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(Just a note, any comments with 3 or more links will be held in our spam filter. We’ll see it, and add the “not spam” comments. Thanks!)
Why is Phillips Andover not included among the top boarding schools reviewed?
It will be! We just haven’t gotten to it yet. I expect to add Andover as well as others within a day or so.
Hi StatMaster & Co.
This is really a terrific study. Well done!
Please consider creating an additional column based on a combination of the following two criteria:
1) USNews “Peer Assessment” based weight, instead of the current method.
2) Total matriculation — entire graduating class, not just ‘strong’ school matriculants.
Thank you so much for sharing this on the web in such a nice clean format.
Best regards,
Tristan
Thanks for the compliments.
1) I’m not aware of this statistic. I checked the USNews site and couldn’t find it unless you’re referring to the ranking by the high school counselors. I agree, a smoother weighting system might be theoretically better, but I don’t know if there would be a significant change in the relative values. As to the point you made elsewhere about the underweighting of liberal arts colleges vs. national universities, I certainly realize that there were some arbitrary choices that had to be made to produce anything useful. I debated over whether to go the depth into the LAC as the National Universities but eventually chose this methodology. Again, I’m not sure there would be a significant difference in the results from changing the methodology.
2) I agree that it’s certainly important to see where the bottom half or quarter of a class attends college. In the schools that I’ve looked at so far, typically 70% or more are attending colleges on the “Strong” list. Effectively, that is simply weighting schools off the list as a 0 out of 5. So, the methodology takes care of that for now. As I add schools that don’t have such a high percentage attending “Strong” colleges, this may become more of an issue and there are some obvious ways to address it (like creating a 3rd category which includes a larger group of schools).
Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions.
I think adding these schools would really complete the scope for the top tier:
Andover
Cate
St. Andrew’s
St. George’s
Adding a few ‘second tier’ schools would be nice for comparison:
Northfield Mount Hermon
Woodberry Forest
Mercersburg Academy
Emma Willard School
Asheville School
All good suggestions and we’ll get to them. The plan is to keep gradually adding schools as time allows.
Andover and St. Mark’s were just added.
The ‘Peer Assessment’ statistic is in USNews’ Premium Online Edition. 15 bucks for a year of access. The stat is based on input from college presidents, provosts and deans of admissions.
It’s really the best way to weight across all national universities and LACs — objective weights and smoother gradations.
Do they weight all schools? How does the scale range? Could you just post the top 10 or so here, so I could see what it’s like? It sounds interesting and I might look into it. There are some technical difficulties in implementing it that I’d have to overcome though.
Yes, all colleges and universities are weighted based on the same criteria. It’s on a 5 point scale. Here is a small sample from the 2008 data set:
Liberal Arts Colleges
Williams College, Williamstown, MA 4.7
Amherst College, Amherst, MA 4.7
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 4.5
Carleton College, Northfield, MN 4.4
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME 4.3
Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 4.2
Davidson College, Davidson, NC 4.2
Pomona College, Claremont, CA 4.2
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 4.2
Haverford College, Haverford, PA 4.1
Claremont McKenna College, CA 4.0
Private Universities
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 4.9
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 4.9
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 4.9
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 4.6
Brown University, Providence, RI 4.4
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 4.3
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 4.0
Georgetown University, Washington, DC 4.0
Public Universities
University of California, Berkeley, CA 4.8
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 4.5
Duke University, Durham, NC 4.4
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 4.3
University of North Carolina, NC 4.2
College of William & Mary, VA 3.7
The “peer assessment” is an interesting metric but also susceptible to manipulation. A Clemson official admitted as much at a conference last year, thus igniting a firestorm in the academic community. There were examples obtained via FOI where universities blatantly abused the process – giving their own school top marks while assigning low scores to schools that would be seen as competitors.
A quick Google search turned up this article: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings
A copy of the University of Florida’s survey submission: http://www.gainesville.com/assets/pdf/GS17003616.PDF
Does anyone want to bet on Clemson’s peer assessment scores in the 2010 rankings?
Yes, similar misbehaviour by Wisconsin, as I recall. Although not perfect, I still think the Peer Assessment does better job of what we want from it than anything else I’m aware of.
Could you please add NMH (Northfield Mount Hermon) to the boarding school list? I’ve had one child graduate and a second child is currently there.
I’d like to. Unfortunately, the information that NMH provides on its website isn’t sufficient to produce the statistics that you see here. If you have access to at least one recent year (preferably several more) of more detailed information that is clearly from an official source and can provide that to me (best would be by a link), I would be happy to include NMH here. I would need a list of the colleges that students matriculated at and how many students matriculated at each college. NMH doesn’t provide the second part of this information on its website. Sorry that I can’t be of more help for now.
“etc. For the 15 schools in the Liberal Arts Colleges, I also placed them into groups of 5. The top group included schools like Williams and Swarthmore, which although certainly excellent schools, did not seem to merit the same number of points as Yale and Stanford”
Why????
Also, what about using Rugg’s data that differentiate prelaw, premed, engineering, etc. as not all schools are good at all (eg Univ of Ariz would not be a “top” school, but is in ag, astronomy and engineering.
For several reasons. First, my subjective impression of the way that these schools are viewed. Second, if you look at CNN’s “peer review” data, you’ll see that Yale and Stanford get higher ratings than Williams and Swarthmore. Although the “peer review” is only 25% of the CNN rating structure, it’s the only piece that I saw hard data for. Third, if a candidate for a job walks into an office for an interview, the Stanford grad starts off with a slight edge over the Swarthmore grad nearly every time. I’ve been in the business world for a long time and that’s simply the way it is.
Not familiar with Rugg’s data, but it’s essentially irrelevant for this purpose. The CNN ratings are intended to take into account the overall school, so I use that information. This exercise is not intended to dig nearly as deeply as you suggest into the quality of different programs at each university.
Interesting on business.
I am on med school admit comm and I look at the US Military Academies, Williams, Wellesley, Amherst, Swathmore as equal to Harvard and Yale (ok, I am biased, list Stanford higher) as do most of my colleagues. (Esp for a liberal arts education)
Interesting viewpoint on the US Military Academies for med school since they aren’t near the other LACs you mention on the CNN lists.
The thing is, with any analysis like this one, some arbitrary decisions are necessary to get anything done at all. I freely admit that here (and also did so on the home page). The CNN list itself makes some arbitrary decisions about how to weight certain factors. I made an arbitrary decision to use their lists. And I’m forced to make some arbitrary decisions about how to combine their two lists and also incorporate some foreign universities. My basic thought is that it was better to make an effort to do something reasonable than not to try at all.
