89 Percent of Rye High School Seniors Headed to Four-Year Colleges

Rye High School's class of 2010 will graduate on Saturday and most of those students will become college freshmen in September.

Eighty-nine percent of Rye's nearly 200 seniors will be headed to four-year colleges and this year's class has received more acceptances to highly competitive schools than previous graduating classes during the last three years, according to Patricia Taylor, Assistant Principal for Guidance at Rye High School.

At Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting, Taylor presented a final report on students' college choices.

She said students had sent 1,359 applications to 321 different colleges. More than half of the senior class, 139 students, applied via early decision or early action, which allows students to complete the college process several months early once they have been accepted to the school of their choice.

Taylor said 65 percent of the 356 early action and early decision applications were accepted. The 89 percent college rate is a slight drop from the nearly 95 percent of students that went on to attend four year colleges in 2009. For the 2008 class,  that number was 91 percent.

This year's graduates will be attending colleges in almost every region of the country, from Bowdoin College and Yale University to the University of Notre Dame, Rice University and the University of San Diego.

Colleges also recruited and accepted students based on athletic ability, as well as academics. Some of those colleges include Brown University, Colby College, Duke University, MIT, Georgetown, Fordham and several others.

Those college acceptances don't come cheap. The average price of a private, four-year school is more than $35,600 a year. Some Rye High School students will offset this cost through scholarships and grants.

Taylor said the senior class has been awarded $170,500 in grants and scholarships from 53 different individuals and organizations.

Taylor credited students' success to their own hard work, but also to the district's efforts to prepare them and guide them through the college process.

She said the district has provided several resources and programs for students, such as  college essay writing workshops and a class that teaches students how to manage their futures.  The district has also hosted several college information sessions, with 137 colleges visiting Rye High School this school year.

The Rye City School District will release a detailed list next week of each student's college destination. The Blind Brook-Rye Union Free School District will present a report on college placements at its June 21 board meeting.