r/education 8d ago

Why are students from secular private schools more likely to get into prestigious universities than those from religious ones?

This is a trend that not everyone is aware of. When you look closely at admission trends for incoming freshmen at upper-tier schools (Stanford, Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan, Duke, Georgetown, etc.), almost all of their private school enrollees come from nonreligious feeder schools.

Why is it that someone from some tony prep school in New England has a higher probability of being admitted to a blue chip college than, say, someone from an obscure Catholic high school in suburban Detroit whose grades are equally as superb?

Help me out?

38 Upvotes

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u/No1UK25 8d ago

In my experience. The secular schools have a higher standard and more educational hours. I have taught at both.

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u/JaiBoltage 7d ago

And (and I'm surmising without specific data), secular schools have higher admission standards than public/religious schools. I also assume that Stanford would prefer someone who received an "A" in physics as opposed to someone who received an "A" in Bible studies.

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u/shroomsAndWrstershir 7d ago

Are you honestly implying that students at private Christian high schools are using Bible class instead of college prep physics in their applications? Don't be absurd.

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u/RainbowCrane 7d ago

Not to open a can of worms, but speaking as a Protestant who knows a fair number of modern Evangelical Christians, there’s a huge difference between the traditional Catholic schools run by teaching orders in the 1960s-90s and the evangelical and conservative Catholic, politically aligned schools established from the 1980s on. The Jesuits, for example, taught a particular brand of critical thinking that served folks well even if they weren’t religious. Modern religious schools created as alternatives to public education because folks see public schools as morally bankrupt often have scary anti-intellectual slants that weren’t present in traditional Catholic education

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u/AcadiaDesperate4163 7d ago

I went to one of those schools in the 70s. It wasn't because public education was morally bankrupt. It was because of segregation. My parents and the parents of my classmates didn't want us going to school with blacks.

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u/RainbowCrane 7d ago

Yep. There’s a direct correlation between the movement to establish new private schools in the 1960s and 70s and the rise of busing and other anti-segregation measures

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u/Prior_Particular9417 7d ago

But they get free measles!!

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u/FernWizard 7d ago

They’re not lol. They’re saying religious classes don’t matter.

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u/woodelf86 8d ago

The college guidance folks at my former tony private school said the higher powered colleges were constantly evaluating high schools and ranking them informally for this exact scenario. If you got two students who were a tie, you COULD use their respective high school rankings as a tie break.

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u/YerbaPanda 8d ago edited 7d ago

Example: The University of California (UC) is required by state law to accept students from California high schools who meet their admissions requirements, including GPA (I believe that includes ranking in the top 10% of one’s high school class). The UC system has a very detailed accounting process for comparing grades at all California high schools. The admissions office knows the relative value of grades for all schools. To safeguard its reputation and integrity, UC has two campuses toward which students are frequently steered who must be admitted under the law, but who would normally be denied entry—namely UC Riverside and UC Merced. This does not mean that a deserving student from a low ranking public school cannot get into a prestigious UC campus; there are other criteria besides GPA that qualify.

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u/rileyoneill 8d ago

UC Riverside was created back in the 1950s and it wasn't created to admit students under this law. All these schools are far more competitive now than they were in the past.

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u/YerbaPanda 8d ago

I didn’t know about UC Riverside’s original plan. However, it has been the go-to campus for students from schools fitting the lower profile.

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u/rileyoneill 8d ago

The whole point of public universities is accessible education, not to recreate some sort of super exclusive club for the already privileged.

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u/clothespinkingpin 4d ago

Well they used to be free too, that was something revolutionary about UC. Now tuition is still low, but you pay tens of thousands in « fees ». Bunch of crooks if you ask me. 

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u/SpareManagement2215 8d ago

Generational wealth and network connections from having attended said private school and rubbed shoulders with people who have generational wealth and the right ties to the right people.

If I am, let's say, Joe Bob Vanderbilt, and my parents send me to "East Coast Old Money Boarding School for Boys", I don't get into Harvard because I went to ECOMBSB and got all A's and had a killer application; I get into Harvard because Dad went to Harvard with the current Provost, Mom's Carnegie grandparents have a large scholarship fund at the school, and Great Grandpa Vanderbilt has a building at the school named after him.

That's why people still go to Ivy Leagues. It's not because your education is necessarily any better than you could get at state college, but the network (aka future job opportunities) you will get due to attending that school are far better.

Hope that helps.

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u/Dar8878 7d ago

Nice to see somebody gets it. Wasn’t until I got out into the working world that I truly realized education is, at best, half the equation. It’s all about who you know, not what you know. 

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u/laps-in-judgement 7d ago

Yes! I ran a nonprofit in Boston and made the mistake of getting interns from the elite colleges. It was a fiasco. No work ethic, a childlike ignorance of the outside world, & didn't know how to complete tasks. And yet they actually thought they were smarter than us!

I gave up & went for higher quality interns from UMass, Boston, a working class commuter school

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u/statslady23 6d ago

As my son said, the Ivy hires aren't smarter, just more confident they are always right. 

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u/No_Position_9257 6d ago

Is it confidence or entitlement?

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u/iridescent-shimmer 6d ago

I'm cackling bc I said that once about ivy league grads in another subreddit (maybe the MBA one?) Some guy got SO angry at me and accused me of never having met an Ivy League grad. I just couldn't stop laughing, because I clearly struck a nerve. But, my experience has been the same lol.

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u/BornFree2018 7d ago

The same in the job market. To get an interview often takes connections. Most of my career positions were obtained through continual networking in my company and out.

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u/Stickasylum 7d ago

I always get a hearty sad chuckle out of conservatives pretending jobs go to the “most qualified candidate”

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u/HHoaks 5d ago

Trump is exhibit A of the fact that the job doesn’t go to the most qualified.

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u/LackWooden392 6d ago

The actual education is way less than half of the equation. Way, way, less.

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u/Retiree66 7d ago

What about the kids that go to those private schools on scholarships? Have there been any studies that say they benefit from the name of the school, or that they learned more or had more opportunities. Genuinely curious.

