Getting In: Who Gets the fat Envelope
Public v. Private Schools – a look at whether those tuition checks actually do buy more Ivy League bumper stickers.
By Carol Hall
Photography by John O’Donnell
In
Eighteen-year-old Brendan McGuire of
He scored a total of 2270 out of a possible 2400 on his SATs (730/writing; 740/math; 800—a perfect score—on reading comprehension, the old “verbal”). He carried four Advanced Placement (AP or college-level) courses in both his junior and senior years. And he had an impressive list of extracurricular activities that included community service and student government. He became a leader in all of them. “I learned it’s better to be involved in depth in a few activities, rather than over a breadth of them,” says Brendan, fit, blue-eyed, and smiling. And, oh yes: Brendan graduated last spring from one of Westchester’s most exclusive private schools:
There’s no doubt Brendan is intelligent and hard-working. And there’s no doubt his family and his school (he began attending
This fall, Katie Arden, a slim, energetic young woman, also started as a freshman at an Ivy League school:
Katie’s grade point average, “un-weighted,” was 97.58; “weighted”—she took seven AP courses, (AP courses earn students credit or standing at most colleges and universities)—it’s 100.61! Like Brendan, her SAT scores totaled 2270, too (710/math; 770/writing; 790/critical reading). And, like him, Katie had a stellar array of extracurricular activities, including intensive involvement with her school’s theater program. That undoubtedly helped when she delivered her speech as class valedictorian—of
That’s right, Katie went to a public school. Yet, the youngster got into what for the graduating class of 2006 was the nation’s most competitive Ivy League school, with an acceptance rate of just 8.6 percent. “I’m all for public school,” Katie proclaims. “I’ve been very happy in the Pelham schools and had no reason to switch,” she says.
If you are the parent of a child older than six, it is impossible not to read about these two outstanding kids and wonder if you are doing everything you can to prepare your own child to achieve and get into the very best college. In the eyes of many parents and high school students, these two grabbed the golden ring: admission to an Ivy League school.
All across
Many make that choice with their eyes on a certain kind of prize: entrance to an Ivy League college, i.e., Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”), and Yale—or comparable non-Ivy schools, e.g., Amherst, M
Parents keen on giving their kids a leg up understandably look for ways to increase their odds in what has become an absurdly competitive admissions process. To some that means, if you’ve got the money or can get the aid, you send your child to a private school, at least for grades 9 through 12. In 2003 (the last available year of data), of the 173,141
At the top colleges, 65 percent of the freshman class hail from the nation’s public schools and 25 percent from private. (The remaining 10 percent are products of home-schooling and other unusual circumstances.) That may seem to put the advantage squarely in the camp of public education but, of course, the vast majority of graduates are public school seniors. The number of high-school graduates has risen steadily since 1988. According to the
But not all private schools are created equal. For instance, some emphasize academics, some religious orientation, and others focus on cultural interests. But year after year, placements in top colleges from top Westchester-area private schools tend to skew higher than average, and often higher than the area’s public schools. It’s essential, when looking to see which schools send more kids to top colleges, to take into account class sizes, parents’ income range (private school kids generally can afford the more expensive colleges), and what colleges a school’s seniors apply to in the first place versus where they actually attend (some kids get accepted to the Ivy League but decline to enroll, often for financial reasons).
“If you took the top twenty to twenty-five colleges, you’d find them grossly over-represented among their admissions with kids from certain Westchester-area private schools,” says Howard Greene, former
college.” Greene, the author of many college-admission advice books, including Making it into a
One reason private schools might have such a dominant presence at selective colleges is that they themselves are selective. Most require applicants to pass entrance exams. By the time some private school grads apply to college, they will already have passed through a system designed to polish the most motivated and intelligent students. This process creates a competitive culture that benefits some students and penalizes others.
“Some kids are just more motivated by being around other motivated students,” says Katherine Cohen, founder of IvyWise, another college-consulting firm (cost: as much as $30,000 for two years’ worth of applicant-polishing). That description would fit
All agree, however, that a parent doesn’t do a child any favors by sending him or her to a private school where they consistently under-perform. “No Ivy League school wants to fill its freshman class with the bottom half of even the best private school,” says Edward Fiske, editor of The Annual Fiske Guide to Colleges and former education editor at the New York Times.
When choosing a high school, Michele Hernandez, an independent college consultant and former assistant director of admissions at
The debate over whether public or private school is the best path to the country’s most selective colleges goes way beyond your—and your neighbor’s—dinner table. It is a hot topic among education professionals, too. For them, it always comes back to the same question: where does one get the best education? All agree that there are good and bad teachers, good and bad educational experiences to be had at both types of institutions. In
“Any good
private school.”
Landing an acceptance letter from one of the top colleges or universities has always been an achievement. But competition for a place has heated up so much, it must be contributing to global warming. There are more and more qualified kids applying for an unchanging number of slots. That’s why there are acceptance rates like these:
Many high school seniors apply to several colleges (some to more than a dozen), further tightening the competition. “About thirty percent of students apply to colleges that only about seventeen percent attend,” reports Judy Hingle, director of professional development at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “We have a real shotgun approach to college admissions in this country.” (To reduce the competition for places from the same school, some private schools limit the number of college applications their students maysubmit.)