After some extensive discussions with some people who have provided welcome constructive criticism, I very well may modify somewhat the methodology when schools release new matriculation results over the summer. I’m still mulling that over as I hear more feedback.
One of my problems is my nephew’s roommate at … who was accepted at Juliard and the school “strongly advised” him to enroll at Yale for a year as it would be better for him (translates better for school matric data and lists as yours)
As for Westpoint’s rank, they are number one in Forbes:
?
Special Report
America’s Best Colleges
08.05.09, 06:00 PM EDT
1
Rank Name State Cost Freshman Class Size
1 United States Military Academy NY 0 1,263
2 Princeton University NJ 49,830 1,243
3 California Institute of Technology CA 48,990 236
4 Williams College MA 49,530 540
5 Harvard University MA 50,250 1,666
6 Wellesley College MA 50,026 596
7 United States Air Force Academy CO 0 1,286
8 Amherst College MA 50,230 439
9 Yale University CT 51,400 1,318
10 Stanford University CA 51,760 1,703
11 Massachusetts Institute of Technology MA 50,100 1,048
12 Swarthmore College PA 50,381 372
13 Columbia University NY 51,406 1,356
14 Centre College KY 39,200 336
15 Haverford College PA 51,637 327
16 Boston College MA 52,060 2,167
17 Northwestern University IL 52,120 2,078
18 Bowdoin College ME 50,570 488
19 Vassar College NY 51,370 638
20 Whitman College WA 46,212 401
21 University of Chicago IL 53,310 1,306
22 Kenyon College OH 49,260 456
23 Carleton College MN 50,000 489
24 Colby College ME 50,120 482
25 Middlebury College VT 52,460 576
Terrific effort. Thank you.
Please consider adding Westminster School in Simsbury CT, St. Marks in Southborough MA and other small boarding schools.
Thanks for the compliment.
I’ll add Westminster as soon as I can. Previously unknown to me, its outgoing headmaster was a member of the Lawrenceville faculty while I was a student there. That seems to be a common thing. To my knowledge, ex-Lawrenceville faculty members have also become the headmasters of Groton, Riverdale and Horace Mann since my student days.
Unfortunately, I can’t add St. Marks because they don’t provide adequate information on their website. If you can provide an official source of that information which I can verify, I would be glad to include it. See my response to Dianne, above, for the type of information I would need.
Great project you’ve got going here. Here’s some data for Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville: http://www.alumni.montgomerybell.com/downloadsold/schoolprofile0405.pdf
More recent data here from Montgomery Bell Academy:
https://www.montgomerybell.edu/ftpimages/175/misc//misc_68204.pdf
https://www.montgomerybell.edu/ftpimages/175/misc/misc_66634.pdf
Thanks for the compliment and your interest in our site.
The first link is to data that’s perfect for us to use except it’s a bit dated. The second link doesn’t doesn’t provide the information that we need. The third link, however, will work. We prefer more than one year of data, but one year is fine.
MBA is a day school, though. We are planning on adding a new page for day schools outside NYC in the near future and will be sure to include it when we do.
Many thanks for the response. I understand the site does not currently cover non-NYC/boarding schools, but I wanted to start feeding you data for your (planned) expansion. I’m really impressed with what you’ve gathered here, so I want to help you make the database more robust. Here is some data for Holton Arms school in DC: http://www.holton-arms.edu/uploaded/documents/college_counseling/HoltonMatriculation2009.pdf
Nice work! Would also like to see:
Woodberry Forest School in VA
United World College USA in NM
Blair Academy in NJ
Emma Willard School in NY
Hill School in PA
Tabor Academy in MA
Roxbury Latin School in MA (day school)
Roxbury Latin probably sets the high bar for day schools in the US and as such is a good benchmark.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, some of these schools don’t provide adequate data on their websites (Woodberry Forest, Hill, Tabor). Emma Willard will definitely be added soon. I’ve looked at Blair and am trying to figure out whether its data is adequate enough to use. Sometimes it’s not quite clear and it depends how much I feel is appropriate to fill in some of the gaps that are left out. Thanks for bringing UWC to my attention. I hadn’t really thought about including it, but it provides good enough data, so I will include it in the near future.
You are certainly correct that Roxbury Latin’s results are incredible. You’ll have to wait and see whether it actually sets the high bar or not (I’ve already analyzed it, but I’m not going to spoil the suspense
). I’m getting closer to a “Day Schools outside NYC” page and it will certainly be included there.
Here’s the data for Woodberry:
https://www.woodberry.org/ftpimages/51/misc/misc_45416.pdf
Thanks for this information. It’s a little dated (2005-07), but without anything else, I’ll probably use it. In any one year, a school might have better or worse results than average, but those tend to average out over 3 or more years. It seems to take longer periods of time for true shifts in a schools results to take place.
The information that Woodberry is currently showing doesn’t include number of students matriculating at each school and that makes it unusable for me.
“The information that Woodberry is currently showing doesn’t include number of students matriculating at each school and that makes it unusable for me.”
I “think” we’re in sync, but just to be certain let me clarify that the Woodberry link I pasted above inlcudes both acceptances AND matriculation.
Always good to double check, but we are in sync on this. It’s the 2007-2009 information that I was referring to as only including acceptances.
For Blair, look like one year of data (2009) is available in sufficient detail:
http://www.blair.edu/College_Counseling/cc_mat_list.shtm#2008
Absolutely, that one year is fine. But that six year data is tantalazing since it is nearly complete. I’ve been forced to make some decisions like this one. Doing some estimating for the colleges that only had one matriculant barely changes the results as long as I have a good estimate of total graduates from the school over the time period. In any event, I will certainly include Blair as soon as I can.
Sounds like you have UWC data, but here’s a link just in case:
http://www.uwc-usa.org/podium/default.aspx?t=116610
Yes, I was able to find the 2008 and 2009 data. But thanks, anyway.
This is a lot of data to process. Are you manually counting, or using any tools to ensure the accuracy of the calculation?
I can’t count past 13, so I wouldn’t dream of doing any manual counting!
The data is all kept in a spreadsheet. None of the calculations are done manually, though I periodically spot check my spreadsheet formulas just to make sure they are doing what I think they should be doing. The process of getting the information from a school’s website into the spreadsheet does involve some manual input, but I have various methods in place to help ensure accuracy. I attempt to do as much as possible electronically rather than manually.
That being said, no process like this one ever seems to attain perfection. If you notice something that seems incorrect, please let me know and I’ll take a closer look at it.