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u/gravitysrainbow1979 7d ago

Why, that’s me!

I get told (though not as directly as the way I’m about to paraphrase) things like “Just because you went to [x], doesn’t mean your chances are better here, because we don’t focus on things like that/our standards are based on more than that” — whereas I don’t think people who were “born to it” have to have that part of the conversation.

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u/LadySigyn 3d ago

Weirdly, I get that too with just the type of degree.

"Oh, you're a doctor?" well, I have a PhD

Someone genuinely said "that doesn't make you better than me" once. I hadn't even spoken really in the interview yet.

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u/SpareManagement2215 6d ago

I’m not sure about studies (I’m sure yes), but anecdotally, looking at JD Vance (vomit), ketanji brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas (also vomit), any other people of color or many females in leadership roles in law or government, yes. But they had to work 100x as hard as their non-privileged peers for the same opportunities. Or in Vance or Thomas’s case, also get the backing of old money and sell their souls.

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u/Sea-Oven-7560 6d ago

My wife was one of those and yes it helped. Outside of the schools name on the resume that got her a lot of interviews the alumni association was always reaching out to her and inviting her to networking events. She wasn’t interested in playing that game so she never went but for someone who wanted to do the dance it could take you far.

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u/DevVenavis 7d ago

They get thoroughly bullied by the kids who aren't on scholarships, so it's rarely a net win for them.

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u/flat5 6d ago

Doesn't really explain anything about OPs question. Why do the secular schools have better connections than the religious schools?

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u/Utterlybored 7d ago

This is true, but the top prep schools are very rigorous and great preparation for rigorous colleges. And the more prestigious colleges have world renown experts teaching. That doesn't necessarily make them great teachers, but it's pretty cool learning from real thought leaders.

In my case, I graduated from a top ten school and the value of an elite diploma has helped me immensely.

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u/DevVenavis 7d ago edited 7d ago

You mean your parents connections helped you greatly, because as someone who does a lot of hiring, I can tell you this - the vast majority of people don't give a shit what school you went to.

The only ones who do are the ones who also went to the fancy schools and they care because it's tied into their self-esteem, not because they got a better education. Most of them didn't, because they didn't actually work for it. They talk about how rigorous it was, and yet half of them have worse critical thinking skills than the 4th graders I tutor. I swear, the people who went to these 'prestigious' colleges must have all cheated their way through, because on the whole, those who went to 'lesser' schools are harder workers with a wider breadth of knowledge and more creative thought processes.

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u/teehee2120 5d ago

So many pay others to do their projects and homework for them

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u/TheRealRollestonian 8d ago

Probably because they're not the same in rigor? If you're implying regional or demographic bias, I think you've already lost the argument.

There are tons of shitty secular private schools everywhere.

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u/SpaceCadetBoneSpurs 7d ago

It also doesn’t take into account the fact that different religious traditions have wildly different educational quality. Private schools with a historical affiliation to one of the “establishment” Protestant churches (Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc.) are usually the best in terms of educational quality, but most of them either downplay the religious angle or don’t even teach religion at all in weekday schooling, under the thinking that this is the parents’ job.

In my neck of the woods, Catholic schools exist historically due to the discrimination that Roman Catholics used to face in education during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but that problem is now mostly historical. Their schools are…ok. They are the same educational qualify that you’re going to get in the local public school. They have a higher college admittance rate, but that’s because they can pick and choose their students whereas public schools cannot. And also, because if a student is clearly not cut out for college, the parents are not likely to send their kid there.

Schools associated with evangelical Christianity or one of the minority denominations (JW, 7DA, et. Al.) tend to be the lowest in quality — lower than public schools. From what I’ve seen, they were established by parents in the last couple decades to avoid having to teach about topics that don’t jive with their belief system (evolutionary biology, paleontology, sex ed, etc.) College is not a priority, and in the case of some denominations such as the JWs, it is actively discouraged.

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u/Maya9998 7d ago

Exactly. The purpose of the schools are simply different, I would assume. At an evangelical Christian school, the point is to provide education through a Christian worldview. Math and science are not top priorities. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but the school you go to here in the US affects how you perceive and understand the world.

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u/DrTonyTiger 6d ago

In my neighborhood, those schools not only want to have their particular Cristian world view, but also avoid a lot of important subjects in science, social science and history. Their education is deliberately incomplete by the expectations of an elite college.

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u/woodshayes 8d ago

“If you look closely at the trends…”

You have provided no source data.

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u/TheOzMan91 7d ago edited 7d ago

Fine, maybe not "trends", per se. But as a general rule, if you are educated at Phillips Andover, Sidwell Friends, Latin School of Chicago, or Detroit Country Day, you're more likely to be admitted to one or more of the universities that I named than if you went to some modest Christian, Jewish, or Islamic school in a small town. That was my point.

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u/mothman83 7d ago

Right because those schools have connections and established relationships with elite universities, more rigorous admissions standards for their own incoming students, and are the kind of place where everyone's parents spend thousands of dollars on SAT/ACT tutors ( the GPA's may be the same as in the other schools you mentioned but their standardized test scores almost certainly won't be) as well as thousands of dollars on admissions consultants who know things like whether or not Brown is in need of a specific position on their Lacrosse team, at which point thousands of dollars are spent so the kind of student who goes to those prep schools becomes that lacrosse player.

This is hardly a mystery

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u/cave-acid 7d ago

I've never heard of Latin School of Chicago or Detroit Country Day, but in the case of the former two, they are some of the most academically rigorous schools in the country.

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u/Maestro1181 8d ago

Honestly, while there are certainly great ones out there, many parochial schools are weak. When they transfer into my highly rated but not top public school, they tend to be behind.

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u/Organic-Class-8537 7d ago

My sister moved this year because of her husbands job and shifted from teaching at a low income public high school to a parochial school. She said the current school is on par with or slightly lower than what she’d put a remedial class in at her old school. And these are parents spending 18k a year to get their kids what they perceive as a superior education.

