College is on the minds of most Westminster students and is taken into consideration in their course choices, but an issue can be raised as to whether Westminster students choose to attend highly selective schools at the same rate as their counterparts at comparable high schools.
After high school, students spread out across the country to attend college. With Princeton, Harvard, and Yale as the top three schools in the country according to U.S. News and World Report, they are by far among the most selective. Westminster has had graduates in the past four years attend Harvard out of these top three universities. Westminster has a rigorous course selection from which students can choose. Whether or notstudents choose rigorous courses is entirely up to them, but it a well known fact that the more rigorous a student’s classes are, the better chance they have of getting into higher ranked colleges.
“Westminster students are smarter than just picking a college based on prestige because prestige is different for different schools. For Westminster, Wheaton is like the Harvard of Christian colleges. They look to see if they will fit into the community,” said Kate Kindbom, guidance counselor.
Students at Westminster are motivated by different factors and this may, in part, affect how they choose what colleges to which they apply and their course selection for high school and college. Westminster usually has around 15% of the graduating class eligible for the scholar’s diploma. 15 AP courses and six honors classes are offered at Westminster. While there may be a multitude of reasons students do not take honors or AP courses in high school, the students that do choose to take these classes sometimes apply to less rigorous colleges. The point is whether students choose to go to these highly selective colleges, not if they apply to them.
“I look for an environment that allows for both social relationships and allows you to study at the same time,” said Matthew Autry, senior, who is attending Truman.
High schools comparable to Westminster’s demographic pool produce different results. MICDS’s average ACT scores were 2 points higher than Westminster’s scores (28 to 26). In the last four years, Westminster had students attend six different colleges in the top 20 colleges ranked by U.S. News and World Report. MICDS, in the past five years, and Clayton High School, in the past year, both had students attend eighteen of the top twenty colleges. This may be in part due to the fact that MICDS has more kids than Westminster and was established 116 years prior. Clayton High School’s mean ACT score is a 26. Clayton is a much larger school than Westminster.
“Students are good about picking a good selection of colleges based on their abilities,” said Kindbom.
Although MICDS and Clayton have more graduates, the trend seems to be that graduates from both schools agree to attend more selective colleges. This does not mean that Westminster students are not accepted into highly selective schools, it just appears that MICDS and Clayton attend those colleges. The reasons for these numbers are unknown, but perhaps Westminster students consider going to Christian colleges over other colleges, even if they are higher ranked. At Westminster, 24% of college-bound students chose Christian colleges.
“I did not apply to any Christian colleges. I wanted an experience a little different than Westminster since I have gone to Christian schools since kindergarten. I wanted college to be a time where I could put my faith into action and let my light shine, so to speak,” said Cori Becker, Westminster graduate who now attends Wake Forest University.