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Yes, of course it is skewed. Like I said, I was exchanging one biased list for another biased list.
Yes, I would imagine this list is affected by cost. However, the NYC schools at 1 (43% economically disadvantaged according to US News), 3 (no US News data), 4 (43%), and 8 (59%) do not appear to be filled with affluent families. I suppose that the affluent population in these schools can afford to send their children to HPM and possibly the poorer families are eligible for financial aid, leaving the middle or upper middle paying full fare.
There is probably a degree of self-filtering or guidance counselor filtering too. One of my colleagues was accepted to MIT, but chose to go to a different, also highly ranked school because one involved paying the full fare, while the other one was $0. He chose not to strap a mortgage payment on his back. T's wife went to Harvard, but her high school guidance counselor suggested that she was aiming too high and should go to a beauty school. Talk about a Grand Canyon sized gap.
Yes, the percentages matter - the Polaris page has some (not all) class size data for this. Multiplying their listed class size by four to approximate the number of students in the 2015-2018 period:
name admitted class size 4 year size Admission %
Hunter College 43 N/A
Chapin 18 N/A
Ethical Culture Fieldston 13 N/A
Chaminade 12 N/A
Collegiate 24 57 228 10.53%
Brearly 22 56 224 9.82%
Trinity 41 107 428 9.58%
Spence 15 48 192 7.81%
Dalton 34 115 460 7.39%
Horace Mann 45 183 732 6.15%
St Ann’s 19 82 328 5.79%
Nightingale-Bamford 9 39 156 5.77%
Rye Country Day School 22 97 388 5.67%
Manlius 6 43 172 3.49%
I didn't go to NYC-area public schools, but I can attest to the cost consideration of selecting among highly-ranked schools. It's not just tuition and board which can sometimes be covered at least in part by many of the Ivy League schools with large-ish endowments based on merit and/or need, but there are also other factors like moving expenses, any trips back home, keeping in close with family especially if you need to help around the housue, etc. that can also rack up considerable costs and time. Getting all tuition covered at Ivy League schools is nice, but it's still a considerable expense for a low-income family which I was in if it doesn't cover all room and board, and transportation (I was on the West Coast). If you don't get that, which to make clear, I don't think someone is entitled to but does make it a more reasonable selection given finances, then the school that does cover all of these and even gives you a stipend is maybe the more reasonable choice especially for undergrad even if it doesn't have the same cachet. Given the rather large proportion of students in the top-ranked NYC public high schools that are in the low to mid-income brackets, there's probably a larger portion of students for whom financial and time/distance penalties would be a more substantial consideration.
I always got the impression that Canarsie was a very rough neighborhood. In fact, so rough that they had to close down the high school and replace it with several smaller schools because it was in such disarray and couldn't be fixed.
South Shore HS was actually closed before Canarsie, which is the only other zoned school for the area. But I am pretty sure Erasmus in Bushwick was the first and Franklin Lane HS was 2nd and preceded both.
I think more telling of the times, it was one of the first schools in the early 90's to have metal detector screenings due to all the violence and weapons. I remember carrying a baton and butterfly knife to junior high school, just in case.
Not sure if this is the case now, but had a friend get into Harvard in the late 90's, valedictorian of the class. He came back after one semester and transferred to NYU because he was made fun so much due to the fact he was not wealthy and got there due to grades alone.
South Shore HS was actually closed before Canarsie, which is the only other zoned school for the area. But I am pretty sure Erasmus in Bushwick was the first and Franklin Lane HS was 2nd and preceded both.
I think more telling of the times, it was one of the first schools in the early 90's to have metal detector screenings due to all the violence and weapons. I remember carrying a baton and butterfly knife to junior high school, just in case.
Not sure if this is the case now, but had a friend get into Harvard in the late 90's, valedictorian of the class. He came back after one semester and transferred to NYU because he was made fun so much due to the fact he was not wealthy and got there due to grades alone.
I had a high school friend who went on a full ride to Princeton, and when I went to visit him, the kind of **** people would say to him because he wasn't wealthy or blue blood was pretty constant. It seldom went into something extreme, but it was just a constant low level harassment and pointing out how he wasn't really one of them. He stuck it out though, because full rides aren't that easy to come by.
I had a high school friend who went on a full ride to Princeton, and when I went to visit him, the kind of **** people would say to him because he wasn't wealthy or blue blood was pretty constant. It seldom went into something extreme, but it was just a constant low level harassment and pointing out how he wasn't really one of them. He stuck it out though, because full rides aren't that easy to come by.
Not saying that isn’t true, but Princeton is only 39% white and a very large number of those whites are recruited athletes from the middle and lower middle class so the idea that it is dominated by blue-bloods nowadays is complete fantasyland.
Last edited by Quick Commenter; 04-29-2021 at 11:54 AM..
Not saying that isn’t true, but Princeton is only 39% white and a very large number of those whites are recruited athletes from the middle and lower middle class so the idea that it is dominated by blue-bloods is complete fantasyland.
That's true now--but keep in mind this was about a decade and a half ago, and it wasn't really just about blue bloods, though there was that cadre of people. It was also often more about wealth or the lack of it and sayings things like "I pay for you to be here" in a not so friendly manner. I mean, yea, technically maybe parts of that is true, but why be a jerk?
