Top seniors head to high-powered universities

Whitefish High School guidance counselor Barb Mansfield keeps a running inventory of the colleges Bulldog graduates have gone on to attend. The list is three pages long and includes schools from the East Coast to the West, both large and small.

This spring, she’ll be adding a bevy of top-flight universities to her file. Seniors with the class of 2016 plan to head off to some of the most elite institutes of higher education in the country — Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Middlebury, NYU, Pepperdine, the list goes on.

“These are high-powered schools,” Mansfield said.

While it’s not uncommon for Whitefish grads to attend prestigious universities, the sheer number of graduates in this class reaching those levels is totally unprecedented.

“What’s really unique about this class is that there are 16 students with a 4.0 grade point,” Mansfield said.

Typically, a graduating class will have six students finish with straight As.

“From the time they were little, I’ve been warned to be prepared for this group,” Mansfield said. “They’re active in the school, involved in community services and they have pushed each other.”

“This class has shown they’re determined and dedicated, and they want it.”

The application process to even get a sniff of an Ivy League school is arduous at best.

First come the numbers: Grade point average should be close to a 4.0, an SAT score in the 2,200 range or an ACT around 36. Then comes the expected load of extracurriculars like athletics and clubs. Community service is another bullet point that should be checked off. And finally, there’s almost always an essay and phone interview, which can often be deciding factors, Mansfield said.

“They want an all-around package,” she said. “These schools know what they can do for the student, but they want to know what the student can do for them in return.”

Meeting the application criteria takes time management, dedication, and often great parents the students can lean on, Mansfield said.

Of the 30,000 or so who apply to a school like Harvard or Columbia, only 2,000 are accepted.

While this crop of Whitefish seniors is top heavy with standouts, Mansfield has been equally impressed with the depth of the class. Of the 124 seniors, the mean GPA is 3.024, and 74 hold a 3.0 or better.

“That alone says a lot about the rest of the class, too,” she said. “They are pushing themselves and each other.”

About 70 percent of the class plans to go on to a four-year university, with 20 percent planning to attend a junior college. A small percentage expects to enter the military and about 1 to 2 percent go straight to working.

Even after 19 years of assisting Whitefish students in taking their next step in life, Mansfield says she always gets a little choked up to see them go.

“It’s neat to watch the process,” she said. “I always tell them to just go for it. It’s another chapter, another step.”