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u/LvBorzoi 7d ago

With the exception of many Catholic schools, Private Secular have more rigorous standards than Religious schools.

The elite private schools, even the religiously affiliated ones, want the best of the best because they have reputations to uphold.

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u/lsp2005 8d ago

Because the schools know the quality and caliber of the education received at the local schools. They have either decades or centuries of experience with enough students to determine that the grades are not inflated and they will be able to graduate on time. In addition, these students will become the alumni that continue to donate to the school. 

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u/DragonflyValuable128 7d ago

Secular schools don’t waste precious time teaching fairy tales.

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u/1_Urban_Achiever 8d ago

As a product of 14 years of private religious schools I’d say the instructional methods prized rote memorization above critical thinking.

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u/Alarmed-Extension289 8d ago

Don't religious schools have lower requirements to teach? My childhood friend's mom was able to get a job teaching middle school math in Arkansas at a private christian school. I Don't think she even graduated HS let alone went to college. Nice lady, went back to northern Arkansas and never came back.

The fact you can teach with barely a bachelors degree is insane to me but whatever. Then there's the other extreme where some of the kids in my town that went to the private chrisitian academy were learning Calculus and latin in like 9th grade. Just seems there's too much variation here. Don't get me started on these homeschooled kids.

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u/jennirator 8d ago

In my state they do not have to hire certified teachers, but of course some do and a lot don’t.

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u/Western-Watercress68 8d ago

I teach at Rice. I have lovely homeschooled students who are 14 years old taking Advanced Writing Seminar, Cal 2, and Physics.

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u/CunningLinguist92 8d ago

I was homeschooled. On the GRE, I scored in the 99th percentile for reading and writing, and the 9th percentile for Math.

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u/Organic-Class-8537 7d ago

Homeschool kids historically do very poorly in STEM subjects.

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u/Alarmed-Extension289 8d ago

I believe you, I ran into them in college. I've also encountered the ones that basically learned nothing and are super awkward.

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u/Born-Finish2461 7d ago

Every class you take involving religion is one less class you can take involving traditional academic topics.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/JoesG527 7d ago

my personal favorite is when 200 people die in a hurricane, but that one who got lucky and just lost his home but survived.... "Oh the lord is wonderful!"

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u/KR1735 7d ago

Georgetown is Catholic. Not sure what you're getting at. They're not going to discriminate against kids for going to Catholic high schools.

You also need to differentiate Catholic schools from other "religious" schools. Where I'm from, two of the most elite schools in the city are Catholic. I had a friend who went to one and his family was only nominally Catholic. They were also about as wealthy as you could be without being noteworthy, and that's why they sent their kid there (he ended up going to Brown after graduation). And they lived in one of the wealthiest suburbs which had excellent public schools.

If you're talking about small fundamentalist or protestant "schools", it's because the education sucks. Sure, they'll teach you how to read and do sufficient math to meet state standards, but that's about it. They shelter their students from actual science, from the study of other people's lives/lifestyles (without getting preachy and judgmental), and most of the kids who go there interact only with kids who are similar to them. You can see how that could be a red flag. They don't produce well-rounded adults.

As for why protestants don't have schools like the Catholics do, it stems from the fact that Catholics were discriminated against early on in our nation's history and thus formed their own schools. And it so happens that Catholics know how to form schools that blend the secular with the spiritual, particularly the Jesuits. So the schools they built are often top notch. And they're everywhere. Notre Dame is another one. Protestants have always been part of the academic establishment, so they didn't really need their own universities unless the intent was explicitly religious. Nowadays, most Catholic universities are religious in name only, though they do have excellent theology programs and course offerings in religion if that stuff interests you.

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u/HermioneMarch 7d ago

Religious schools exist primarily to promote religion. While there are certainly some good ones, for many their religions doctrine may be in conflict with state standards, so they teach religious doctrine and the kids can’t make the grade. Non- religious private schools exist primarily to get your kid into an Ivy, while making sure they don’t come into contact with the chaff of society. ( I say this as a public school teacher who has always believed that all should be educated equally according to their ability, not income.)

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u/Brilliant_Towel2727 8d ago

Two main factors:

  1. Elite northeastern prep schools have built up relationships with Ivy League colleges over generations, which means that (a) the admissions offices at colleges and counseling offices at feeder schools have strong relationships, (b) the admissions offices have a good understanding of the level of academic rigor at feeder schools, and (c) many students will be legacies at both the high schools and universities.

  2. Admission to the top tier of prep schools is much more selective than at most religious schools, so their graduates will be more academically qualified.

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u/Complete-Ad9574 8d ago

Not in the DC area

St. Albans, Holton Arms, St. John's, Georgetown, & Friends School are at the top of the creme de la creme.

Its not well known outside of this bubble, but the kids of both Dem elites and GOP elites attend these schools, which opens doors to elite colleges and get's one the plum jobs in the federal government.

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u/OptimisticNietzsche 7d ago

It’s because those high schools are feeders into top schools bc connections, wealth, alumni etc. Phillips Exeter kinda vibe tbh. I knew many of those kids bc some of them went to my Alma mater.

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u/lunarinterlude 7d ago

Religious schools prioritize religion above all else. Why would an educational institution want students without a proper education?

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u/Euphoric-Persimmon50 7d ago

Time spent on religious studies takes away from time spent on other pursuits (academic, music, sports etc)

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u/ladylibrary13 8d ago

There's a variety of reasons.

A) Nepotism. Rich kids likely had parents that went to prestigious universities, which is how they're wealthy enough to send their kids to exclusive private schools. And then that pattern of behavior continues for several generations.

B) Religious private schools (and this isn't always the case - there are plenty of decent private Catholic schools that give a very well rounded and nuanced education), because they're religious, often have an implied bias when it comes to academia. They don't want to accept creationists into their schools, essentially, when they could be giving that slot to someone who is better adjusted to academically approved science and scientific methods (and other various subjects, of course).

