The Class of 2025 received their early admissions decisions last December, with 223 students applying through Early Decision (ED) and Single Choice Early Action (SCEA), according to the administration. 47% of the applications were admitted, making a tie for the highest acceptance rate in the past five years, while 33% of early applications were denied and 20% were deferred.

According to a Chronicle article from February of the 2023-2024 school year, 51 percent of the Class of 2024’s seniors in the early pool applied to the same 14 schools. Slattery said the performance of this year’s class was better than the results of last year’s early admissions, and said students were able to approach the admissions process more strategically.

“It was a really successful year in comparison,” Slattery said. “When I looked at the percentage of kids who were done, either because they were admitted through ED or EA, it was a lot more than last year’s, which was probably around a third of applicants. One class has almost 300 students, and usually a little over 100 kids are done around this time, but this year, it was around 140 or 130 students. I think it was good counseling and good listening on the part of the [Class of 2025]. That may be partially in response to last year because early wasn’t as strong, so people are often responsive to that.”

The top 25 colleges students applied to  include the eight Ivy League Schools, New York University,

Boston College, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Vanderbilt University, Tufts

University, Emory University, University of Virginia, Duke University, Wesleyan University, Colgate University, Boston University, Tulane University, Howard University, Kenyon College and Carnegie Mellon University.

Upper School Dean Chris Jones said the seniors in his cohort — with nearly two-thirds accepted in the early round — have been some of the most successful in his counseling career.

“In all my 30 years doing this, in which the last 23 have been on the high school side, my cohort of students [this year] has done better than any cohort of students I’ve ever had,” Jones said. “If a third of my students are done by January 1, I know that it’s going to ultimately wind up being a good year. It doesn’t mean that the people who are in the two-thirds aren’t going to have good options. It’s not that. But if at least a third got in, I know it’s going to be okay. This year, out of my 33 seniors, 22 achieved that place by January 1. I’ve never seen something quite like that because this class really applied very smartly. Even when I think about the students who didn’t get something during early decision, looking at their list, it’s smart, and what they did made a lot of sense.”

Senior Prefect Victor Suh said he is proud of the turnout for the seniors and believes their success comes from a greater amount of awareness regarding the admissions process.

“[Our class is] made up of kids who understand what it means to be practical, to be realistic, to take risks and go for goals while still being in the realm of possibility,” Suh said. “I’m just very happy with our community, and I’m very happy to see that we’re successful. I know it may make the people who didn’t get into their EDs feel good. But honestly, would I rather have this situation, this boom of success, that we’re going through right now? Or the opposite, like something we had last year? I would much rather have what we have this year.”

Slattery said she hopes students will use this class as an example when applying to schools in the future, choosing to diversify their options.

“If a class was more successful with a different strategy, I would hope that people would follow that strategy,” Slattery said. “There were a handful of schools where we had incredible success, like Vanderbilt and Northwestern, where we historically haven’t had the best outcomes. There were places where the majority of people who applied early got in, and so if people can do that and spread the types of schools out, they’re going to have more success.”

The school’s college counseling team uses a platform called College Kickstart, which provides students with information about the likelihood of acceptance to colleges after they input data about their GPA and test scores. This tool allows students to strategize about where to apply to and to optimize their chances of acceptance. Colleges are sorted into categories such as “likelies” where a student has a 90% chance of being accepted, “targets” where a student has a 50% chance of getting accepted, “reaches,” where a student has a 25% chance of being accepted and “unlikelies” where a student has a 1% chance of being accepted. Jones said College Kickstart is more accurate than most students believe. According to the website’s data, Jones said, seniors are successful 91% of the time in “likelies,” 55% of the time in targets, 29% of the time in “reaches” and 2% of the time in “unlikelies” in regular decision applications. Jones said students may underestimate the platform’s reliability because Early Decision results appear different, as the website only provides probabilities for students applying through Regular Decision.

Jones said because his approach to counseling students depends heavily on a student’s statistics, especially their  GPA, it becomes difficult to construct a plan if a student’s college list is too ambitious.

“There’s no way for us to prevent students from overshooting,” Jones said. “[The choice to use data] is more for us to make sure students understand exactly what the landscape is. I rely a lot on data to allow them to come to those conclusions on their own, which they usually do. We go to the data and see how kids within your GPA cohort have performed in the admissions process over the last three years. If you look in there and you see a good number of kids getting in, yay. If you look in there and you see that most, or maybe all the kids in your range have not gotten in there, it’s not saying you can’t apply to those schools, but we can’t develop a strategy for you that’s based around having a list that only has that.”

Suh, who was accepted into Harvard University via Restrictive Early Action and is a student of Jones’, said he appreciates Jones’ flexibility and considers the application process an opportunity for students to challenge themselves.

“[Jones is] the perfect blend of wanting his kids to be idealistic and realistic,” Suh said. “He puts faith in kids and them making good, wise decisions at the end of the day. Sometimes, that means giving them control of the reins a little bit and giving them the full picture so that they and their families can make as good and informed decisions as possible. Again, that also means playing a little bit with unrealistic and realistic possibilities because, at the end of the day, it’s the kid’s and their family’s decisions. So, there is nothing wrong with entertaining the dreams and goals that some kids might have, regardless of how realistic.”

Slattery said she is confident that the students applying via regular decision will be admitted because of the many early admissions this year.

“Last year, the top of the class was not  as successful in early [admissions], while this year, most students at the top of the class got in,” Slattery said. “That’s going to be better for everybody else in the regular pool. Regular decision last year was really difficult because the top kids were still in the regular decision pool. So this year, the kids who are still left in the pool and who are strong will have success.”