Two public schools — Princeton's local high school and Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va. — send more graduates to the University than any other high schools.
A recent Wall Street Journal article ranked "feeder" schools based on the number of students they sent to a selected list of eight elite colleges, including Princeton. It identified Collegiate School, a private day school in New York City, along with two other high schools in the city, as the top feeders.
But an analysis of the high school alma maters of Princeton undergraduates suggests the University has somewhat different feeders from those high schools the Journal singled out as most adept at getting students admitted to the eight colleges surveyed.
The high school that sees the greatest percentage of its graduates attend the University is the Lawrenceville School, at 6.54 percent, as measured by the current number of Lawrenceville alumni enrolled at the University divided by Lawrenceville's current total ninth through 12th grade population. Close behind is the Collegiate School in New York, at 6.51 percent. Third is United World College of the Atlantic, an international school in Wales, which came in at 5.43 percent.
The top three high schools on the Journal's list were Collegiate, the Brearley School and the Chapin School — all private schools in Manhattan. The top-performing public school was Hunter College High School, a magnet school in New York run by Hunter College. Princeton High School was 27th on the Journal's list.
Raw numbers yield a different set of statistics, with Princeton High School topping the list of the best-represented schools — 70 of its alumni are currently enrolled at the University. Thomas Jefferson comes in second, with 60 of its graduates currently attending the University. The next best-represented high schools are, respectively, Lawrenceville, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., and Stuyvesant High School in New York City.
Yume Kitasei '09, who attended Stuyvesant, a selective public school that specializes in math and science, said she and her high school classmates were pushed to work hard from the start. "At the first freshman assembly, we were given an anecdote to work hard or we would end up serving hot dogs at Yankee Stadium," she said. "[Applying to college was] very much a freshman-year-to-senior-year process. The amount of attention and support they give for that is a lot more than what they give at other schools."
Some high school administrators have nonetheless objected to the Journal's survey and the subsequent surge of commentary on high schools' college admissions success that it has provoked.
Mike Rosenhaus, director of college counseling at the Delbarton School, a Benedictine school in Morris Township, N.J., said the Journal's list could have been very different with "a little tweaking."
Rosenhaus said Delbarton's success rate on the list would have been significantly higher if the Journal had included Catholic universities in the group of eight colleges it examined, since many Delbarton graduates attend Catholic colleges. "I think ... in this business, you like to stay away from rankings," he added, saying he sees problems with overemphasizing high schools' admissions rates to different colleges as a measure of their success. In all, 19 Delbarton graduates are currently enrolled at the University.
The eight colleges the Journal used to compile its rankings were Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins.
Sarah Constantin '10 graduated from University of Chicago Lab School, which currently has nine alumni enrolled at Princeton — 1.6 percent of its current ninth through 12th grade population. She said different high schools tend to be feeders for different colleges, noting that her school has "a relationship with the University of Chicago, and we tend to send people there."
But Aimee Gasior '09, who attended a public high school in New Jersey, said she questions the extent to which students from top "feeders" are better qualified to do the work at Princeton. "It'd be interesting to see how the kids from Collegiate actually do once they get here," she said.
In part, Kitasei said, she attributes Stuyvesant's success with college admissions to the fact that the high school itself is selective and draws top students from across New York City. "Even if the teachers weren't always as good as some of the other schools, the students make it worth it," she said.
Ryan Coyle '09, who graduated from Lawrenceville, said he and his family made their high school selection based on academic offerings rather than placement of graduates at colleges like Princeton. "It was a decision my parents and I made," Coyle said, adding that he had the option of attending Princeton High School but chose Lawrenceville instead. "I knew Princeton High School was a very good school, but my parents felt that Lawrenceville was going to be a better education for me."
Coyle added that he is skeptical of the Journal survey and subsequent analyses it has triggered. "You can't draw any big statistical conclusions from it," he said. "I think it'd be more interesting if there were more schools, but eight is not enough of a sample size."
As long rankings remain a hot topic, though, Coyle said he doesn't blame the Journal for conducting its survey. There are "people out there who want to hear this stuff," he said, so "there isn't any reason why [the Wall Street Journal] shouldn't do it."
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