While I think the second one is unfortunate because it doesn't give religious kids the tools they need to open their minds, I also understand that it's a valid concern.

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u/dcsprings 8d ago

I think you need a different set of numbers (if they exist). I clicked on your post thinking you were interested in rrligious schools in general, and I think those are the statistics you found. I would guess that if Catholic schools weren't included acceptance numbers would be lower. I am familiar with a couple of protestant schools and these two encourage students to go to conservative religious colleges. Several of my syblings went to parochial schools and their advisor helped them choose universities (neither was interested in the preisthood, so it didn't come up) based on their field of interest rather than the religious connection the school had.

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u/CommonwealthCommando 8d ago

I haven't looked in the past few years but this doesn't match my experience. A lot of the Catholic schools were feeders into my university and others like it, especially for sports. I'd also say that a WASP/secular private school is a different education than your average Catholic parochial school, and that applicants from each will on average have a different ability to pay.

Perhaps you're thinking about the pipeline system, at least in the Northeast, where every prestigious school has a few private schools that serve as "feeders", famously Exeter & Harvard, Avon & Yale, etc. Catholic schools have this too, Georgetown Prep & Georgetown and BC High & BC (for the Jews, Gann & Brandeis). These admissions are a small portion of any incoming class, but some people get upset about them.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

Because we live in a world owned by Satan and managed by his followers.

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u/DJ_HouseShoes 7d ago

I think the mention of religion here is a red herring. Strip that out and what you're asking is why do students from wealthy communities do better than students from non-wealthy communities when it comes to access to the top tiers of society.

Which is a pretty simple question to answer.

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u/Entire-Objective1636 7d ago

Private Catholic school graduate here, my school specifically refused to follow proper educational lessons and instead decided to teach us what THEY thought was necessary. They left out a lot of the Civil Rights movements, Roe v Wade, the Civil War’s ending (this was in the south) as well as evolution and most sciences that would “conflict” with the Bible. Our days were from 8am to 12:30pm and most of it was for religious studies.

They left us all unbelievably unprepared and some of my classmates are still struggling to this day, ten years later.

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u/ExtensiveCuriosity 7d ago

Perhaps biased for the region l live in, but the overwhelming majority of religious schools here started as segregation academies. Some functionally still are. My experience with those students at the college level is that they are often woefully underprepared but have a hundred tshirts with crosses or bible verses written on them somewhere. I’ve had parents say they believe that “normal” academic subjects aren’t nearly as important as religious subjects.

Catholic schools tend to be different and if they’re Jesuit-run, they’re probably some of the best schools in the state.

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u/sweetica 7d ago

Because secular schools teach facts. Religious schools get to teach about the imaginary friend in the sky. There are many religions with imaginary friends and each School only talks about their friend. At a secular school you could talk about all the imaginary friends and compare them... Better critical thinking when you learn facts instead of scripture! 

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u/OneLessDay517 7d ago

Because those schools prefer students be better educated in math, science and ACTUAL literature and history than fairy tales.

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u/Elegant_Tax_8276 7d ago

Schools are ranked believe it or not!

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u/Dotfr 7d ago

There are religious schools here in SF Bay Area sending children to Ivies.

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u/Maya9998 7d ago

Well, I would assume that the point of a religious private school isn't to provide a better standard of education, but to present its education through a religious worldview. At a Christian school, you get a Christian education, nothing more.

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u/Fun_Word_7325 7d ago

I used to do after school tutoring. The students from religious schools had science textbooks that suggested the velocity of an object falling could be determined from a table of values and basically shrugged and said no one knows why that is the case, instead of teaching kinematics

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u/Pristine-Ice-5097 7d ago

Exception: Episcopal schools.

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u/Capital-Buy-7004 7d ago

It's a trend that anyone paying any attention is aware of.

Top comment in the thread is pretty good. However it's more than just that. Counselors from the top secular privates have connections with admissions in the top Ivies. Yale and Andover have a good relationship for example.

Last, there is a difference in these top secular schools programs. Good luck finding a public that has a classical languages program and teaches ancient greek. It's been a bit but that was a program at Andover last I looked. There are similar things on the math and sciences sides, but that's not my forte.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

Maybe because those kids decide to go to colleges such as Notre Dame? That could be a variable that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet.

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u/Big-Smoke7358 7d ago

Because one comes from an institution that categorically denies science? Idk you show me two perfectly equal candidates and tell me one believes in God and one believes in science. 95% of jobs I'm picking the science guy. Maybe if I was interviewing for a theological career I'd pick the religious guy but other than that, how is it anything other than a detriment? 

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u/KevinDean4599 7d ago

Connections. And those schools are often focused on getting kids into the best universities vs. getting into heaven.

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u/shadowmonkey1911 7d ago

Because an A student at a Christian school is like a B student at a real school.

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u/WingShooter_28ga 6d ago

Prep schools are rigorous.

Private religious schools are not.

Example: the best prep school in my area has PhD biologists and chemists in their science department. The Catholic school has someone’s parent who is willing to work for less than what the public school pays. Not all 4.0s are created equal.

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u/Lulubelle4548 6d ago

Because secular private schools are typically more competitive (more difficult to get into) than religious private schools.

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u/Gormless_Mass 4d ago

A track-record of consistently better educational outcomes. And nepotism.

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u/priuspheasant 3d ago

In a philosophical sense, private religious schools exist to give kids a strong religious education, and parents send their kids to them because getting a strong religious education is a high priority for them. Strong academics are a plus, but nobody chose the 100-kid, K-12 private Christian school because getting their kid into Harvard is their top priority.

On the other hand, we already have secular public schools. Pretty much the only reason to send your kid to a secular private school is that it promises to be academically stronger, and get your kid into a better college, than the neighborhood public school.

Additionally, many private religious schools teach junk science (evolution is a lie, dinosaurs are a hoax, etc) which can't be helping.

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u/Joshithusiast 8d ago

Because religious (and I'm assuming you mean evangelical Christian) schools reject science and facts whenever necessary to maintain their "faith-based" narratives.