The reason I am asking is because I have done something similar before. As you said, Excel or another kind of spreadsheet is a good tool for the task. For me, the first trouble was to get the data into the spreadsheet. Some data were easier to copy over, the other were troublesome and took a lot of manual input/adjustment. The next error prone area is to make sure you include all the data points you are interested in, in your case the schools in each of the four groups you get statistics under. It does sound like you have a good process in place. It is a great amount of work.
I actually have it set up a bit differently than it sounds like you did. I bring in the information for every college so I don’t have to pick and choose while bring I in data. I simply have a large matrix. Each row represents a college. Each column represents a high school. At the intersection is the number of students who matriculated from that high school to that college (as a total if I have multiple years). In order to determine the the percentage of Ivy’s, for example, I take the SUMPRODUCT of a school’s column with an IVY column (a 1 in the 8 rows with an Ivy League school, 0′s elsewhere) and divide by the sum of the school’s column.
Interesting to hear that someone else did something similar before. What kind of results did you get?
University School of Milwaukee:
http://www.usmk12.org/podium/default.aspx?t=130879
St. Mark’s (Dallas):
http://www.smtexas.org/campus/counseling/matriculation.asp
(see Excel data for past 5 years)
University School of Nashville:
http://www.usn.org/ftpimages/392/download/profile0910web.pdf
Harpeth Hall (Nashville):
http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=23552
Korean Minjok Leadership Academy:
http://english.minjok.hs.kr/
United World College (NM):
http://www.uwc-usa.org/podium/default.aspx?t=116629
Thanks for the suggestions.
UWC just went up today. St. Mark’s will be included this weekend when the “Day Schools Outside of NYC” page makes its debut.
Let me guess, you live somewhere near Nashville?
I worked on the matriculation data of a small number of boarding schools to verify the stats and ranking give by Prepreview. The result seems to be more in line with your results on “Ivy” stats.
I may try and verify Prepreview’s numbers at some point. Calculating the Ivy + S + M percentage is not too difficult given the way I have my spreadsheet set up. However, there’s no way to know if I’d be using the same data they’re using. And these numbers do change over time.
That would be great! Prepreview is a little vague in their methodology. It says that they are trying to use the most recent data of up to the past 5 years based upon the availability of the data. I have the impression that they don’t really have access to more data than the general public does. It’s hard to imagine that schools would send them a different matriculation list than the one posted on their websites.
Thomas Jefferson (VA):
http://www.tjpartnershipfund.org/docs/Presentation%2008.pdf
(Clearly a puff piece, and I see some suspicious claims in the document, but the college data is probably only mildly “massaged”.)
St. Anselm’s Abbey (DC):
http://www.saintanselms.org/student_life/college_guidance/matriculations/index.aspx
Thanks again for the data. The St. Anselm’s data is clearly useful. I’m wondering if the TJ data includes all the schools that students matriculated at during those two years? It feels like they may have left out less prestigious colleges even though there shouldn’t be too many students who attended them based on the class size. In any event, TJ has impressive stats.
I think the TJ data must reflect only those seniors each year that went to prestigious colleges. I quickly added the 2008 numbers, and got only approximately 280 students, but I know that TJ graduates classes of over 450. Given the PR/marketing nature of the document, it makes sense for them to list only the most prestigious matriculations.
Noble and Greenough is really not a boarding school; should be in Day Schools outside of NYC list. They do have a small percentage of boarders who almost without exception live within an hour or two’s drive and some much closer; it’s a convenience thing for some families and also for students who need the structure even if they live close by.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I wasn’t aware of that. So, you’d say that they have basically the same structure with respect to day/boarding as Belmont Hill? If so, I agree that they both “feel” like day schools even though they technically have boarding students. Most likely, I’ll reclassify N&G.
I know you’re looking for St. Albans data. Here is some:
http://www.stalbansschool.org/contentPage.aspx?pageId=42341§ionId=961
(not terribly helpful)
http://www.stalbansschool.org/contentPage.aspx?pageId=42316§ionId=961
(maybe more useful)
“Over the past five years, the following universities have enrolled the most St. Albans graduates:
University of Virginia (17) Princeton University (12)
Yale University (15) University of Pennsylvania (12)
Georgetown University (13) University of Michigan (12)
Vanderbilt University (13) Columbia University (10)
Harvard University (12) Trinity College (10)”
Date on Maret (DC):
http://www.maret.org/admission/SeniorProfile09-10B.pdf
S – You are an amazing one-person research department!
The Maret information is perfect for use. The St. Alban’s feels like I may be able to do something by putting all the pieces together. I’ll have to think about it later, though.
VERY impressive StatMaster! Would you mind emailing me? I would love to talk to you about this project…
Shipley school: http://www.shipleyschool.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=141
Friends Central: http://www.friendscentral.org/program/college/profile/default.asp?L4=1&bhcp=1
Thank you for developing your website. As you know, lots of people are very interested in this data. I love your sort feature. Good luck.
Thanks! And thanks for the mention!
Penn Charter (Phila):
http://www.penncharter.com/page.cfm?p=543
The Haverford School (PA): http://www.haverford.org/ftpimages/143/download/Matriculation%20–Five%20Year%202009.pdf
Hi,
The information you provide on matriculation is very informative. I was wondering if you could also add The Hill School to your list…preferably before March since it is one of the schools we are looking at.
Thanks!
That’s another school I’d love to add to the site. Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain that information. In fact, theiir website contains a discussion as to how they are philosophically opposed to the comparison of such information.
Here is the college matriculation data link that is on Hill’s web site:
http://www.thehill.org/home/content.asp?id=2248
Unfortunately it is only for one year and it only states the colleges students are attending from the class of 2009. Not sure if this helps.
Thanks!
Susan,
Thanks for trying. I had seen this information before, and without quantifying how many students are attending which college I can’t do my analysis. In general, I try to do as much reasonable inferential analysis as I can when perfect information isn’t available (I have a half-written blog about some of my procedures). Unfortunately, this information doesn’t give me enough to work with.
Univ Laboratory High School (Illinois):
(cool school!)
http://www.uni.illinois.edu/about/profile/05profile
Washington Int’l School:
(8 years of data)
http://www.wis.edu/documents/profile_2009.pdf
http://www.wis.edu/documents/2006-2007_final_profile.pdf
Wonderful information. Could you add to San Francisco Bay Area Schools: University High School in SF and College Preparatory School in Oakland. The latter appears to send a very high percentage of kids to the ivies each year, but then a lot of Berkeley professors send their kids to this school. Also, perhaps one reason that top day schools do better than boarding schools in your study may be the strong honor code that boarding schools try to inculcate in their students. Cheating is rampant in highly competitive society like NYC and this is sure to get conveyed to the kids directly or indirectly. One of my friends went to a HADES school and said that she and her peers would have died of shame had they copied someone’s homework or cheated on a test as it would have been an admission of their ineptitude. When she got to a top university she was amazed at the amount of cheating that went on. Another friend, a doctoral candidate, was a tutor for wealthy kids at a top day school and she told me that she basically wrote all their papers for them so they wouldn’t get caught downloading something off the internet. Granted if a student relied too heavily on such assistance, they would be epic fails by adulthood, but doing so occasionally could make all the difference. It could be that boarders simply don’t have such options.
