Private School Graduation and College Attendance: Patterns of Transition. ASHE Annual Meeting 1981 Paper.

The college designations of over 5,800 recent graduates of 60 private secondary schools and the relationships between characteristics of these schools and the average selectivity of the colleges attended for each school were investigated. Aggregating all graduates, the data show considerable success in gaining admission to selective, prestigious private colleges and universities. Over 81 percent attended private institutions (religious and nonsectarian), and 69 percent attended colleges identified by Astin as either very highly or highly selective. The colleges attended compensate their full professors better than average and they enroll students from families of generally higher social status than other colleges. Approximately 19 percent of the students were admitted into the top 25 colleges attended by major business leaders. Almost 40 percent attended one of the top 100 sources of the bachelor's degree of the Ph.D's for the period 1958-1966. Finally, the colleges attended had many alumni listed in "Who's Who" and the "Social Register." Two school variables, the size of the average scholarship offered by the secondary school (the best predictor) and the size of the faculty, together account for about 34 percent of the variance in average selectivity. Other variables that were assessed include the size of endowment; size and worth of facilities; status indicators (date of founding and whether the school has been identified as traditional among the elite of private boarding schools); student body diversity (as indicated by number of scholarships offered and the amounts of scholarships); school enrollment; number of graduates; and student-faculty ratio. (Author/SW)