regional preferences of top west coast and southern students. Additionally this study fails to take into account the earning power and legacy relationships of the students’ families. Had this also been factored in, would have produced markedly different results, based more upon merit then privilege. After all, not everyone can afford Advantage Testing or has parents who confer legacy status. Glad to see Ramaz made the list. Hopefully Savage can pat himself on the back.
brown Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Does anyone else find the “factoring out” of factors like race or class (or, in this case, legacy status or earning power) to be kind of against the point in studies like this? I mean, that’s why we call them factors — they necessarily affect the outcome. Merit and privilege, for instance, are tied too closely together in college admissions to try to distinguish between the two. Sure, we can try to be race-blind or class-blind or what have you, but then you miss the point: that these things still DO (unfortunately, I might add) factor into our everyday lives, as much as some people might like to turn a blind eye to them.
h '06 Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
IN YO’ FACE, YALE!
Cornell / LA Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
You have an incoherent-manifesto style to your writing. Don’t lose it. It’s your trademark. Hopefully they taught you that at prep school.
To address the points that appear related to my comment:
1. Southerners are not preferred by distribution. A greater percentage of the total college age students from the north attend elite colleges than college age students from the south. But, you may argue, the percentage of students admitted from southern applicants vs. northern applicants are admitted. That’s an arbitrary time to measure percentages. Universities and high schools can manipulate the college applicant pool at will.
2. Qualification is completely arbitrary. You would have to know what a university is looking for in its student body. Is it a high SAT score, is it diversity, is it maturity and intellectual curiosity, is it ability to succeed after graduation? The SAT is an imperfect gauge for one element in the total, and it is a gauge easily manipulated by income – test prep, college counselors, etc. My argument is simply that if you are letting in students for diversity, geography is a much better indicator than race.
3. The real problem appears to be that you bought into some sort of new-school education nonsense that you are responsible for your own success. You were given a leg up in life by your parents money which you did not earn. Your high scores are based upon that. You are no more entitled to your spot at Columbia than a student who got his leg up during the application process. However poor southerners have a valid argument that if there are a limited number of legs up being given in the college admissions process it should go to them rather than rich African Americans who may or may not need it.
4. As for your broad generalizations about the South, your ramblings about fixing the property tax systems, etc. , your education has failed you. Unfortunately, there are no refunds.
yale prep Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
The WSJ ranking is bullshit. When I was looking at schools out of prep school, I looked at the top Ivies (arguably Harvard, Yale, and Princeton). I also looked at other Ivies (Penn and Brown) and a hand-full of equivalents and “little ivies” like Middlebury, Bowdoin, and Amherst. I’d say my experience was typical for a prep school senior.
Why would any objective methodology include schools like MIT, Pomona (honestly, what the fuck?), Swarthmore, UChicago, or Johns Hopkins? The only students from my school that went to those colleges were people who couldn’t get into Yale. But apparently Yale is not worthy of the WSJ top eight.

I’m fairly certain that if the WSJ had used the usual methodology (Ivy League + MIT and Stanford), Collegiate would still come out close to the top, and the usual list of prestigious private schools would follow: Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, Groton, Trinity, Rox Lat, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, etc.
St. Paul’s, for instance, sends most of its students to Harvard (26), Stanford (25), and Yale (21), but only 3 to Pomona (a major hit for the college office, I’m sure). Likewise, last year Andover sent students to Harvard (22), Penn (13), and Yale (12), but only 1 to Swarthmore (for shame!). Too bad Yale, Stanford, and Penn didn’t make the WSJ list this year.

Also, h ‘06, I hate you.
wheres dalton? Says:
December 5th, 2007 at 7:41 am
this ranking is retarded. if they wanted the best of the best, they wouldve done all the ivies, not freakin u chicago and JHU. to the people who call collegiate middle class, you’re a. retarded, and b. a douchebag. back in the day i went to dalton, and i have nothing but respect for collegiate. but im shocked that Dalton and Horace Mann got shortchanged so badly in this BS ranking. Dalton sends about 10 percent of its class each year to PENN alone!! so these rankings mean jack shit.
29k Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 5:55 am
Your post just smacks of hypocrisy. I’m incoherent? When YOU argue that there is no such thing as a quantitative measure of achievement? How about words known or math problems done right?

When you have a school where the median score is in the top 1/2 of the 99th percentile on standardized tests… those are elites. They are quantifiably good students. The end. That is what collegiate was.

You are welcome to continue to feel better than us for various reasons particular to your geography and upbringing– but you are in a minority. The market, society, does not reflect your radical ideas. We believe that there is a system by which we can judge merit. Colleges try to be fair about it.

The fact is you can’t fill a school entirely with poor people. To reduce it to a rich/poor scenario is a kind of misguided rabble rousing populism (especially in the ivy leauge forum LMAO). Collegiate kids, those of us who aren’t on financial aid (about 25% of the upper school), are rich kids in competition as much with upper middle class suburbians as anybody else. And there the argument gets really dull doesn’t it? Who’s to say a private school kid is so much advantaged over a kid from a top public school district in say Chappequa New York?

And as to do I “deserve” to go to Columbia? What a stupid question for you to pose. Do you deserve to go to your college? The question should be answered pretty easily: have you succeeded. Did you turn out to be a dud, surpassed by the public school kids once given a chance, or do you remain at the top? The fact is I’ve done well here. I can tell of quite a few prep schoolers who’ve fallen to the middle of the pack. That’s the real test of if admissions were correct in making a decision, but to an extent this is always the case. Often it is more extraordinary with public schoolers who end up not finishing their education, where some middle class yuppie would have almost certainly gotten by with B+s. It’s a rough science. Nobody’s claiming perfection, except you.

Oh and by the way, I also placed into Hunter College public high school too in middle school. I took the exam, along with 20,000 other New Yorkers and got in. Could have gone there for free… but decided to have my parents pay 100,000 for me to go to collegiate instead.

They thought it was a better school, so didn’t mind really.
29k Says:
December 9th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Various errors above… can’t seem to edit. Can you fix posts here?