Thanks for the information about the two Bay area schools. Assuming information is available, I’ll add them to the queue to be added. Children of professors can certainly have an effect on the quality of the students at a school and their matriculation results.
I think your attempt to explain the difference between NYC day school results and boarding school results is misguided. Day schools in NYC have their own honor codes and certainly treat cheating the same that any boarding school would. There are always opportunities to cheat in school, whether boarding or day, if a student chooses to go that route. There will always be examples of cheating in all environments and citing one example does not a trend make.
I am still attempting to understand why a handful of NYC day schools have significantly better results than other schools, day and boarding, around the country. Of note is that 5 of the top 6 of those schools are small, single-sex schools. NYC also tends to have a higher concentration of wealth and fame than many other areas. As a result, maybe some of these students are children of people so famous or wealthy that elite schools simply can’t say no (assuming that a student is in the ballpark of being qualified). I suspect that one can still buy one’s way even into Harvard (though I have no evidence), but the price is very high. It only takes a few such admits to elite colleges to improve the results of a small school.
Since one of my sons is currently waiting for admission letters from some of those NYC schools, I am particularly tuned into the attributes that they seem to be looking for in candidates. Trinity and Horace Mann, for example, are known to desire students with a high degree of academic potential (as evidenced by standardized test scores or other means). Such students tend to also do well when it comes time to applying to colleges.
My theory on why a handful of NYC day schools have such strong matriculation percentages would relate to the huge NYC applicant pool for those schools. All of these are top schools (whether NYC day, boarding, or other cities’ day schools) that produce strong applicants for colleges. And all cities can produce top students. But because NYC has such a large population, it’s going to produce a very large number of kids that combine attributes necessary for admission to top colleges (innate smarts, strong education, high-SES parents, opportunities for non-traditional experiences, etc). That huge mass of highly qualified kids coming out of NYC have plenty of NYC day schools that can provide them with an education comparable to what they can get at boarding school, so there’s no reason for them to travel to boarding schools. And that means NYC can fill the top 3-4 day schools with a huge percentage of top students. Other cities (like Chicago, LA, Boston, or DC) may have comparable day schools, but their much smaller populations are less likely to generate the same numbers of incredibly gifted students to fill those day schools.
One counter-argument might be that even if a city like Chicago is only 1/3 the size of NYC, it will have only 1/3 as many top schools, so the percentages should remain the same. But I suspect that a city like NYC is better able to support more top schools because of the larger population.
Clearly my thoughts on this are only half-baked. Sorry they’re not more clearly expressed.
Hi, NYC 8th grader checking in (yeah, me, the website designer and such…). I completely disagree with your theory about us NYC day schoolers. Cheating is NOT, and I repeat NOT rampant in a “highly competitive society like NYC”, it is in fact widely frowned upon (unless, of course, I’m just missing something). We too are imbued with this sense of academic integrity. We feel a sense of responsibility for our work. At the very least, I can say I do. Kids requiring tutors generally have a bit more trouble writing essays and such. Not every student, or even most of them, use tutors (some of my friends do, but definetely not in the way which you outlined here). I’m not quite sure why we do so well in these statistics, but it is certainly not because of cheating.
College Prep (Oakland):
http://www.college-prep.org/about/school-overview/index.aspx
Thanks for the great work that you’re doing! Would you please add The Winsor School to Day Schools Outside NYC?
2005-2009 college placement stats at http://www.winsor.edu/academics/collegecounseling.aspx
I hope that you are going to add Greenwich CT schools such as Greenwich Academy and Brunswick….Thanks
You should add Los Angeles area private and public high schools. It would really help with my final decisions
Top Private Schools in LA:
Harvard Westlake
Brentwood
Winward
Malborough
Archer
Top Public Schools in LA:
Palisades High
Beverly Hills High
THANK YOU I really hope you have the chance to do this..
As always, I am trying to be as responsive as possible to requests for specific schools.
S: I’ll add Winsor School as soon as possible. Providing a link makes my life easier (and also makes it more likely your request will be added).
jd: I’ll add both Greenwich Academy and Brunswick School as soon as I can.
nottelling: Harvard-Westlake is already shown. I’ll add Marlborough as soon as possible. Brentwood, Windwood and Archer do not provide information on their websites in sufficient detail to compile the statistics shown on this website. If you have an alternative link to confirmable information, I’ll be happy to include them here. As to the public schools you requested, we’re not focusing on public schools (at least for now). Yes, I know that I have two public schools on the NYC page, but I live there and it’s my website.
Great analysis! If possible, can you please have a look at the matriculation data for Seven Hills School? See http://www.7hills.org
As a matter of fact I’ve already looked at it and it will be added shortly (I have some younger relatives who attended there in very recent years).
can you do the stats for browning school
Sorry, but Browning is another one of those schools that doesn’t make their matriculation results publicly available. On their website I was able to find a list of colleges offering admission to members of the class of 2009, but for my analysis I need a list of schools where students actually matriculated . If you can provide the raw data (form a verifiable source), I would be happy to analyze it and include them on the NYC page.
I have tried to include all the secular NYC independent schools. If I missed any for which data is available, please let me know (this applies to anybody out there).
I think your statistics on The Brearley School in NYC are either incorrect or outdated. On their website, they have the past 5 years matriculation statistics (2004-2009) – here’s the link: http://www.brearley.org/academics/college.aspx.
Asyou can see, out of 250 graduates over the past 5 years, they have sent a total of 64 students to HYPMS – equating to a total of 25.6% of the class, rather than the 16.4% indicated in your table. This includes Harvard (23), Yale (19), Princeton (11), MIT (5) and Stanford (6). The difference is substantial, and puts Brearley on par with Collegiate and Roxbury Latin in terms of HYPMS percentage.
It would be great if you could check the link and update your table with the latest, most accurate, five year statistics.
