<p>Ptontiger16, just a comment on your statement that public high schools are “nonrigorous”. That is not necessarily the case. Some public high schools are quite rigorous, more rigorous than some private prep schools. My son attends a public high school of about 1600 students which offers many AP courses and is extremely rigorous with no “grade inflation” in the honors/AP classes. Of course, there are some public high schools which are not rigorous and give out A’s like candy. However, this is also true of private schools. Some are highly rigorous in their academics, and others are not as rigorous or are so small that they do not offer a wide variety of challenging courses. In our city there are several private schools, including one “college prep” school, but none of them match the rigor of our public high school.</p>