Over the course of my career in independent schools, I have developed a rule for my conversations with seniors: never ask them about college. They put enough pressure on themselves—and feel enough pressure from (usually well-meaning) friends, family, and strangers in line at the grocery store—without my piling on too. This is not to say, of course, that I am not thinking of them, and nurturing quiet hopes for them, throughout the application, admission, and selection process. At this time of year especially, as the season of regular-decision notification begins, their aspirations and dreams are very much on my mind.
The anxiety that attends undergraduate admissions at a college-preparatory school like MICDS is ever increasingly a function of the long odds of acceptance at selective institutions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 23.4% of applicants from the high school classes of 2002-2006 were accepted into the 50 most selective American colleges and universities over that period. For the five-year cohort who graduated from 2009-2013, that rate had fallen to 17.0%. Ten years later, for the 2019-2023 cohort, it had fallen to 10.1%.
Although our graduates are not immune to this phenomenon of diminished access, I am proud of how well—and how consistently—they perform relative to the general population of applicants. (I should observe, too, that however much the Department of Education may be making the news these days, I would lament the dilution or loss of the data that make comparative analyses like this one possible.)
Of course, our national obsession with highly selective schools—to which, I will admit, the opening of this letter risks contributing—overestimates selectivity as a correlate of excellence. MICDS seniors routinely matriculate to universities whose overall acceptance rates are high, but whose honors programs to which they have earned admission offer exceptional educational opportunities. Even beyond such programs, an undergraduate experience is what one makes of it. David Kang at the University of Southern California has been tracking the college educations of corporate CEOs for decades. Among Fortune 100 CEOs in 2023, only 11.8% received an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university. Among the top 20, only one did.
Rather than attend so closely to the selectivity of the schools to which MICDS seniors matriculate, we should attend instead to their breadth. From 2019 to 2023, while the 50 most selective undergraduate institutions were collectively admitting barely 10% of all applicants—from Harvard’s 4% to Wellesley’s 17%—our graduates launched out to 231 destinations around the world, including 42 of those 50, but 189 more besides. Their variety is a testament to the wide range of passions and ambitions that our students carry with them beyond our doors.
Not merely “getting in” but belonging, and thriving, should be the measures by which we define college preparation at MICDS. Our exceptional faculty and our dedicated College Counseling staff—Matt Essman, Abby Klinckhardt, Earl Macam, and Karen Wildman—understand the purpose of their work in just these ways. Yes, early March is a season of pins and needles for our seniors and, vicariously, for those of us invested in their futures. It will soon give way to a season of pride, and of promise. The spring that awaits the year is the spring that awaits the blossoming of their lives to come.
Always reason, always compassion, always courage.
Jay Rainey
Head of School
This week’s addition to the “Refrains for Rams” playlist: Talk by Victoria Canal (Apple Music / Spotify)