Thanks for pointing this out to me! I did use the same 5 year data (2005-2009) that you provide a link to. The 23 Harvard matriculants were inadvertently credited to Harvey Mudd in my spreadsheet (which lists the colleges alphabetically). The NYC schools were the first set of schools that I included in this project, and I had not yet established some of my error-catching procedures that now make this sort of issue much less likely to occur. Along with other procedures, I now hand calculate both the HYPMS and IVY percentages from the raw data to check against my spreadsheet’s calculation to insure I’ve input the data correctly. Last week, I actually started auditing the NYC results because I realized that I had gotten better at the data input process since I had begun the project. In the first 6 schools I audited, I only found a few very minor discrepancies (which have already been corrected).
Because Harvey Mudd is also a “Top School”, there will be no change to the “Top School” and “Strong School” percentages. Both MATRIC indices will increase moderately (from 224 to 261 for Strong and 297 to 320 for Top). And both the HYPMS and Ivy percentages will change significantly (from 16.4% to 25.6% for HYPMS and from 23.6% to 32.8% for Ivy). These changes are sufficient to push Brearley to the top of some categories on this table.
In the Philadelphia area, consider adding in Mount Saint Joseph Academy, LaSalle College High School and Saint Joseph’s Prep, as well as perhaps Merion Mercy and Gwynned Mercy. And perhaps Central High School (Public, selective). Thanks!
Of the schools you suggested, only Marion Mercy provided adequate data (though I didn’t check Central High). Unfortunately, I’m only as good as the data that I have access to.
Thomas Jefferson in VA/DC:
(a real smattering of data, but perhaps it all adds up)
http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss/docs/tjprofile_2010.pdf
http://www.120perhour.com/EveryParents/wordpress/?p=58
http://tjpartnershipfund.org/docs/TJPF%20Alumni%20Parent%20Newsletter%202007.pdf
http://tjpartnershipfund.org/docs/TJPFNewsletter_Alumni_Dec08.pdf
http://www.tjpartnershipfund.org/docs/Presentation%2008.pdf
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/729701-tjhsst-09-senior-destinations.html
You like making a lot of work for me! I’ll try and parse this out at some point when I’m ready to dig into selective public schools.
This is a great website; I applaud all the work that must have gone into compiling, analyzing, and presenting this data in a very user-friendly way.
One minor nitpick, I could be wrong but it looks as though the statistics for Ethical Culture (NY) Ivy are wrong. Their site lists 138 members of the 2009 graduating class with the following Ivy matriculations: UPenn – 8; Cornell – 6; Yale – 5; Columbia – 2; Harvard – 2; Princeton – 2; Dartmouth – 1; and Brown – 1. By my count that’s 27 out of 138 or 19.6% but the table on this site lists 15.6%. Perhaps the site data is from another year?
Your supposition is correct. The statistics that had been there were from 2008. After seeing the 2008 data shown prominently on this page http://www.ecfs.org/fieldstonupper/collegecounseling.aspx, I assumed that was all the information that was available. Now that you’ve pointed this out, I went back to the website and found that the 2009 data was also there. The combined results from the two years of data will now be shown. Since the two classes had slightly different numbers of graduates, the results won’t quite be the average of the two years, but will be quite close.
Thanks for pointing this out and adding to the robustness of the data presented here.
For what it’s worth, I was poking around on their website and discovered that their annual reports list the college choices for a couple more recent classes:
2006 – http://www.ecfs.org/files/annual_report_0506.pdf (pg 16 of the pdf [14 of the annual report])
2005 – http://www.ecfs.org/files/annual_report_0405.pdf (pg 12 of the pdf [10 of the annual report])
Thanks! I will incorporate this information as well.
In general, I prefer to use the most recent 3 to 5 years. Fewer years than that leaves the results exposed to a particularly good or bad year. More years than that means that the information might be out of date. The new information that you’ve dug up provides me with the most recent 4 years which is just about right.
After looking more closely, it seems that there was a missing year in the middle. Very strange. So, we’ll stick with the 2 years for now, but that’s still a significant improvement over the one year alone.
I see what you mean; must have been a glitch on their site. For what it’s worth, I managed to find the missing Class of 2007 matriculation data in their school newsletter here (page 7) http://www.ecfs.org/files/fieldnotes_june2007.pdf
Hopefully that fills in the gap. Thanks again for all of the good work pulling together this site!
I’ll update to 5-year information soon. A quick scan suggests that they did better in the 3 years that will be incorporated than the 2 years that are already there, so look for an uptick in the school’s stats.
For what its worth, I ran a few numbers in a spreadsheet using the missing three years. I’d be happy to send along the now-structured data for those years if it would be useful.
Thanks! Sure send it and I’ll tentatively post it if it agrees with the numbers I’ve got so far. I should be able to get to this by the weekend, though.
Columbia Grammar is not on your New York City list. It has been around for some time. Does the ommission indicate anything? Specific philosophy not to publish? Poor Results?
From my point of view, the omission indicates that they simply didn’t make the information available.
As to why Columbia doesn’t make that information available, both of your reasons are plausible explanations. There may be other reasons also. I did not notice any specific explanation on their website. I have seen some schools post specific philosophical reasons posted as to why such information isn’t being made available even when it’s likely that the school has very good results (e.g. The Hill School).
I really know no more than you do (despite the Webmaster of this site having applied there this year). Having toured the school the day after our tour guide received his Early Action acceptance from Yale, I suspect the school’s results are just fine. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.
The following are, together with Roxbury Latin and Winsor, among the top day-only schools in Boston. Adding them when you have the chance would greatly contribute to the Boston picture. Thanks again for the excellent work!
Commonwealth School http://www.commschool.org/page.cfm?p=132
Boston University Academy http://www.bu.edu/academy/academics/college-counseling/acceptances/
Fascinating data. Can you add Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, MD to this list? You can find their matriculation data at the bottom of toward the bottom of this page on their web site:
http://www.gprep.org/contentPage.aspx?pageId=52278§ionId=1259
Thank you. I had missed that information since it’s on the “admissions page” and that information is usually in other places. What’s shown there isn’t perfect for what I need, but in combination with the 2009 matriculation list and the class size, I can make some reasonably good estimates of their statistics. I’ll add this school as soon as possible. I’ve been looking for data for this school for awhile.
Could you please add Greenwich Country Day (co-ed) in CT. You already have added Greenwich Academy (girls) and Brunswick School (boys) so this would round out the “Big 3″ in Greenwich. Here’s the link with three year’s matriculation data. “http://www.gcds.net/page.cfm?p=16″ Thanks
I had looked at this school earlier but since it doesn’t continue through 12th grade, I felt it wasn’t appropriate to include in this website. Although that may be interesting data to see, I’d think it’s much more relevant to parents and students looking at this school where the students continue directly afterwards which includes an impressive array of day and boarding schools.
