On June 26th 2007 the Hartford Courant published a large table that ranked Connecticut High Schools by their graduate enrollment in college (page B2; the link at the newspaper website does not work anymore). The Cafe published an article on this report.The title of this half page article was “More Graduates Heading to Private Out-of-State Colleges” the main message of the article. But, although the data ordered all 179 CT high schools by the percentage of graduating high school students that attended private colleges, the table also showed the total percentage of high school seniors that went on to both private and public colleges. This survey compiled its data by averaging 2004 to 2006 graduating seniors.

As might be expected, the same affluent towns that ranked highest among preK-8 schools - New Canaan (2), Darien (1), Wilton (4), Staples/Westport(5), Ridgefield (9), and Simsbury High School (12), towns that don’t send their kids to out-of-town high schools were at the top of the list with 90-97% of graduating seniors going off to 4-yr colleges. Among this elite group the percentage of seniors going off to private colleges ranged from 76% down to 54%.

Woodstock Academy (WA) was ranked 108th out of 179 high schools for private college enrollment with 25% of its seniors enrolling in private colleges.  WA ranked 114th in the state with 74% graduating seniors enrolling in any type of 4- yr college. If one examines the 2006-07 Strategic School Profile published by the State, 78% of graduating seniors went off to 2-yr and 4-yr colleges including ‘college level’ trade schools. The average number for all high schools in the state was 77.8% which included inner city schools which tend to have lowest scholastic performance.

A recent commentor stated “Only 50% of WA graduates go on to college!” The commentor recommended that ’whodathunckit’ call them up, but knowing that the Academy exaggerated these numbers in the Putnam Shoppers’ Guide in the second half of 2007, we preferred to find this information from an ‘official source’. Admin found the source of this information at the Academy website in the Academy’s 2002-03 profile on page 2 (guidance counselor section). The 50% figure represents only 4-yr colleges, and the number was the same for the 2001-02 year. If the students that attended 2-yr colleges or college level trade schools are added in, the number of students attending all three of these categories of colleges is very close, if not the same, to the number that shows up in the Strategic School Profile published by the State.