96 Percent of Blind Brook High School Seniors Headed to Four-Year Colleges

Blind Brook High School seniors will graduate on Thursday and almost all of the class of 2010 will head to college in the fall.

Ninety-six percent of this year's seniors class will attend four year colleges, according to a report presented at Monday's Board of Education meeting by Mary Mediate, the Director of Guidance and Counseling.

She said this year's graduating class of 88 students submitted 888 applications to 227 colleges. They received 485 acceptances, 185 rejections, and 67 spots on wait lists. Twenty-five percent of the seniors applied to in-state schools, many of them receiving large scholarships, and nine percent of the class will go on to Ivy League universities including Brown University, University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University. Ninety-nine percent of the class will go on to college, 96 percent to four-year colleges, and one student is taking a year off to go to Israel.

Blind Brook's 96 percent college admission rate decreased from last year, when more than 97 percent of the class of 2009 attended four-year colleges, Mediate said.

This year, several Blind Brook students started the college process early. Mediate said 21 students applied to Early Decision I programs and one to Early Decision II programs, both of which are binding. There were also 179 applications to Early Application. Fifteen students were accepted on the binding Early Decision, and students received 124 acceptances under Early Applications. There were 453 applications for regular decision.

Members of the Class of 2010 will attend some of the most competitive schools, including Boston College, Boston University, University of California Berkley, Connecticut College, New York University, Northwestern University, Brown University, University of Virginia, John Hopkins University, Cornell, and University of Pennsylvania.

According to Mediate, this year's graduating class was part of the largest graduating class in the history of United States, with over 3.5 million seniors across the country.

The large number of high school seniors resulted in expanded wait lists, with many schools doubling the amount of students they put on these lists, Mediate said. This year, 67 Blind Brook seniors were put on a wait list compared to five in 2009.

Mediate said the economy was also a factor in where students applied to schools and where they decided to attend, which may have been reflected in the fact that 25 percent of the Class of 2010 applied to in-state schools, a significantly cheaper option than private universities.

Blind Brook High School has provided many resources to students throughout the college process. Guidance staff met with students and parents individually throughout the year and the school began an Alumni Return Day, where students who graduated last year and are now at college came back before the Winter Holidays to discuss their college choices and their transition from high school to college. The school also held workshops on writing admissions essays and preparing for college visits.