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    Our experience with elite prep schools is that a LOT of admissions slots are given to legacy students and students whose parents are likely to be large donors to the school. Then there is likely a diversity slice and some athletes -- and a few slots left for everyone else. We applied to the top K-12 school for our kids in another city, and both were rejected (one with a 160+ IQ...) -- we heard from someone later that there were TWO slots in the kindergarten class that did not fit one of those criteria I listed above. A ninth grade class may have more slots, but it is still fewer than you think if you are "unhooked". Hate to say it, but this is good preparation for applying to the very top colleges -- there are a lot fewer slots for unhooked kids there than the colleges like to admit, too.

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    Originally Posted by intparent
    Our experience with elite prep schools is that a LOT of admissions slots are given to legacy students and students whose parents are likely to be large donors to the school. Then there is likely a diversity slice and some athletes -- and a few slots left for everyone else. We applied to the top K-12 school for our kids in another city, and both were rejected (one with a 160+ IQ...) -- we heard from someone later that there were TWO slots in the kindergarten class that did not fit one of those criteria I listed above. A ninth grade class may have more slots, but it is still fewer than you think if you are "unhooked". Hate to say it, but this is good preparation for applying to the very top colleges -- there are a lot fewer slots for unhooked kids there than the colleges like to admit, too.
    You also forgot to add the students of staff members of whom there are a lot.
    In the "elite" school in my area, here is how it goes: if there are 100 seats for K, they try to allocate 50% of them to boys and the rest to girls to keep up gender diversity. If you had a boy, he is automatically competing for one of the 50 seats and not 100 seats. Then, those 50 seats for boys get further sub-divided between - the legacy quota, the donor quota, the staff quota, the sibling quota, the seats for the "notable achievers" (that 5 year old that played in Carnegie hall or has a sky high USCF rating etc), the quota for "financial aid" students (their charter insists on "financial diversity"), the quota for "celebrities" (founder of hedge fund, CEO, politician, potential donor, notable sportsman), the quota for kids referred to them by the school board. In reality, there is hardly a single seat left for a well performing gifted kid without any "Hooks". I was told that many long time staff had to wait for years to get their kids into their schools (staff quota was limited to a certain %). So, a PG boy (or girl) with a sky high WPPSI score or a 99 percentile ISEE score (higher grades) with no hooks might not end up with a seat at all because the real quota for such a candidate is 1 or 2 seats and not the 100 openings that they talk about during admissions events. The K entrance sounded a lot like the Ivy league admissions.

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    Your analysis sounds likely. Perhaps its more pronounced at the local level than at the Ivies. I heard of one study that said legacy doesn't increase donation. At the college level. Note also that MIT and Cal Tech don't do legacy. I think Harvard and Stanford are up front about, endow a chair ($3mm?), get your kid in.

    But local prep schools might actually need those endowment donations. Not having $20 - 40 billion to kick around. They'll be more enmeshed with local politics.

    I think the big intake years are generally K, 6, 9.

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    Originally Posted by thx1138
    I think Harvard and Stanford are up front about, endow a chair ($3mm?), get your kid in.
    I am off to buy my super lotto ticket ... grin (just kidding). All jokes aside, it is good to know that these things are going on in the Ivy race - I am just a parent of an elementary school kid and these threads are a learning experience for me.

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    Knowing Stanford, it's probably per child...

    Crystal Springs, after 75 years, their most notable alumni... Patty Hearst. Hmmm. That's what comes of an aristocracy masquerading as a meritocracy.