Thanks for the info. BUT I think these comparisons are meaningless to deduce quailty of education at any school if you don’t reveal these stats as well: 1) % of legacies (as you know legacy admission rate for HYP is 350-40%), 2) % of Lifers (if the school is K-12, what % of lifers graduate? Many schools double in size for HS when they recruit top students or some schools counsel out aggressively, so it’s not fair at all to compare schools that actually educate their lifers vs schools that get rid of bottom students).
I suppose there are other info that may be of interest (diversity, big donors, etc.) bu that gets too hairy. But you can’t really judge a school even with matriculation data without legacy and lifer info.
And who said that these statistics are meant to deduce the quality of education at any school? I refer you to the Caveat Emptor section of the Home Page of this web site. I am well aware that there are a host of factors which contribute to the final matriculation results for each school, some of which you refer to here.
I have compiled and presented these statistics for your use as you see fit, but of course care must be taken in their interpretation. I certainly agree that the statistics you cite would assist in that interpretation, but in general I don’t have access to them (do you?).
More NJ schools – please!
Could you be a little more specific? I’ve certainly covered the general Princeton area (where I went to high school) as much as data was available.
I’m limited by both information availabilty for schools and my knowledge of which schools people might find interesting. Since this is a part-time venture for us, there is no intention for all possible schools to be covered. We just don’t have the time and motivation.
Hi , Do you think you could publish Sidwell Friends School in DC and some other competitive schools in DC please. Thanks a lot
I believe I already have listed all the competitive DC area schools for which I could find appropriate data. If you can find any others and point me to appropriate data, I would be happy to include them. Sidwell, Potomac and Georgetown Day (not Prep) are three schools that generate a lot of interest for which I have been unable to find data.
As fans of educational statistics, some of the readers may find this NYTimes table of revealed preferences interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html
The implied rankings deviate in certain cases from some of the more widely-followed media rankings.
Further background in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html?_r=2
That’s an excellent article Nizmo Troon. Note that I discuss it and have a link to it on the Home Page as support for specifically using HYPMS as an ultra-elite reference statistic.
I should have seen that (and known that you’d be all over it).
Great information. With Trinity School, did you include the 6 Barnard matriculees over the past 5 years as part of Columbia Univ? – Barnard is a college of Columbia University – grads get Columbia degrees.
Excellent question! When I initially started this project, I included Barnard as part of the Ivy League. To me, it had always seemed to simply be part of Columbia University. But it has a separate entry in the US News & World Report rankings and its students meet separate admissions criteria. Therefore, Barnard is now included as its own entry. So, I excluded it from the Ivy League totals (for all schools – not just Trinity!) but it is still counted as a “Strong” school.
Will you include Salisbury School at some point?
If you’re referring to the one in Salisbury, CT, I just checked their website and they have one year’s worth of data in usable form. So, since you asked, I’ll add it at some time today or tomorrow. The school doesn’t seem to have any problem with releasing their matriculation data, but the 5-year data that is shown is summarized in a form that makes it unusable to derive the statistics on this website. If you happen to have access to more complete data from past years, that information would provide a more reliable view of the school’s matriculation statistics.
When you have a chance, here is another.
Bullis School (MD):
http://www.bullis.org/collegecounseling/collegelist.asp
Will do! As you can tell, I’ve gone into a less active mode of adding new schools, but I’m certainly willing to respond to requests.
Great site! Please consider adding data for Irvine, CA schools, particularly, the University High School, Irvine http://www.iusd.org/UHS/School_Information/School_Profile.html
Thanks!
I’d love to help, but there are two difficulties. First, unless I’m mistaken, this is a public school and I haven’t been including public schools on this site (yes, I know about the 2 NYC exceptions). There are far too many for me to deal with and they generally don’t make data available. Second, the data you point to is for admissions, not matriculations. I need matriculations data to produce the statistics shown on this website.
Brooks School in Ma ( Boarding and Day) ?
Thank You
Great site
The necessary data for Brooks School is on its website so I’ll be adding that school to the boarding school page within the next few days.
Have you considered the Santa Catalina School in Monterey, CA?
They typically rank in the #25 – #35 band, ahead of many of the schools you have analyzed such as Stevenson, Asheville, Woodberry, St. Andrew’s and Mercersburg.
I have no problem with including Santa Catalina if only they would make the appropriate data available. On their website they list college acceptances rather than matriculations for their students. Unfortunately, I can only derive the statistics you see here from matriculation data. Sorry about that.
Note that Packer in NYC has been updated to incorporate the 2009 data that was emailed to me. Much thanks to the anonymous contributor to the website.
Kent School (New England boarding school in Kent, CT) for the boarding school category – I can get you the college matriculation for Kent School (www.kent-school.edu) for the past 2 years. They don’t post on their website but I could send you their school profile they provide colleges which includes the school history, summary of classes offered and college matriculation. They provide the hard copies in the school’s admissions office as do most/all other boarding private schools. Please let me know the best way to get this information to you.
That would be excellent! If you can scan the pages and then send it to me via email (there’s a “Contact Us!” link at the bottom of this page), I’ll include the information on the website. Just make sure it’s matriculation and not acceptance information and that it scans legibly.
Although I’m aware that many schools do provide that information even when it’s not shown on their websites, I’m not about to go on a “road trip” to get it all.
So, I certainly appreciate receiving information like this.
OK, I will double check to make sure it is matriculation rather than acceptances and if so, I will send it. Otherwise I won’t.
Can you please add Germantown Academy, Fort Washington, PA.
Thank you.
Sure. It’ll take a few days, but I’ll add it.
Maret’s in DC not MD.
I noticed that you are already aware of the “revealed preference ranking” produced by some economists:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105
Any chance that you might produce a MATRIC ranking using weights based on these rankings? Imho, these rankings, while slightly out of date, are the “best” college rankings I know of, for the simple reason that they are based on where students actually want to attend. Presumably, students and parents care most about the matriculation stats for colleges that the students want to attend.
Also, I know that it’s hard to judge the international schools, but I feel that you’re giving them too much weight. Some kids desperately want to go abroad, but since most students don’t, I think that the conservative approach is to weigh them a little less.
After a quick five minute review, that article looks fascinating! Give me some time to absorb what it’s really saying and whether I believe its methodology (which I haven’t even looked at yet). Your point that “students and parents care most about the matriculation stats for colleges that the students want to attend” is difficult to argue with.
If I decide to use this information, it will be fairly easy to implement based on how I have my data already set up.