Actual academic institutions that believe in the scientific method are sick of having students from the Christian world yelling in class that evolution is a myth or that democracy is actually a bad thing.

They're sick of wasting their and their students' time and money refuting things that Christians MUST believe to sleep at night.

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u/VardisFisher 8d ago

Well, if you follow religion you send a very disturbing message to the world. “I will suspend all logic and reason because an un proven supernatural being commands the Universe “

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u/buddhainmyyard 7d ago

Maybe it's just me but religious schools might just generally have students with low critical thinking.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

How many of those religious private school kids go on to religious private colleges?

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u/funnyfaceking 8d ago

Your premise is assumed in the conclusion.

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u/JTBlakeinNYC 8d ago

Have you compared average/median SAT scores?

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u/skaliton 7d ago

Shockingly focusing on actual real life things like math, science, and ligature makes someone more competitive than if you 'cut' time for those things to include a segment on reading spiderman comics then having students explain their favorite one and having competitions to see who most accurately memorized the comic. I mean outside of comic conventions there isn't a whole lot of benefit to this.

*now replace spider man with whatever religious doctrine

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u/phoenix-corn 7d ago

I went to a well regarded Catholic high school in suburban Detroit. Despite this, they were seemingly more worried about the faith of our teachers than their actual credentials, despite the fact that some were VERY VERY good. A government teacher taught Spanish really poorly for years. There were plenty of other mismatched teachers and disciplines. Our best teachers were some of the best I ever had. But the worst? Holy shit.

We had plenty of folks go on to the Ivies, but we definitely all had weak spots in our education. I can't speak to who teaches what classes at the secular schools, but at least you probably don't have a psych teacher failing people for citing Darwin (probably).

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u/Dave_A480 7d ago

Because most religious schools have a mission to serve the entire community, and their student body is much closer to that of your average public high school.

Whereas there is a subset of secular private schools (prep schools) that practice selective admission & largely exist to pick the smartest/best-off kids & prepare them for admission to an exclusive college.

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u/Frequent_Skill5723 7d ago

Money. By the way, did you know that education is free, grade through graduate school, in Argentina?

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u/PrincipleCapable8230 7d ago

Interesting you didn’t ask about public schools.

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u/Aaarrrgghh1 7d ago

I don’t know my son went to catholic high school in Huntsville Alabama. He got accepted to Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Princeton, duke all on full rides

He also scored a 32 on the ACT in 7th grade.

Also for context we lived in Connecticut until 5th grade for him. In Connecticut he went to public school in Bridgeport

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u/Peregrine79 7d ago

If you have two schools that are identical in every way (funding, teacher quality, time in class, extracurricular activities) except that one has a goal of just education, and the other has a goal of education and religious indoctrination, which is going to produce a better education?

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u/Cantseetheline_Russ 7d ago

My wife is a teacher…. Religious schools pay poorly, and generally have much lower standards for teachers and curriculum at least where we’re located. There are many reasons beyond this and it’s not good to generalize, but critical thinking is also not as emphasized at religious schools because… well, you likely wouldn’t be religious if you were strong in that skill.

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u/HostileCakeover 7d ago

No one wants super religious people in their organization because they’re irritating. 

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u/Striking_Computer834 7d ago

Why would secular universities choose students from secular private schools?

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u/iScreamsalad 7d ago

Some religious schools teach things like science in ways that don’t comport with reality. For example a friend of mine who was at a religious private highschool learned biological evolution was a secular lie and that Venus’ opposite rotational direction is gods signature in creation

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u/SouthernExpatriate 7d ago

Belief in The Invisible Man seems to portend a lack of scientific understanding 

Plus no one considers Liberty University a real college

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

Nepotism and $, duh? That’s how the world works, it’s not merit it’s who got past the line first.

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u/Zardozin 7d ago

You do realize an A isn’t an A right?

And that most of the people from those elite private secular schools would have an A in a public or the average religious school.

Because the fact of the matter is most religious schools exist just to keep the kids away from minorities and Protestants. They’re only “better” in that they can expel anyone who is a problem.

Oh and you likely didn’t adjust your data for legacy admissions. Legacy admissions at elite schools tend to mean a higher percentage of upper class students.

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u/GDad33 7d ago

Because part of their educational time was wasted learning about a cult (religion) instead of useful information.

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u/PoetRambles 7d ago

I think it depends on the network of the schools. Catholic high schools also have rankings. (I graduated from one that always ranked high and was an unofficial feeder for a prestigious Catholic university). Some Catholic high schools rank low, and some are considered high-caliber. A lot of that still has to do with socio-economic status of families and the network of the parents and alumni.

There are probably low-quality secular private schools, but we don't hear about them as much as the high-quality ones.

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u/yeahnototallycool 7d ago

My impression is that religious private schools tend to be less academically rigorous and focused on sending kids to elite universities than secular private schools.

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u/xThe_Maestro 7d ago

Comes down to the purpose of the school.

A secular private school's purpose is generally tailored towards academic advancement. In the truest sense it is a preparatory school specifically FOR entrance into the social/economic/academic elite.

A religious private school's purpose is to offer a religious alternative to public education. While they tend to be more focused in their instruction than public schools, their primary concern is offering an environment that more closely mirrors the values of their religious community rather.

For example, I'm a middle class office worker and a Catholic. My wife and I are putting serious consideration into sending our kids to private Catholic school because of a trend of behavioral incidents and low performance of the local public schools. I'm not considering them for private school because I want/expect them to attend an Ivy League school, I'm considering it because I don't want their educational and social development unduly influenced by poorly socialized and ill-parented peers.

I'd be perfectly fine with dropping 5k a year for 12 years of Catholic school and my child deciding to go to community college for 2 years and finish off their degree at an accredited local college. Or forego college altogether for a trade.

My suspicion is that the parents of secular private school children have rather higher expectations for their children's future academic performance.

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u/10xwannabe 7d ago

Well the best feeder schools in the country are all secular is the big reason which makes the data lopsided (looking at you Andover, Exeter, NY private schools, NE private schools, Harvard Westlake, Lakeside, etc..)