    Meanwhile, at Menlo School,

    Posted by in the know
    a resident of Old Palo Alto
    on May 16, 2014 at 3:08 pm
    Menlo is going through a huge transition right now, after a period of very rapid growth from its roots as a folksy boarding school for the scions of the old Atherton ruling class to a highly competitive first-tier college prep school. The recent former leadership had serious flaws, and the influence of these flaws permeated the institution. For a while, teacher morale was quite low. There is at least one case of a mid-to-senior level manager being promoted to a truly Peter-Principle-level of incompetence after a decidedly checkered history as a teacher (if you think the Phil Winston affair was tawdry, this one would knock your socks off). There is/was no transparency in the salary "scale" (meaning there is not actually a scale, unlike Sacred Heart, which has a totally transparent scale), and instead salary negotiations with teachers were used as a bargaining cudgel and a weapon. There were several cases of very well-liked and highly respected veteran teachers being run out of a job based on political bickering and petty personal revenge tactics by senior management. (In several cases lawsuits were brought but immediately settled with total confidentiality in order to avoid bad PR.) Certain parents who were wealthy enough wielded inordinate influence with the administration and were able to shield their children from any consequences for truly reprehensible behavior, which in one case led to at least one staff member resigning in disgust. In other cases summary "judgment" was delivered against students based on hearsay and rumor, without regard to the actual facts of the situation. Other students and parents saw this and the message was clear - money talks, ethics walk, influence is everything, and politics is king. A great role model for young people. That model will take some undoing, which may be happening now. There is a new head, who is evidently instituting a new regime, and time will tell whether the overall climate at the school improves.


    Last edited by thx1138; 04/12/16 07:52 PM.
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    Originally Posted by thx1138
    Knowing Stanford, it's probably per child...

    Crystal Springs, after 75 years, their most notable alumni... Patty Hearst. Hmmm. That's what comes of an aristocracy masquerading as a meritocracy.

    Meanwhile, at Menlo School,

    Posted by in the know
    a resident of Old Palo Alto
    on May 16, 2014 at 3:08 pm
    Menlo is going through a huge transition right now, after a period of very rapid growth from its roots as a folksy boarding school for the scions of the old Atherton ruling class to a highly competitive first-tier college prep school. The recent former leadership had serious flaws, and the influence of these flaws permeated the institution. For a while, teacher morale was quite low. There is at least one case of a mid-to-senior level manager being promoted to a truly Peter-Principle-level of incompetence after a decidedly checkered history as a teacher (if you think the Phil Winston affair was tawdry, this one would knock your socks off). There is/was no transparency in the salary "scale" (meaning there is not actually a scale, unlike Sacred Heart, which has a totally transparent scale), and instead salary negotiations with teachers were used as a bargaining cudgel and a weapon. There were several cases of very well-liked and highly respected veteran teachers being run out of a job based on political bickering and petty personal revenge tactics by senior management. (In several cases lawsuits were brought but immediately settled with total confidentiality in order to avoid bad PR.) Certain parents who were wealthy enough wielded inordinate influence with the administration and were able to shield their children from any consequences for truly reprehensible behavior, which in one case led to at least one staff member resigning in disgust. In other cases summary "judgment" was delivered against students based on hearsay and rumor, without regard to the actual facts of the situation. Other students and parents saw this and the message was clear - money talks, ethics walk, influence is everything, and politics is king. A great role model for young people. That model will take some undoing, which may be happening now. There is a new head, who is evidently instituting a new regime, and time will tell whether the overall climate at the school improves.


    Sounds like a true ameritocracy


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    thx1138 Offline OP
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    As you sit in the wood paneled admissions office awaiting your tour, I recommend you leaf through the old yearbooks. I couldn't help notice a pattern. Every class had the 2 Chinese kids, the 2 Indian kids, the 1 African-American kid, and maybe the 1 Hispanic kid. I can only conclude there is a certain template for each class. Thus your kid isn't competing for one of 30 slots, she's competing for the 1 slot for an asian girl. Currently even the ivy league discriminates against asians. In smaller private schools that aren't as high profile, they can get away with even more bias.

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    I am really glad I looked up bay area because I live in the DC area, and TOTALLY thought you meant Chesapeake Bay area. I was going to tell you to move to Fairfax or Loudun because they have the highest funded school systems in the country, buuut theirs this large thing called the great planes, and its smack dab in the middle of the two coasts. and don't try to make her an extrovert, it won't work. maybe get her tested to see what her grade level is? and then skip to that grade?

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