By Elyse C. Goncalves, Matan H. Josephy, and Grayson M. Martin

When William E. Buehler ’28 was applying to elite private high schools in eighth grade, one of the considerations was enrolling in a school that would give him the best chances at attending a top Ivy League college.

Buehler was offered admission to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., a prestigious preparatory school that sends roughly 11 students to Harvard each year from a graduating class of less than 350.

“I did not go to Andover purely because I wanted to go to Andover,” Buheler said. “I went to Andover partially because I wanted to go to Harvard.”

Andover, like a series of other highly selective and affluent schools, has been considered a “feeder school” to Harvard — one that sends an exceptionally high number of students to the College every year.

In the year since the Supreme Court ruled Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices unconstitutional, the University has emphasized its commitment to diversity and touted its efforts to recruit students from small towns and rural areas.

But even amid a rapidly changing admissions landscape for higher education, one thing remains consistent for Harvard: it loves to pull from schools like Andover.

A Crimson analysis of the last 15 matriculated freshman classes found that a disproportionate number of students come from just a handful of high schools — private schools, local public schools, and specialized schools alike.

The Crimson used data from the Freshman Register — an annually-published reference book containing the names, images, addresses, and high schools of origin for students who enroll at Harvard College — to determine which institutions send the most students to Harvard.

All the data was self-reported by students, and it is almost certainly an undercount of the disproportionate presence that a handful of high schools have within the College’s matriculated class. An average of 10 percent of every matriculated class does not submit information to the Register.

The Crimson compiled information available from the Freshman Register because the Office of Institutional Research and Analytics and the Harvard College Admissions Office denied a request to share their official data on which high schools Harvard students graduated from.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James Chisholm wrote in a statement that “Harvard College admits students not high schools.”

“Harvard Admissions evaluates each individual student based upon their potential to enrich the undergraduate community and impact the world following their time at Harvard,” Chisholm added. “No high school receives preferential treatment, and, in fact, the enrolled class of 2028 was drawn from approximately 1,200 high schools.”

Feeder Schools by the Numbers

Since 2009, 21 high schools have sent at least 2,216 students to Harvard College.

A majority of these schools are private, all of them are located within the United States, and all but two — Harvard-Westlake School, a private high school in Los Angeles, Calif. and Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, a public magnet school in Alexandria, Va. — are in the Northeast.

The most represented school by far is Boston Latin School: the flagship exam school of Boston Public Schools, which was established in 1635, one year before Harvard. While it is a public school, students are admitted to Boston Latin on the basis of their grade point average and standardized test scores. (Boston has two other exam schools, but neither have sent many students to Harvard over the last 15 years.)

Meanwhile, Boston Latin has sent an average of at least 18 students per year to Harvard.

This trend extends beyond the top 21.

Massachusetts and New York are each home to 32 high schools that have sent students to Harvard in at least 10 of the last 15 years — the most in the country. Close behind is California, with 30 such schools.

These three states combined contain more than half of the schools that routinely see their students accepted to the College.

These schools are also wealthier. Twelve of the 21 schools that contribute the most students to Harvard College are private, with tuition hovering well into the tens of thousands.

Of the nine public schools, four are selective magnet schools, drawing students by an exam or centralized admissions process. Four — Scarsdale High School in Scarsdale, New York; Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass.; Brookline High School in Brookline, Mass.; and Belmont High School in Belmont, Mass. — are based in uniquely affluent, highly-educated suburbs. The remaining school is Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the only public high school in Cambridge, located minutes from Harvard Yard.

Access to Resources

The notion that certain high schools may be disproportionately represented within the College’s matriculated classes is far from new.

Ties between Harvard and Phillips Exeter and Andover, the twin Northeast preparatory schools renowned for their shared past with the Ivy League, proved so close that the College’s sports teams played against both high schools well into the 20th century.

Today, feeder schools continue to dominate discourse around college admissions. Despite Harvard’s efforts to diversify its admitted classes, the schools from which its students come remain affluent — a fact that may prove unsurprising when posed in the context of an admissions process that, in many ways, tilts toward the rich.

“​Your average feeder school is going to be a highly affluent school, which means the students have access to resources, which means they have access to better opportunities to stand out in the college admissions process,” said Dan Lee, the founder of private college counseling firm Solomon Admissions Counseling.

Access to resources is a major part of what sets these schools apart. For one, private schools — which often have smaller class sizes, coupled with larger college counseling teams — are able to offer more personalized support for students applying to college. Public schools may find themselves struggling to compete.

“Here in Boston, the typical ratio for students to guidance counselors is 410 to 1,” said Meredith G. Traquina, the interim executive director of Minds Matter Boston — a nonprofit aimed at providing college counseling and mentorship services to low-income youth.

“There aren’t enough adults in the building to really give them differentiated college counseling,” Traquina added.

While Boston set a goal in 2022 to have one guidance counselor for every 150 students, that ratio is far from the counseling a preparatory school can provide. Andover, for example, reported a college counseling team of 13 people and a senior class size of 338 during the 2023-2024 academic year, according to the school’s website — a ratio of 26 students to 1 counselor.

But the disparity not only lies in a school’s resources, but also Harvard’s familiarity with it.

Anthony Abraham Jack, an associate professor of higher education leadership at Boston University, said that Harvard’s long-term relationship with elite high schools essentially gives students a “home court advantage.”

“For some students, they had to travel 30 minutes to an hour away from their home for their Harvard alumni interview,” Jack said. “If you go to Andover, Exeter, or Deerfield, Harvard comes to you.”

“That is literally the difference in power of these institutions,” he added.

The differences between feeder schools and the hundreds of other schools from which students arrive at Harvard are immense, and often difficult to pinpoint — an issue only further blurred by the opacity of college admissions processes.

To some, the fact that certain schools serve to preselect students — often overtly, through an admissions process or entrance exam — helps clarify the disparity.

Private schools and public magnet schools — which have their own admissions processes — select a group of students in which a set of administrators have already seen merit. Affluent public schools attract legions of students that are wealthier and better-resourced than their peers across the country.

Lee said that it makes sense that these self-selecting schools will have “the best students from across the nation.”

“Obviously, a lot of them are going to get into Harvard,” he said. “It’s correlation, not causation.”

According to Buehler, the Andover student, the resources at a selective high school go a long way, both towards the experience of its students and their long-term academic success.

“The opportunities you get there are unlike anything you’ll get elsewhere. The kids that go there, they’re unlike anything else we’ll get elsewhere,” Buehler said.

—Alma T. Barak, Ben Ali H. Brown, Angela S. Chen, Darcy G Lin, and Elise A. Spenner contributed reporting.

—Dennis S. Eum, Grayson M. Martin, and Neil H. Shah contributed interactives and visualizations.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at [email protected].. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves or on Threads @elyse.goncalves.

—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached at [email protected].. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.

—Director of Data Journalism Grayson M. Martin can be reached at [email protected].