&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"><channel><title>Data Analysis on Hi from Dwipal</title><link>https://dwipal.com/blog/tags/data-analysis/</link><description>Recent content in Data Analysis on Hi from Dwipal</description><generator>Hugo -- gohugo.io</generator><language>en-us</language><lastBuildDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://dwipal.com/blog/tags/data-analysis/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>Public vs Private School College Acceptance Rate</title><link>https://dwipal.com/blog/posts/2026-03-01-where-do-bay-area-kids-go-to-college/</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://dwipal.com/blog/posts/2026-03-01-where-do-bay-area-kids-go-to-college/</guid><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparing PAUSD with Harker: Harker doubles your top-50 odds (though there is selection bias), UCs are the most common outcome for PAUSD, and Foothill is smarter than it sounds.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wanted to get some clarity on what the actual data looks like - especially comparing public school in Palo Alto with other private schools in the bay area. Fortunately, PAUSD publishes detailed &lt;a href="https://gunn.pausd.org/campus-life/college-career-center/college-matriculation-summary"&gt;matriculation data&lt;/a&gt; for both Gunn and Paly. I also found that Harker publishes &lt;a href="https://www.harker.org/college-counseling/college-matriculation-list"&gt;similar data&lt;/a&gt; which gives us a good basis for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;</description><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparing PAUSD with Harker: Harker doubles your top-50 odds (though there is selection bias), UCs are the most common outcome for PAUSD, and Foothill is smarter than it sounds.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wanted to get some clarity on what the actual data looks like - especially comparing public school in Palo Alto with other private schools in the bay area. Fortunately, PAUSD publishes detailed &lt;a href="https://gunn.pausd.org/campus-life/college-career-center/college-matriculation-summary"&gt;matriculation data&lt;/a&gt; for both Gunn and Paly. I also found that Harker publishes &lt;a href="https://www.harker.org/college-counseling/college-matriculation-list"&gt;similar data&lt;/a&gt; which gives us a good basis for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&amp;rsquo;ve consolidated it in a quick &lt;a href="https://dwipal.com/blog/analysis/college-tracker/"&gt;little dashboard&lt;/a&gt;. A few things stood out &amp;ndash;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A lot of PAUSD students go to Foothill College.&lt;/strong&gt; Foothill is an excellent community college, with a very clear path to transfer to UCs. It allows students to have a smooth transition from high school to getting into an excellent university, without the pressure of getting into a top university right out of high school.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://dwipal.com/blog/analysis/college-tracker/"&gt;&lt;img src="gunn.png" alt="Gunn High School Matriculation Data"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Private School (Harker) doubles your likelihood of getting into a top-50 school.&lt;/strong&gt; About 33% of Harker graduates go to a top-50 school (compared to 17% of PAUSD). It&amp;rsquo;s also true for top-10 schools where Harker sends ~12.6% of its graduates compared to ~8.5% for Gunn and ~7.6% for Paly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://dwipal.com/blog/analysis/college-tracker/"&gt;&lt;img src="harker.png" alt="Harker High School Matriculation Data"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This does not account for selection bias (as Harker is a private school, it can select its students), so maybe it&amp;rsquo;s not that much of a difference in the end.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The UC system is still up there.&lt;/strong&gt; Roughly 17–20% of PAUSD graduates go to a UC campus (across all 3 years).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You can explore the full data — by school, by university, or side-by-side — in the &lt;a href="https://dwipal.com/blog/analysis/college-tracker/"&gt;college tracker&lt;/a&gt;. Data is 2022–2024 combined and &lt;a href="https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2024"&gt;QS 2024 ranked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded></item></channel></rss>