Convincing parents to transfer to public school

yoursky
Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:37:36 +0000

I really need advice from the perspective of a parent, and forgive me for not necessarily discussing prep school related issues but sadly there was no other section in the “pre college issues” that would primarily attract parents.

To summarize the context of this situation, I go to a local private day school, one of the best in the country in terms of matriculation (Currently I reside in asia, and I am saying “matriculation” because I cannot merit our academics, athletics, or extracurriculars to any degree of good quality) and feel that socially, I am not fit for this type of place. I have been here for years and are neither the smartest, the one with the best gpa, etc (with high tuition comes the highest social classes, and our school is one of the most severe cases of this in comparison to other local private schools) and feel the social scene is completely different from what I grew up with (previously I lived in the bay area)

I’m actually a long-time member of CC (or at least I think so) as I joined around march of 2008, and switched to a few different accounts as my fear of being identified increased over time. I applied for the 09-10 schoolyear, and was waitlisted by all my schools. I am not a rising freshman, and I do not believe reapplying would help me get into any of the schools I truly feel a connection for (I am an ORM, and do not have outstanding stats, I admit.) Hence boarding school is out of the picture, and this is where I apologize again for not truly following the topic of prep schools.

Recently I found out that schools where I used to grow up in are some of the best public schools in america, albeit not magnet schools. Palo Alto High School is one of them, with strengths in journalism and debate, two extracurriculars I heavily focus on. As I researched more to argue my case with my parents on why moving to paly would be beneficial to me, the more I fell in love with the school. I casually mentioned Paly stats once in a while (my mother loves matriculation) such as them sending _ students to stanford, _ students to harvard, etc etc. A few days ago my mom casually suggested we should move to palo alto and just have me attend school there next year. I completely agreed and was ecstatic.

Today I mentioned moving to palo alto again and this time she scoffed and laughed at me, insinuating that moving from my current private school to a public school was embarrassing. I mentioned how three kids from my grade (there are less than 100 of us, so this is significant) did just this. She argued they only moved because of work (only one of them did, and we’ve heard he’s doing much, much better socially than he would have here) I understand where she is coming from, I guess, but I feel infuriated that she would so quickly change her mind. My mother cares little for anything except whatever goes on a college application and school matriculation, and occasionally my happiness, which she seems to be disregarding at this point.

Well that was my little history. My initial question was how to convince her that this is a good opportunity for me (by moving to america I can also take community college courses for credit, do summer jobs, volunteer, etc. Additionally, moving to america and attending a public school costs roughly the same as my current private school tuition) I needed a bit of parental perspective on how you would approach this situation.

To anyone that read the entire post or is willing to offer advice, thank you :)