Still, it’s important to remember that there are some 2,200 four-year colleges in this country, many of which are almost embarrassingly well endowed these days, courtesy of the dance between their fundraising departments and their alumni. If your child is looking at colleges, remember the following statistic and take heart: a whopping 70 percent of all colleges/universities accept more than 50 percent of their applicants. You may want your kid to go to an Ivy or equivalent top-notch college, but you haven’t done your homework if you underestimate the many fine “second-tier” schools that exist in
Parents often forget that things have changed since they attended college. For one thing, the admissions picture is vastly more complicated. The most selective colleges and universities are bending over backward to achieve diversity in their freshman classes.
They want kids from different ethnic, economic, religious, and social backgrounds. “They are paying more attention to the individual student, rather than to which school you came from,” says Kelly Mitchell, a school counselor at
Quite often, there are practical considerations involved, not just grade-point averages. “If a new dorm or a new engineering complex is being built, it can change the numbers,” explains Mitchell, saying that the school may be on the lookout for engineering-oriented candidates in particular. “Next year, I know of one top university that will be renovating its dorms, so there will probably be fewer residential students accepted.”
But in the cases of kids who might seem obvious candidates, their acceptances have become more nuanced. Some might say deciding when to do what in the application process has become a bit like reading tea leaves. For instance, having “legacy” relatives in your family—both of Katie Arden’s parents went to Yale—can weigh in your favor. (No one knows how much but it’s hardly an “automatic in.”) Regardless, Katie still would have been a non-starter without a shimmering high-school record. A number of Brendan McGuire’s family members went to Notre Dame. He held that in mind as a possibility but later in the process realized other options and eventually chose
Jeffrey Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, says his team looks at every applicant in the context of the school from which they are coming. Like most colleges and universities, Yale has admissions people dedicated to certain geographic areas. They get to know the schools in their catchment areas intimately, often spending years covering the same turf. They look to see if the student has taken the most rigorous coursework their school offers. At Yale, the period between November 1 and March 30 is called “the reading season,” when admissions officers read approximately 1,200 applications each. “We read, with very different eyes, an application from an inner-city
And things have changed since parents went to college in other ways, too. The top schools no longer want a group of well-rounded kids. They want to put together a well-rounded group of kids. “It’s okay to be interested in a lot of things, but you’ve got to focus, you’ve got to stand out,” says Adam Robinson of Rocket Review. He uses the analogy of a dinner party. Every person invited has to bring something interesting to the table—a keen interest in history, music, economics, etc. “Colleges want to put together a community where there is conversation with a capital C, an environment with good discourse,” he says.
Ivies are so flooded with applicants that you don’t pass “Go” without a superb academic record. That doesn’t eliminate as many applicants as you might think. “A ridiculous percentage of Ivy League applicants is eligible,” says
With fewer students on their rolls, private schools can more closely monitor how their students use their time. Some require extracurricular involvement and many private schools require community service (for instance,
It almost doesn’t matter what your outside interests are, as long as you shine in them. One way to ensure that is to stick with something you love. So where does that leave all those baseball-obsessed young boys? “Baseball’s okay,” says Mitchell of Horace Greeley. But something you love that also helps others is even better. “Volunteer your time to go teach or work with an inner-city team,” advises Mitchell.
“We try to suggest ways to think outside the box,” says IvyWise’s Katherine Cohen. Be the first to fill a need in your community, for instance. “We always say, ‘If you can’t find it, found it!’” she declares.
One of IvyWise’s clients started a “sociology club” in his school in 10th grade; its members now serve as academic tutors for grade-schoolers in an underperforming public school nearby. Another student started a French club whose members regularly communicate with kids in French schools. “The top colleges feel that a student who’s been involved in high school will be very involved in college,” consultant Kelly Mitchell says.
Both Brendan McGuire and Katie Arden distinguished themselves in their extracurricular activities. Brendan was “really into tennis” when he entered high school, and even thought about following the recruitment path into college. But his grades started to improve in high school, he says, and, along with that, other interests started to blossom. He got involved in student government in his junior year, going on to become senior class president. A few years ago, to help family friends whose child is autistic, he became involved with the Greenwich Special Olympics. That moved him to join the school’s community-service club, where he helped organize events including a breast-cancer walk; he became co-president of the club. He joined the school newspaper in his sophomore year and became op-ed editor and senior copy editor in his junior year.
Katie is an avid cellist. She not only played in Pelham’s high school orchestra but also with a local symphony orchestra in the
When choosing a school, whether public or private, for their children, parents should consider the strength of its college counseling. “If you’re going to get students into the top schools, you have to have the counseling support,” says Edward Fiske, author of the Fiske Guide to Colleges. “I judge a guidance counselor by how many different schools the kids are going to. Only a handful of schools suggests a lazy counselor.”
“I judge a guidance counselor by how many different schools the kids are going to. Only a handful of schools suggests a lazy counselor.”
Your local public school may have six or seven guidance counselors—now referred to as “school counselors” or “deans of students”—on staff (
