What Colleges Are Accepting Local Students?

When discussing colleges, everyone seems to know the names of the Ivy League schools – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale – but are local students actually getting accepted to these prestigious institutions? 

Yes, but the competition is fierce, according to data posted on the website of Montgomery High School.  Between the years 2016-2020, Montgomery High School students have been accepted to every Ivy League school. At Princeton, 13 of 214 applicants were accepted; at Harvard, 2 of 81 applicants were accepted; at Columbia it was 8 of 148; at Yale it was 8 of 84; at Dartmouth it was 5 of 77; at Cornell it was 27 of 269; and at Brown it was 3 of 127.

Where is everyone else seeking to attend college?  The colleges receiving the most applications from Montgomery students in 2020 were Rutgers (233 applied with 78% accepted), Northeastern University (100 applied with 35% accepted), University of Michigan (85 applied with 19% accepted), TCNJ (82 applied with 52% accepted), Penn State (73 applied with 61% accepted), NYU  (68 applied with 31% accepted), Drexel (66 applied with 74% accepted), Boston University (65 applied with 32% accepted), Carnegie Mellon (54 applied with 11% accepted), and Cornell (54 applied with 9% accepted). To put this into perspective, the average SAT score of Montgomery students is 1347 with a GPA of 90.2.

 

At Princeton High School, statistics for graduates in the classes of 2017 through 2020 indicate that Rutgers was the most popular, gaining 123 of its students.  Other colleges and universities that enrolled large numbers of Princeton High School graduates were Princeton University (78), NYU (38), Cornell University (33), Northeastern University (26), University of California (23), University of Pennsylvania (22), Carnegie Mellon University (21) and George Washington University (21).  

 

Many of the students in Hillsborough High School’s graduating class of 2020 favored New Jersey institutions, with 72 choosing to attend Rutgers – New Brunswick, 21 attending The College of New Jersey, 17 at Rowan, 8 at Stevens Institute of Technology, 8 at Montclair State University, and 6 at both Ramapo College and Drew University.  

Hillsborough students from the class of 2020 who left New Jersey tended to favor nearby state universities, including University of Delaware (15), Penn State University (9), University of Maryland (9), University of Pittsburgh (7), Temple University (5), and West Chester University of Pennsylvania (5). Other schools that topped the list with Hillsborough students were Northeastern University (9), University of Michigan (5), University of California – Berkeley (5), and NYU (5). 

Susan Alaimo is the founder and director of Collegebound Review that, for the past 25 years, has offered PSAT/SAT® preparation and private college advising by Ivy League educated instructors. Visit CollegeboundReview.com or call 908-369-5362