Whenever you hear about public schools today people use the word failure, others go so far as to call them dropout factories. So if they are so bad, if we really have such a crisis, why are some of our most prestigious universities still admitting the majority of their students from public schools?
Corporate reform enthusiasts are re-structuring preschool to graduation, making school harder than ever before, and they are basing all of their ideas on this mistaken notion that our public schools are failing. But they were not failing at all.
I was inspired to look into this after reading this beautiful article by Pulitzer Prize NYT’s journalist Michael Winerip about interviewing high school senior candidates to get into Harvard. HERE. I don’t know how many of those he interviewed were from public schools, but I think it demonstrates how bright our students are today and they are college-ready. The article also does a nice job of putting college in perspective. It is a great read and I highly recommend it.
Let’s look at the future classes of 2018.
Princeton University: 26,641 Applicants; 1,939 Admissions; 61% are from Public Schools.
Brown University: 30,432 Applied; 2,619 Admitted; 63% are from Public Schools; 37% are from Private or Parochial Schools.
Stanford University: 42,167 Applied; 2,145 Admitted; 60% are from Public Schools; 30% Private Schools; 10% International.
Vanderbilt University (Class of 2017) 31,099 Applied; 3,963 Admitted; 64% are from Public Schools; 36% are from Private Schools; < 1% Other.
California Institute of Technology: 6,525 Applied; 226 Admitted; 75% are from Public Schools.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 18,356 Applied; 1,447 Admitted; 69% are from Public Schools; 14% are from Independent Schools; 7% are from Religious Schools; 9% are from Foreign Schools.
The last two universities are heavy STEM schools by the way.
You may be wondering how many of the public school admissions are charter schools? I think charter schools are separated from the public school figure though it is not clear.
Brown University lists special figures for their student 2013 class admissions for Liberal Medical Education : Public Schools 67%; Private Schools: 12%; Religious/Parochial 5%; Independent Schools 13%; Charter Schools 3%.
Cornell University lists the following for the admissions for the Class of 2017: 39,999 Applicants; 6,222 Admitted; 66% attended Public High School; 19% attended Private School; 16% attended Charter or Home Schooled.
This leads me to believe that the Public School percentage is separated from the Charter Schools.
I am also not forgetting the poor. Disadvantaged students need better schools and good teachers and the same opportunities wealthier students have to learn. Nor do I think public schools couldn’t use a facelift. They had a lot of problems. But if we are in such a crisis, why are colleges having to turn away qualified candidates?
The honest fact is, colleges are bombarded by many applications. Most of these applicants probably got high enough SAT and ACT scores, and were well-qualified or they wouldn’t have bothered to apply. And these universities can afford to be choosy, but they always pick a higher number of public school students!
So public school students should hold their heads high! I just noted a few universities. There are many more out there that are equally good for whatever students want to pursue. The point is public schools are good schools despite all the problems that have been foisted upon them.
And to the Class of 2018, Good Luck and Best Wishes! See below.
Hi Nancy,
I commend your positive view point regarding public schools, and I am sure there are many public schools that are doing a wonderful job of making our kids college ready… No Doubt. I do have a comment about the statistics. What I see missing is: how many students from each kind of school background actually apply.
Now this is my assumption but what if public school applicants far outnumber other school applicants. I am assuming that millions more attend public school than private school in this country so Colleges receive far more applications from public school students. I would also like to know how many students once admitted make it through to graduation.
Also, I believe that there is actually a lot more to take into consideration when understanding how colleges pick. I think your link to the Harvard student interviews points to this.
From articles I have read in the past, College admissions look at minorities, they look at economics, they even look at how many students will need scholarships, how many students will apply for federal funding or grants, how many students will apply for government student loans. They look at race, they look at sex, female or male.
Your point is taken though regardless of these questions, Our kids are making it to college, and it appears a large percent are being admitted into prestigious colleges.
Thanks Kara! Very good points. It would be more meaningful if I had broken down how many students applied from public schools or the additional demographics you mentioned. But I still think it is meaningful, for my little blog post, that many students from public school still get into prestigious schools. I don’t hear these super schools complaining, yet, about public schools not sending them enough high quality public school students.
But I do worry that some of the actions being taken, esp. overemphasis on high-stakes testing, Common Core, etc. will make changes not in the best interest of the students in the future.
Nancy, without including the context of the size of the relative pools, the admissions data are meaningless for assessing the performance of public and private schools in qualifying students for topflight universities. A very quick Google shows that roughly 93% of US high school students are in public schools (see link below).
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/projections/projections2021/tables/table_01.asp
Showing these admit shares without the source mix context is like arguing that, since a much larger percentage of UT Austin admits come from Texas public schools than any other state’s public school system, that Texas public schools are the best in the nation.
The discussions around the strengths and weaknesses of our nation’s schools deserve honest, intellectually robust analysis. This isn’t it.
Thanks, Bob. If you want an intellectually robust analysis, be my guest!
I don’t care if the overall number of public school students who apply is 93%. It still shows that, when you consider public schools have a great deal of diversity, and take everyone, those are still healthy numbers of public school students who get into prestigious schools!
And that was my point all along.
I think your UT example is an overstatement.