I didn't go to NYC-area public schools, but I can attest to the cost consideration of selecting among highly-ranked schools. It's not just tuition and board which can sometimes be covered at least in part by many of the Ivy League schools with large-ish endowments based on merit and/or need, but there are also other factors like moving expenses, any trips back home, keeping in close with family especially if you need to help around the housue, etc. that can also rack up considerable costs and time. Getting all tuition covered at Ivy League schools is nice, but it's still a considerable expense for a low-income family which I was in if it doesn't cover all room and board, and transportation (I was on the West Coast). If you don't get that, which to make clear, I don't think someone is entitled to but does make it a more reasonable selection given finances, then the school that does cover all of these and even gives you a stipend is maybe the more reasonable choice especially for undergrad even if it doesn't have the same cachet. Given the rather large proportion of students in the top-ranked NYC public high schools that are in the low to mid-income brackets, there's probably a larger portion of students for whom financial and time/distance penalties would be a more substantial consideration.
True - I'm glad you highlighted that other costs are not small, especially for low to mid-income families.
What I think is interesting (I have no skin in this game) is the lack of correlation in the US News highly ranked NYC high schools and the Polaris list.
3 High School Math Science and Engineering at CCNY 82 4
4 Queens High School for Sciences at York
5 Bronx Science 3 41
6 Staten Island Tech 82 4
7 Stuyvesant 1 94
8 High School of American Studies at Lehman 67 5
9 Brooklyn Latin
10 High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies
11 Eleanor Roosevelt 224 1
12 Baccalaureate School for Global Education
Is it purely financial? Bad/incomplete data? The guidance counselor effect? Stuy, Brooklyn Tech, and Bronx Science appear to have a significant population in low to mid-income brackets but they have relatively more admissions than other schools. These three have an order of magnitude more admissions than the other USN highly ranked schools.
True - I'm glad you highlighted that other costs are not small, especially for low to mid-income families.
What I think is interesting (I have no skin in this game) is the lack of correlation in the US News highly ranked NYC high schools and the Polaris list.
3 High School Math Science and Engineering at CCNY 82 4
4 Queens High School for Sciences at York
5 Bronx Science 3 41
6 Staten Island Tech 82 4
7 Stuyvesant 1 94
8 High School of American Studies at Lehman 67 5
9 Brooklyn Latin
10 High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies
11 Eleanor Roosevelt 224 1
12 Baccalaureate School for Global Education
Is it purely financial? Bad/incomplete data? The guidance counselor effect? Stuy, Brooklyn Tech, and Bronx Science appear to have a significant population in low to mid-income brackets but they have relatively more admissions than other schools. These three have an order of magnitude more admissions than the other USN highly ranked schools.
I would think alumni network and guidance counselor effects would play an outsized role for Polaris because it's restricted to just looking at three schools when there are maybe dozens of schools with similar caliber undergraduate programs. I don't know how this changes with other NYC public schools, but I know a kid who went there a couple of years back and back then they were pushing hard for their students to consider honors programs within the state / city public universities, especially the Macaulay Honors college. I have no idea if it was common elsewhere as well.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-29-2021 at 12:11 PM..
One thing not mentioned here is that the elite private high schools hire guidance counselors with strong connections. I saw first-hand how the college admissions process was a racket. The bribes from hollywood celebrities was probably an extreme example and it puts the college admission counselors under the radar, for now. Eventually, the scandal will fade and it will go back to the way it was. Public high schools have guidance counselors that are assigned to dozens of kids. They give generic advice to the students and their parents. Private high schools have g.c. who specialize in college placement and work with 20 kids at a time on their applications. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that they "write" the students' applications, they tell the students what to write for a specific school because they know what that school is looking for in that year's recruitment. They know which schools are looking for more athletes this year, or English majors for the coming year. They will guide and select students from their high school on how their application should look and will review it several times before submitting it for the student. They have personal friendships with the regional admission reps from private colleges. The high school guidance counselor's salary is based on how many students they can push into an elite college.
I wish I had these guidance counselors when I went to high school. I don't even recall ever meeting with my guidance counselor but it's possible I just forgot that I did.
One thing not mentioned here is that the elite private high schools hire guidance counselors with strong connections. I saw first-hand how the college admissions process was a racket. The bribes from hollywood celebrities was probably an extreme example and it puts the college admission counselors under the radar, for now. Eventually, the scandal will fade and it will go back to the way it was. Public high schools have guidance counselors that are assigned to dozens of kids. They give generic advice to the students and their parents. Private high schools have g.c. who specialize in college placement and work with 20 kids at a time on their applications. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that they "write" the students' applications, they tell the students what to write for a specific school because they know what that school is looking for in that year's recruitment. They know which schools are looking for more athletes this year, or English majors for the coming year. They will guide and select students from their high school on how their application should look and will review it several times before submitting it for the student. They have personal friendships with the regional admission reps from private colleges. The high school guidance counselor's salary is based on how many students they can push into an elite college.
Yes and some of the high-end kids here on LI at public schools hire their own 'admissions counselors'. These folks have connections with colleges, have been known to 'assist' in the writing of college essays, direct SAT/ACT tutoring, and will even recommend courses and activities that look good to the more selective colleges.
Yes and some of the high-end kids here on LI at public schools hire their own 'admissions counselors'. These folks have connections with colleges, have been known to 'assist' in the writing of college essays, direct SAT/ACT tutoring, and will even recommend courses and activities that look good to the more selective colleges.
True. They know how to navigate the system.
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