It is bonkers as a) I have never heard of such a thing and 2) if I am honest, I think it is appalling someone would chose to send a kid to a school that wants only rich kids in it. It seems like a segregation academy of other name. It doesn’t match my personal values, you can disagree.
I don’t think this should be illegal, though.
I am well aware of the finances of private schools.
Such different propositions! No longer in NYC but have some familiarity with this through friends and family. There is a lot of diversity at Science but perhaps of a different kind. Probably less wealth and fewer international students. Wealth differences play out on a daily basis at Science, as in who can buy lunch at the food truck or how is XYZ club going to raise money to travel to a competition? With that said, my sense is that there are showy fewer displays of wealth. If you searched a thread from a few years ago on popular clothing brands, you’d see mention of brands popular at Deerfield that I doubt many kids at Science, including those who could afford them, would be choosing.
I do think there is a difference to attending school with kids and living in community with them with the latter being pretty eye-opening. As a type that sentence, perhaps that’s another big part of the difference?
I think NYC kids from all walks of life have a certain savvy that most other (particularly non-urban) kids don’t. That is one of the things they often bring to a BS or college community. (They trade this for rides from friends who can drive 
)
Why? There are schools for musicians, performing arts, technology, the blind, you name it. No reason there shouldn’t be schools exclusively for those who can pay full freight for them. And, I bet those expensive schools have some wonderful students who bring a lot more to the table than their parent’s income. You know, like other types of schools. I can’t afford a Bugatti, but I don’t whine about the lack of a subsidy program to assist me in owning one, and I don’t begrudge anyone who has one.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald-
Our society has been segregating by wealth since its inception. Meh.
Thanks you! So sounds like all things being equal boarding school is a better option.
It’s apples and oranges - neither is better or worse, but they are VERY different. Have a close family friend who chose BronxSci over boarding. Our kiddo is going to choose private day or boarding over Stuy. It’s about the student and what the experience they want/need is, and neither boarding nor SHSAT schools are for everyone.
Why did yours decide not to do Stuyvesant?
I think it really depends on the kid, what they’ve been exposed to, what their interests are, how they spend their time outside school, etc. And for some families, the cost alone will make the decision for them.
For our kid, she’s looking for a smaller and more tight-knit community, and doesn’t want to spend so much time schlepping all over the city between school and extracurriculars - the time wasted getting around the city really frustrates her. And she wants a class environment that is more Harkness and less lecture. Just not an ideal fit for her.
That schlepping around the city part is real!
S23s life is vastly different than what it would have been like if he stayed in our LPS simply because he took advantage of opportunities that never would have been available to him. He found mentors and a passion for a certain career path and was able to get experience that juniors in colleges we visited were jealous of. It set him up well and he got a research positions and a job with a professors in the field as soon as he got to college. He is also in leadership positions on campus and I recently found out he has his own office in a lab.
I’d say that this was also something I could not have predicted when we first sent him to BS as it is not the path we expected him to take.
This is amazing!
Same. Our son chose his BS hell-bent on film school. Ended up as an EE from a service academy.
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