Page 28 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

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percentage in 1986 was 76.2, as a
point of comparison. Pratt made
similar calculations for two sep-
arate three-year periods: From
2004 to 2006, 79 percent of SPS
graduates enrolled at those 26
schools, while the percentage
between 2011 and 2013 was 68.3.
Meanwhile, between Tenney’s
and Pratt’s calculations, college
applications have skyrocketed.
In 1985, Yale reviewed 11,737
applications; Harvard 13,614;
Brown 13,707, and Princeton
10,950. The numbers for 2013
are decidedly different. Yale wel-
comed 1,991 (6.72%) of 29,610
applicants, while Harvard accepted
2,029 students (5.8%) from a
record applicant pool of 35,023.
Brown took 2,649 (9.16%) of its
28,919 hopefuls, while Princeton
said yes to 1,931 (7.29%) of 26,298
applicants.
Pratt points out that while the
numbers of applicants have nearly
tripled at many colleges since 1986,
SPS graduates continue to do well
at the most selective schools. The
2013-14 School Fact Card lists the
colleges most attended by SPS
graduates over the last four years:
Georgetown (30), Brown, Dart-
mouth, and Harvard (20), Colum-
bia (18), Stanford (14), Berkeley,
Michigan, and Middlebury (13),
and Colby, Davidson, Princeton,
and Yale (12). In a report prepared
by Pratt for Alumni Volunteer
Weekend 2013, he shared that 88
percent of the top 30 percent of
the Form of 2013 and 53 percent
of the entire form were admitted
to at least one college with an acceptance rate below 20
percent. Eighty percent of the Form of 2013 gained admis-
sion to at least one college with an acceptance rate below
30 percent.
But it’s time to put the brakes on that discussion,
Pratt urges.
“We wouldn’t want to send all of our students to Har-
vard, Yale, and Princeton,” he says. “The other impact
of the uber-selective admissions at these places is that
those students who 10 years ago would have gotten into
those schools are enrolling elsewhere, which means the
quality of the freshman class at schools a notch less selec-
tive is actually significantly better than it was 10 years ago.
As the saying goes, ‘a rising tide
lifts all boats’ – and there are
many great options out there for
our students to explore.”
At Bowdoin, which boasted an
all-time-low acceptance rate of
14.5 percent for the Class of 2017,
Whitney Soule is still quick to
caution against the perception that
selectivity measures the quality of
an education.
“One of the biggest myths is that
the harder it is to get in means the
school is better,” she says. “Selec-
tivity is often a proxy for quality in
a student’s perception of a college.
Students believe a less selective
school isn’t as good. I believe there
are amazing schools up and down
the selectivity ladder that can deliver
on the promise of education.”
It is that perception from stu-
dents and parents, and even alumni,
that spawns gray hairs on the heads
of those responsible for college ad-
vising at St. Paul’s and other similar
independent schools. Betsy Dolan
has seen it all in her 17 years at
Phillips Exeter, where she has spent
the last decade directing the college
advising office.
“We can’t just wave the magic
wand and get a kid into Harvard,”
she says. “The mistake students
make is to think, ‘I can get high
honors at St. Paul’s or Exeter and
that’s so much stronger than X
public school.’ It is true that the
student bodies are different, but
students are being evaluated in the
context of their own student body.
Colleges want students to maxi-
mize the opportunities at their
given institution. Some parents think if they kept their
child at home, the student would have been valedicto-
rian. Maybe, but there are many valedictorians who
are not admitted to the most selective colleges. When
a student attends a secondary school like Exeter or
St. Paul’s, he or she is competing at a national secondary
school level. Colleges respect the depth, breadth, and
diversity of these types of student bodies and will admit
deeper into a given class than at another school.”
While there is no magic wand, as Dolan explains,
independent schools like St. Paul’s and Exeter do have
the advantage of access to college admissions officers
that some high schools with fewer resources lack. Logan
“It’s not the
school you are
applying to
that matters;
it is what you
choose to do
at the school
and what you
make of it.”