As to foreign schools, rating them was not easy for me as I had relatively little to base my decisions on. I think how I have them is fine though because I’m only counting five schools at all (Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, Edinburgh, St. Andrew’s). If they’re a little overweighted that’s probably balanced out by other schools to which I gave no weight at all (e.g. the Sorbonne, Trinity U. (Dublin)).
Why is Cornell a full point above Brown? I always thought Cornell was much easier to get into/less prestigious..
Simply based on the US News & World Report rankings. See the home page of this site for more details.
Please add Punahou School in Honolulu, HI (http://www.punahou.edu/) for your day school listing. Thank you.
All other schools my family members attended in CT, MA, OH are already listed.
Will do. In fact, I had just been looking at that school the other day, so I have already organized the data into my standard usable format.
How about the Baldwin School, in PA (for the non-NYC day schools)? It’s on the “short list” for my seventh grade d, and as it seems like you’ve got a lot of its peers, it would be very helpful. Thanks!
Sure. I’ll add it since the requisite information is available on its website.
How about Bryn Mawr School? This is the one year stat:
http://www.brynmawrschool.org/for_students/college_counseling_news.aspx?NewsID=731&View=Individual
Thank you for including Bryn Mawr School. The first college prep for girls is celebrating it’s 125th year!
This is a great site!!
Someone I know at Andover is graduating then going back to Germany for another year of high school before entering their university system. This made me wonder if those cases would drop out of the statistics, or count as not going to a college at all? Just something to think about (if you haven’t already!) that might affect stats of highly international schools.
Very interesting website, thanks for all your effort.
I’m not always able to capture all possibiltiies accurately, but I do the best I can. For students identified as going for a PG year somewhere (either inside or outside of the US), I simply drop them out of the calculation (both the numerator and the denominator). That’s how I would deal with your example. If your example were going directly to a German university, he/she would be treated as if they were matriculating at a US university that isn’t on any of the lists on the Colleges tab of this site. I only include five international universities (Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, Edinburgh, St. Andrew’s) simply because those account for the vast majority of foreign university matriculations. I view any possible error introduced by other omissions to be relatively minor.
What do you think of Shadyside Academy in Pittsburgh?
I haven’t really devoted much though to it at all other than a good friend of mine in college attended it and he liked it there. If you’re asking would I include it, if they have the appropriate date, I’m happy to include it.
Yes! Please do publish!
Regarding US News & World Report rankings and the Top 25:
The Top 25 is not a stagnant list, how are changes from year to year reflected in your scoring?
An interesting question, of course. In theory, it would be better to use the applicable rankings for each indiividual year. But very few schools make year by year information available. The most common form I’ve found is grouped information for the last five years. So, I just use the most recent rankings. In part, that’s one of the reasons I use my tiered point system in which I award the same number of points to clusters of five schools.
In general, I don’t think it’s too big a concern. Some colleges move up a little, some move down a little. For any particular high school, I’m guessing the effect of such movements roughly average out and shouldn’t affect its rating that significantly.
“In general, I don’t think it’s too big a concern”
I would certainly agree but I’d guess that a school’s score regarding “Top Schools” v. “Strong Schools” is a bit more interesting, as well as more “fun to look at”
Take for example what would happen if UVA and USC changed places for 2011.
I have not seen each school’s matriculation list, but of those I have seen I note that far fewer students have chosen UVA v. USC.
Yes, schools do move up and down a bit, but some schools seem to be more popular than others regardless of the US News & World Report ranking position.
I’m curious. Can you calculate how many students from your 3 top 25 high school lists, say 75 top high schools matriculated to USC v. UVA?
For the statistics that are shown on this site, it doesn’t matter whether there are more USC or UVA if they were to switch. What would affect the relative standing of high schools is how they compare on a relative basis between the two schools. For example, if every school has twice as many students matriculating at USC as UVA and then those schools switch places in the US News rankings, the high schools won’t change places. Their percentages will change, but their ordering won’t.
I did look at USC vs. UVA for the Top 25 list. If you remove Harvard-Westlake (which has a HUGE imbalance in favor of USC, presumably for the obvious geographical reason), they are nearly identical in total numbers in the stats that I have.
You may want to consider adding Harker to your list of day schools outside of NYC. You can access their data in the public part of the Harker website under “Harker at a glance” and then clicking on “prestigious universities” in the first paragraph.
The data provided is the acceptance information for the classes of 2007-2009. A sample: 31 acceptances to Stanford, 29 to Princeton, 18 to Harvard and 10 to Yale.
I’d actually looked at Harker before. Unfortunately, I need matriculation, not acceptance, information to compile the statistics you see here in order to have apple-to-apple comparisons. I would gladly include this school if I had access to the appropriate information.
Brearley’s 2010 is out.
Thanks! I wasn’t expecting 2010 updates so soon.
I hope this won’t disappoint too many people, but my intention is to update selectively for 2010 results. It would simply take me too long to update every single school on this website every year. At this point, we’ll just have to see how things go on the updates. Presumably, results for each school don’t change so dramatically from year to year. However, I will be changing all the “Years” columns to indicate the specific years of data used rather than just the number of years so that it will be clear what data is being used.
Thanks for the updates!! I would also like to see Sewickley Academy in Pittsburgh. For my brother-in-law, please include Newark Academy, Kent Place School, and Pingry Academy — those are all in NJ. Thanks!!!
Pingry is already here, but I can add the other three in the near future as time allows.
It was a good time to check the Sewickley website as both 2009 and 2010 matriculations are listed until the 2010 list bumps off the 2009 list from the standard location on the site.
Could you please add the Harker School in San Jose, CA?
this is a fantastic site.
Please see my comments above concerning Harker.
This is really great work. It is tremendously helpful, and cuts through much of the matriculation noise. Please keep it up, it’s really important to all of us looking at private schools.
Thanks for the compliment. That was basically the point of setting up this site.
Thank you for taking the time to pull together these statistics. I believe it can help parents and students understand the differences in matriculation rates between schools, instead of relying on pure conjecture and word of mouth as many web blogs do.
Thank you as well for pointing out that the stats are just the stats – nothing more and nothing less. There are several good schools to choose from.
My wife and I were fortunate enough to send our kids to two of the top 5 ranked schools on your TOP 25 list. They both currently attend HYP schools, but we didn’t need their matriculation to confirm that they both received great educations. The key is the dedicated faculty and support of the school community in each school.
My advice to parents and students considering private school education: if you get in, learn and do the best work that you are capable of and the results will surely follow.
Could you please add western reserve academy in Hudson, OH (wra.net)?
