Guest Column:

The La Cañada High School class of 2009 was a special class that produced the most National Merit scholars in school history while winning two CIF championships. These graduates are now enrolled at many of the most prominent colleges and universities in the nation.

Of the 355 LCHS June 2009 graduates, 100% are currently enrolled at colleges throughout the country (plus several abroad) with more than 80% attending four-year colleges. Many students opting for two-year colleges, including some with 4.0 GPAs, turned down offers of admission from distinguished four-year colleges.

Top UC and USC

feeder school

La Cañada continued its long-standing tradition as a top UC-feeder school. One hundred forty-four LCHS graduates (41% of the class) were accepted by at least one University of California campus, with 67 students (19% of the class) choosing to enroll.

Sixty-one admission letters were offered to La Cañada 2009 graduates by the UC flagship campuses — Berkeley and UCLA. Twenty-six offers of admission were accepted (over 7% of the class) by 2009 graduates who are now enrolled at Berkeley or Westwood. Three LCHS graduates selected Berkeley over Ivy League colleges last year.

Separately, USC admitted 40 La Cañada seniors (11% of the class) from 90 applications. With 16 Spartans (4.5% of the class) enrolling at USC, La Cañada was the seventh most represented public high school among USC’s fall 2009 entering freshman class.

Spartans’ favorite colleges

The three most applied-to colleges last year were UC Santa Barbara (37% of the class), UC San Diego (35%), and UCLA (30%).

However, more LCHS Spartans (16) ultimately enrolled at USC than any other four-year college, followed closely by Berkeley (15), and BYU (Provo) with 12.

Despite the large contingent of 2009 Spartans enrolled at USC, UCLA won the battle of “cross-admits.” Of the 17 LCHS graduates accepted to both USC and UCLA, nine selected UCLA while eight enrolled elsewhere. Cross-admits between Berkeley and UCLA were evenly split. Of cross admits between Berkeley and USC who didn’t go elsewhere, four chose Cal while two chose Troy. All four Spartans admitted to Stanford are now enrolled in Palo Alto.

Admission offers

La Cañada graduates were viewed most favorably in the admissions process by many selective colleges. A prime example is USC’s 44% acceptance rate for La Cañada, which is approximately 20 percentage points higher than USC’s reported acceptance rate for freshmen in 2009.

Acceptance letters were extended to 2009 LCHS graduates by all US News & World Report’s top-25 “national universities” except Caltech and MIT, and by all of its top-10 “small liberal arts colleges” except Carleton, Haverford and Swarthmore.

Last year’s seniors using the early action/decision process were accepted to their first-choice colleges including Amherst, Brigham Young, Cornell, Pitzer, Scripps, and Stanford.

Other La Cañada graduates, with acceptances from multiple colleges, were in the enviable position of making “win-win” choices among colleges such as Duke and Pomona; Brown and Columbia; Berkeley and UCLA; Middlebury and Williams; Cornell and Northwestern; Boston College and Notre Dame; Michigan and Texas; Grinnell and Vassar; SMU and TCU; Georgetown and Johns Hopkins; NYU and USC; Arizona and Oregon; Oberlin and Whitman; Santa Clara and St. Mary’s; Occidental and Scripps; Brandeis and Emory; Clemson and Wisconsin; Harvard and Stanford; Fordham and Syracuse; Chapman and Pepperdine; Otis College of Art and Parsons School of Design; Brigham Young and Utah; Virginia and Washington.

“Top-Tier” college

matriculations

Members of La Cañada’s class of 2009 have matriculated to a number of so-called top-tier colleges and universities beyond Berkeley, UCLA, USC, and Stanford including, but not limited to, Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Hamilton, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Princeton, Rice, Tufts, Vassar, Washington U., Wellesley, and Williams.

Class of 2010

Looking ahead, the local press announced recently that the following student athletes from La Cañada’s class of 2010 have signed letters of intent during the “early signing” period: Anton Arboleda (golf), UCLA; Riley Kessler (water polo), Harvard; Courtney McCutchan (volleyball), Lehigh; Tara Ralis (volleyball), Loyola Marymount; and Hayley Woodford (volleyball), George Washington.

Get in touch SCOTT TRACY is vice president of the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board. E-mail him at: stracy@lcusd.net.