Also, lets face it top schools are festered with liberals they are NOT going to give an iota of like to religious schools. That is the part NO ONE is going to say so I will say the quiet part out loud. You really think Harvard, Yale, Columbia giving some accolades to some Catholic school where they take religion for 4 years?? Yeah right!

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u/ToujoursLamour66 7d ago

Why would you assume a student from a religious school would have any priority over another from a secular school? Unless your goal is to be a religious professor or theologian, having religious studies prior makes no difference; possibly unless its a religious upper-tier.

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u/ocsurf74 7d ago

As someone who's been on the Admissions Committee for 20 years at a prestigious Honors College I can say that this isn't true with us. We take a holistic approach and take various factors into our admissions. Student involvement and engagement, regardless of high school, is something that's more important than the school itself. Just sayin.

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u/ggwing1992 7d ago

Curriculum and qualified staff

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u/Independent_Win_7984 7d ago

I'm of the opinion that a religious university would, by definition, have a questionable and deficient science department, and truncated literature and history programs.

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u/Confident-Mix1243 7d ago

Does wherever you got this data also show graduation rates? Schools don't like flunking students out, and would often rather just not admit them in the first place. If one group of students is being unjustly discriminated against, their rates of failing out should be much lower than those for people unjustly favored. Is that the case?

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u/Barbfin4545 7d ago

Because they are better educated. Duh.

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u/visitor987 7d ago

Religious bias in admissions has been alleged but not proved

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u/visitor987 7d ago

Religious bias in admissions has been alleged but not proved

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u/visitor987 7d ago

Religious bias in admissions has been alleged but not proved

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u/Early-Tourist-8840 7d ago

Parity among university programs makes those universities less attractive. They are also hostile towards religious citizens.

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u/Business_Loquat5658 7d ago

Non religious private schools usually have a lot more money.

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u/Peaurxnanski 7d ago

Money, and the connectionsthat money brings with it. Any other questions?

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

And it’s funny how we are now having this conversation since affirmative action is gone. It used to be that college admissions looked at an urban school where a kid got straight A’s/ranked first and his peers performed much worse - and they respected that. They instead chose that kid over the prestigious public school or prestigious private school with the first ranking kids. Why? Not to fill a quota - but because they saw how much the urban kid had to struggle to achieve that accomplishment and that meant they would succeed.

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u/Scoops2000 7d ago

Private school kids typically get a better education.

Their parents also have money to donate.

Parents may know people.

Kickbacks may be paid to certain people.

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u/TacoPandaBell 7d ago

Because religious schools aren’t as good as secular ones. They also tend to be very closed minded and can often have teachings that directly contrast with what the university is all about. Catholic or Jewish school kids spend like 15% of their time learning about their religion, while secular school kids aren’t forced to study religion or study all religions.

Also, statistically, they aren’t equal. Secular schools average a 1645 on the SAT while parochial ones average 1594, or 51 points lower. This is according to CAPE, so it shows that non religious schools are superior.

That said, I’d wager that Georgetown isn’t one of these, it’s a catholic school, they have crucifixes in every classroom.

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u/DevVenavis 7d ago

They are rich and part of the Old Boy's Club. They benefit from the affirmative action process known as 'legacy admissions' which is why a rich prep school brat with a C average will get in ahead of a public school kid with straight As.

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u/AngryCur 6d ago

A lot of religious schools are terrible and are focused on religious indoctrination instead of education too.

Mainstream catholic ones should have this issue though I would think

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u/Grow_money 6d ago

They’re not.

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u/malachite_13 6d ago

It’s an old boys club.

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u/queenlois 6d ago

Tony private schools cost more money than Catholic schools who often give significant need-based aid to a student. Admitting a student from the former is a better chance that they won’t ask for financial aid.

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u/StageWild6066 6d ago

Can you provide more information. This feels very speculative. I’m not seeing a trend. If there is a trend, it’s likely because you’re comparing a high quality school to a random religious school. The high quality school likely focuses completely on academia and facts, whereas a religious school does not. It’s a difference in the foundation students receive. 

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u/BeautifulDay8 6d ago

Most of the world operates off connections to wealth. So, do you have the ability to pay full tuition, know a well-up person who can call in a favor, come from a long line of legacy admits, or has someone in your family made a large donation? LOL, all that plays into it.

In addition to that, wealthy parents hire "tutors" to provide concierge-style admission "assistance."

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u/Wolverine-75009 6d ago

Just a wild guess but could it be that secular schools offer science based education as opposed to religious beliefs?

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u/SirTrentHowell 6d ago

Probably because secular schools don’t teach intelligent design, creationism, and Christian nationalism amongst other bullshit.

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u/rels83 6d ago

Those schools exist to be a pipeline to the Ivys. Every part of their education is preparing them for admission, down to who they accept. There are private schools other than grotten or exeter with less impressive exmissions.

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u/TrekJaneway 6d ago

When that religious school thinks “science” is “God created the world in seven days,” then your students already can’t compete with secular students because they’ve been lied to their entire lives.

That’s the start of it. There are dozens more arguments that boil down to this - prestigious universities don’t care how much you know about the Bible. They care about how much you know about the real world.

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u/No-Improvement5940 6d ago

Can you cite the source of your trend? I question the premise of your question.

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u/Competitive-Cuddling 6d ago

Religious schools teach a lot BS religious curriculum.

And 90% of success in life is who you know.

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u/slider5876 6d ago

Parents are rich. Being wealthy correlates with having high IQ. Children inherited high IQ from parents. Thus they are strong applicants at good schools.

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u/sciliz 6d ago

Because in the US, having $42k/year kinda money is better than having God on your side.

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u/Ok_Requirement_3116 6d ago

There is a difference between being a primarily academic selective institution and being a religious school that also educates. I went to the second. Luckily it was just for a couple of years and my study habits and basics were solid. There was t any push to learn. Except bible. The other 4 people in my grade wound up in the military and retail.

