@gkalman - many good points. Don’t get me wrong - if where our family lives now was based on the quality of the public HS education, we probably wouldn’t be here. We just set down stakes decades ago and didn’t wind up moving, for a variety of reasons. Would my kid have stacked up with the top kids at a more competitive HS? My gut tells me “not necessarily”. Or “maybe”, but it would have profoundly changed her and her parents as people. My only point, I think, was that IF you are stretching yourself (financially, interdistrict transfers, etc.) to get your kid into a select public HS SOLELY in order to increase the odds of he/she getting accepted at top universities, there may be unintended consequences. Our neighbor is a VP at a local select HS, and the ongoing stress of the kids and parents is palpable. The year D graduated HS, more than one kid at this other school was disappointed because the top school they got into was UC Berkeley.