The information for the Class of 2009 for Western Reserve Academy is fine and I will use it. The problem is that I’ve closed the book on 2009 and am now only going to add information that includes 2010 data (you’ll notice that some NYC schools now include 2010 info). So, I’ve saved WRA’s 2009 information and will add it when the school posts 2010 information. It would be helpful if you would post back here that the new info is available as I suspect you’ll be aware of it before I will be.
Sure. I’ll scan the 2010 commencement matriculation data and e-mail it to the contact e-mail.
2010 data for various DC schools.
Landon:
http://www.landon.net/uploaded/documents/academics/College_Counseling/matriculation_2010.pdf
Georgetown Prep:
http://www.gprep.org/contentPage.aspx?pageId=51997§ionId=1256
Potomac School:
http://www.potomacschool.org/campus-life/college-counseling/college-matriculation/index.aspx
Stone Ridge:
http://www.stoneridgeschool.org/page.cfm?p=2204
Thanks, SAM2.
In particular, I haven’t seen Potomac School information before now.
st. john’s in houston now has matriculation data available. the present headmaster of trinity in new york city was the former headmaster of st. john’s.
lee zhanmin
I was able to find the 5-year data for 2005-2009 on the School Profile pdf. As I mentioned above, I’m now only adding information to the site that includes 2010 information. If you let me know when that information is available, I’ll include St. John’s then.
Spence 2010 List:
http://www.spenceschool.org/program/college_counseling/senior_class_college_list/index.aspx
Looks like a good year for Spence with 10/48 = 20.8% going to HYPMS, but I’m going to wait until the 2006-2010 5-year results are posted before updating. The Spence website is still showing the 2005-2009 results.
I think the Spence Site updated the its 5 year list but forgot to change the title. If you compare the list now posted I think you will note that it’s not the same as the one you are currently using.
Thanks for pointing that out. Spence has now been updated.
Brunswick school has the last 4 years matriculation posted on the upper school application form. Would be nice to see the average over a number of years.
Thanks. That’s definitely not some place I would have looked on my own. I’ve saved that data and will update with the five years 2006-2010 as soon as 2010 is available to me. If you let me know when that data is available (since I’m not checking every school’s website constantly), it will hasten when I post that combined data.
Please Lake Forest Academy and Sidwell Friends.
Sorry, but I’ve been unable to obtain information for either of those schools. Sidwell Friends in particular seems rather secretive. Don’t worry, I’m sure Sasha and Malia will be accepted by every school to which they apply.
Fantastic website and set of stats – it’s terrific you make your efforts publicly available. Thanks so much for all your efforts! Just a few additional thoughts/suggestions: where possible, it would be great to capture average SAT test scores by school. I personally don’t put a lot of stock in the value of SAT tests, but they are still a reality and an important component of the college admissions process. It would be interesting to see how these scores correlate with your MATRIC scores.
Regarding MATRIC, that’s an interesting methodology but it’s unclear to me exactly how you decide the weighting factors. For instance, if I compare test scores/selectivity/etc. between two sample schools, e.g. Cornell and Dartmouth, they look quite different whereas MATRIC lumps them all into the same bucket. May I suggest you take a look at the following paper and perhaps add an additional score similar to your MATRIC, but one that ranks the schools on more graduated/continuous spectrum? This paper develops an ELO score for the top 100 US colleges/universities, using the same methodology employed to rank chess masters (ELO rating points). The rankings are shown starting on page 26.
Given your interests in school rankings, you may find this paper interesting regardless.
“A Revealed Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities”
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf
Thanks and keep up the great work!
First, thanks for the compliments.
Including SAT scores is certainly a possibility, but my view is that because they are one component of the college admissions process they are essentially subsumed in the results shown here. There are obviously other, less quantitative, aspects to the college admissions decision, and I felt to highlight SAT scores would diminish those other aspects.
An earlier post (back in May) referred me to that same interesting article. Although I agree that using “revealed preferences” as a way of determing the the weighting of schools would indeed be theoretically better, I chose not to overhaul the structure of the ranking system here for several reasons. 1) I’d already started with the structure that I currently have. 2) Those rankings are starting to be a bit dated (though they probably haven’t changed too significantly) and I have no good way of obtaining an update.
Note that HYPMS was the result of the extreme of revealed preferences as discussed in a NY Times article (link on home page).
As I describe on the home page, the rankings I use are simply the US News and World Report rankings. I grouped by 5′s to form the rankings you see here for the two MATRIC stats. Since US News Rankings come out annually, keeping current is possible. I grouped by 5′s because I didn’t want to worry about fine distinctions. My general gut hunch (and hope!) is that any small inaccuracies of misclassification will average out for any particular school across its matriculating students.
Have you considered Iolani School in Honolulu, HI? It is considered by many locals to be the stronger academically compared to Punahou, but I would be curious to see how your stats bear this out.
Unfortunately, you get my standard answer. I’d be happy to include Iolani, but the school doesn’t post adequate information on its website. If I were to receive appropriate information for me to calculate the statistics shown here, I certainly would.
Thanks for the data, it’s very interesting. Have you considered adding Oak Knoll in Summit, NJ and Greens Farms in Westport, CT? They both have impressive college admissions data, particularly Oak Knoll for such a small school.
Here are links to their school profiles with 5 year data.
http://www.oakknoll.org/data/files/pages/2010USProfile.pdf
http://www.gfacademy.org/Customized/uploads/Academics/College%20Guidance/Profile%202010Single%20Paged%20.pdf
On the top 25 list, the school ranked 6th has a higher score (231) than the school ranked 5th (229). Is this a mistake?
Thanks for pointing that out. When I updated those schools with 2010 data, they switched places. I updated their MATRIC index, but didn’t swap their places on that page.
Hi!! Great site! A lot of good information.
Do you think it would be possible for you to include American schools OUTSIDE of the US (international). I assure you many will have information. This would be EXTREMELY helpful for us expatriates!
Some big ones include…:
American School in Japan http://community.asij.ac.jp/Page.aspx?&srcid=-2
Canadian Academy (Japan) http://www.canacad.ac.jp/
Singapore American School http://www.sas.edu.sg/
Shanghai American School http://www.saschina.org/
Hong Kong International School http://www.hkis.edu.hk/
Seoul Foreign School http://www.seoulforeign.org/
International School of Beijing http://www.isb.bj.edu.cn/
International School of Bangkok http://www.isb.ac.th/
Taipei American School http://www.tas.edu.tw/
International School of Geneva http://www.ecolint.ch/ecolint/ch/en-ch/index.cfm
American School in London http://www.asl.org/
American Overseas School of Rome http://www.aosr.org/
Thank you!!