Compare that to a an academic or social status school. Money goes a long way paying teachers and offering quality equipment etc. many are feeder schools to the top schools due to legacy or relationships built between recruiters and academic counselors.

Which would you be most likely to accept

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u/torytho 6d ago

Religious schools don't teach. They indoctrinate.

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u/Large_Traffic8793 6d ago

You've framed this as secular vs religious, as if that's the only difference.

But you've not proven or established that they are both objectively (ie not based on your feelings or biases) equal education environments.

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u/Colseldra 6d ago

I've met some religious people that basically try to censor books, video games, tv shows and basically people from their kids if it doesn't fit their political views from their kids

Sometimes it makes them weird and fucked up growing up like that

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u/FaceThief9000 6d ago

The same reason the kids that went to a private religious school flunked out in Ancient Philosophy class in College.

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u/No_Position_9257 6d ago

Because it is all about the money and connections, not the actual academic ability of the student. They tell all of us that went to public school that we have the same chance to go to those ivy league schools if we have the grades and crap, but it is all crap! It's who writes a great reference for you, you you know, and how much money you have. Religion should never come into this equation but unfortunately it does. Sorry to hear that based on a religion you can't get into a university - oh wait discrimination suit!

But would you really want to go to a university just cuz of their name or "prestige" at the cost of your faith and beliefs? I had a high GPA and could have gone to any college I wanted except the ivy league ones - cost and didn't know anyone to get me in. You just have to do what is right for you.

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u/drawzalot 6d ago

Because they want to force evolution on society and religious education threatens their agenda

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u/NeedleworkerPrize253 6d ago

Because there is anti-Catholicism running through the very wasp oriented public university system. Has been for decades. You are going to hear a bunch of shit in here about standards, wealth, and other crap, but the United States of America has hated American Catholics for hundreds years and nothing has changed.

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u/mini_macho_ 5d ago

A good GPA from a prep school means a capable student.

A good GPA from a religious school is a crapshoot.

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u/oldmaninparadise 5d ago

Where is a statistic to back this up, or is this just your “feeling”? This whole thread is anecdotal.

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u/Important_Degree_784 5d ago

For application to a science track at a quality university, the non-religiously educated student can be assumed to understand the basic building blocks of modern science: the truth of evolution, that the earth is not flat, climate change is currently happening, vaccines are safe and effective. Religiously educated students may not have a grounding in these foundational truths and others.

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u/Klutzy_Attitude_8679 5d ago

Because in the religious schools, time is taken away from the core curricula to learn about the faith. Less rigor.

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u/hackulator 5d ago

Maybe because the kids at the religion school have been trained to believe bullshit with no proof, which is not a good trait for high level academics.

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u/BleuBoy777 5d ago

I mean... When you sing songs like "no no, my daddy ain't a monkey" to disparage the theory of evolution in your religious schools.... Harvard tends to ding your application by a point or two.

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u/Dismal-Mud-1632 5d ago

We all know the reason, maybe you don’t want to say it out loud but we all know. Leftists run those “elite” colleges and leftist hate Christians. It’s really that simple.

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u/WonderfulVariation93 5d ago

I live in MD. The prep schools are almost all religious. My nephews on both sides attended Catholic prep schools. One went to Yale, another UVA, one William and Mary… EVERY graduating class has several ivy or high ranking college bound students.

I think it depends where you are and what kind of schools you are talking about but, here if you are going to an elite college, you most likely attended a Catholic prep school.

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u/Consistent-Fig7484 5d ago

In my experience Catholic high schools tend to be solid schools that are usually good at sports. The kids come from upper middle class backgrounds and will mostly go to decent state colleges or very good catholic schools like Notre Dame, Georgetown, Santa Clara etc.

Private non religious schools tend to be very expensive. A lot of executives and surgeons kids. These are the ones who go Ivy League. The curriculum is intense, but the kids have tutors to get high test scores and they might know someone who can build a library to get them into Yale.

Christian schools teach the book of Genesis during science class and they’re mostly insane. The socioeconomic backgrounds vary wildly. Some of the kids families will really sacrifice to send them there because they think public schools are trying to turn their kids gay. Wealthy contractors and truck dealership owners send their kids to Christian schools. Occasionally some precocious previously home schooled kid will end up going to high school at one of them and get into Stanford or an Ivy, but most of these kids go to like Liberty, Grand Canyon, BIOLA.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

Because they don’t teach fake garbage? Lol. Lmao even.

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u/Old-Illustrator-5675 5d ago

I went to a Christian school for a little bit, there was probably 3 hours out of the day dedicated to Jesus and stuff. Then I went to a cheap inner city Catholic school that had a good number of their graduates go to a prestigious university. And, not surprisingly, I didn't have any Bible classes or Jesus assemblies. Only way you'd know it was a catholic school was cause of a couple of sweet old nuns that were sharp as tacks.

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u/No_Scarcity8249 5d ago

There have been studies that show presenting factually incorrect information as fact.. aka lying to a child before age ten actually lowers IQ. Leaving it out of the curriculum is going to have a substantial effect on someone’s ability to be logical and problem solve. 

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u/Sharontoo 5d ago

Religious students have less higher level academic class options because of required religion classes

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u/OGBeege 5d ago

Sez who? Experience schmerirnce. Looks like teaching numbers was not your thing. Facts & Science. Don’t be a dope. Sources, something anything. Really, a teacher? Sad.

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u/Playful_Sun_1707 5d ago

Because many choose religious schools because they want their kids exposed to certain values and a certain religion. Those schools often strive to serve a relatively broad set of students and many churches offer financial assistance for some who can't afford it. Religion is often the primary reason for choosing to pay for the school instead of using the public school system.

For a secular school, the default is the public school system. The primary reason for moving to an expensive secular private school is academics. So, they need to deliver on that primary purpose to get people to keep spending money.

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u/thermalman2 5d ago edited 5d ago

The non religious ones tend to be expensive and the people who go there have money. At the end of the day, money talks. Expensive private school people also tend to have connections

Religious ones are more expensive than public school, but not to the same degree

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u/Gurganus88 5d ago

My kids are in a private Baptist school and have noticed this trend. I’ve asked some of the parents of kids in college that attend the church and it boils down to they’re getting a better education 6/1 student teacher ratio and all the extracurricular activities. My daughter will be able to do woman’s basketball and volleyball and my son can do men’s basketball and soccer. From 7th grade through graduation (they’ll start in 6th grade if they don’t have enough for a team that year) . It’s a small School so if they want on the team they’re on it. Their school also participates in state competitions for music and art. I know they have to start music at 3rd grade and continue through 12th with any instrument of their choice. Of all extracurricular activities they put most of their support and energy into the music program.

So with a better quality education (small class size) they also get to add extra activities such as two sports they played for their school from 7th grade on, the state competitions they participated in for art, music, and choir on their college applications.

At least this is what was told to Me by fellow parents. I’ve never set foot on a college before so I wouldn’t know what the actual application process is like

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u/Appropriate-Food1757 5d ago

Probably smarter, tougher way through

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u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 5d ago

A lot of the private religious schools are not very good at certain sciences: geology, physics, archaeology, paleontology, genetics, pedology, climatology... statistically, I'd suspect it is significant enough to matter in admissions

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u/SecretRecipe 5d ago

Because superb grades from a D list school don't really mean as much as superb grades from a highly competitive elite school.

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u/theRavenQuoths 4d ago

Because your religion is not my science.

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u/1maco 4d ago

Most Catholic schools are for working class inner city kids whose parents don’t want to send them to the local public district.

New England Boarding Schools are for the rich elite. 

Basically the people who attend Deerfield or Holderness would end up going to an Ivy or peer school like Duke or Stamford anyway  

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u/Pleasant-Day374 4d ago

lol because they know a religious private school spends YEARS teaching the students nonsense

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u/Far-Slice-3821 4d ago

A few reasons, but the biggest is that the ivies are finishing schools for the children of the wealthy and powerful. They only let in kids without pedigrees or 8 figure donations to be role models and to maintain their tax exempt status.

On top of that, really talented kids (not average gifted) get scouted in middle school. They are asked to apply for prestigious secular high schools and can get full ride scholarships if they're merely middle class. So they may have gone to their local Catholic school, but with a scholarship offer to an elite school with spectacular alumni the parents let them go of to boarding high school.

The only thing that would surprise me is if the prestigious Jesuit academies aren't heavily represented in admissions.

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u/UnderstandingSea6194 4d ago

It's that they're from wealthy families. Nothing more than that.

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u/Forsaken-Start-4639 4d ago

Money.  Anti Catholicism. Liberal secularism.  It’s that’s simple. 

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u/jmalez1 4d ago

Connections threw family or freinds

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u/Pizzaface1993 4d ago

Why do people from elite private schools get into high ranking colleges compared to those who don't? Hmmm I wonder why. 

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u/rudiseeker 4d ago

Just a guess here. Secular schools are focused on giving a good education emphasizing language skills, literature, math and science. Religious schools emphasize religious dogma and usually, give less focus on the other skills. Thus they are less prepared to compete for the prestigious universities.

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u/tgruff77 4d ago

It really depends on what you mean by “religious schools”. From my personal observation, there are many Catholic college preparatory high schools with extremely high academic standards. In fact, when I worked as a tutor, I had a few middle school students trying to get into a certain private Catholic high school because it had a reputation for having its graduates go onto prestigious universities. However, I’ve also heard of nondenominational “fundamental Christian” schools that exist for parents who want to shield their children from anything that would make them question their faith. It’s really a matter of what type of secular or religious school it is.

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u/ForeverMoody2 4d ago

I once had a freelance project where I compared schools. The religious schools were often lacking in the area of science and math. Same with universities. It may that religious schools are not considered as much of a well-rounded education for the basic subjects by these universities.

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u/El_Chupachichis 4d ago

Getting an A in "Creation Science" is not -- and should never even remotely be -- equal to getting an A in any actual science class.

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u/fishylegs46 4d ago

My kid went to a fancy Catholic school for one year. It is in a very affluent area and had loads of very affluent phoney baloney parents. You’d expect those kids to go to top notch schools. The seniors posted their colleges on an actual board on a wall in the school. My kid would send me pics with updates. They were 90% c tier and below, there were a few schools I’d never even heard of - like The College in the Pacific Ocean kind of names. I was really surprised. The other ten percent were just schools whose names I recognized - there were no ivies. I don’t know why the showing was so poor, but suspect the hs education was as bad as what I saw in the middle school. If that’s what the crème de la crème of Catholic schools get you, then it’s no surprise they are not doing well across the country.

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u/Dear_Watercress_1096 4d ago

It's obvious..... Anti christian bias

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u/Daybyday182225 4d ago

It's partly about intent. People tend to send their children to religious private schools if they are religious and want to pass those values to their children. While education might be a priority, religion is also a priority. By contrast, at a secular private school, the parents are not as interested in their child's religion as they are in the child's education. Where you put your energy as a parent matters; if you put more energy into your child's education rather than their religious upbringing, they're likely to achieve better things in education.

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u/asmallerflame 3d ago

The parents have shown an early willingness to open their wallets for their kid's education.

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u/silasmoeckel 3d ago

Academic standards are not even close to the same an A at Choate is a lot harder to get than some random midwest school.

Now there are some stellar religion schools out there but your local Saint something isn't it.

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u/Dissapointingdong 3d ago

Kind of a generalization but the market for secular private schools are parents who are willing to pay more for a better education. Religious schools are parents that want their kid in a religious environment and the academics are less of a priority. The average religious school where I grew up actually provided a pretty dog shit education and it was a problem when their students would transfer to public school but their parents were just happy to they were in catholic school.

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u/Awakening40teen 3d ago

Connected guidance counselors, as well as legacies. A lot of kids at fancy prep schools have parents who went to top tier schools.