Counselor talks to Admission Officer

JHS
Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:49:59 +0000

Pizzagirl, as you know my kids moved from a hoity-toity private that operates the way I described above to a large urban public where the GCs are essentially traffic cops. They think they ended up in college pretty much where they would have gone had they stayed at the private school. Kids from their public school did fine at selective colleges. They could have done a little better with a lot more (and a lot more intrusive) GC work, but if you adjusted for demographics, test scores, and fashion differences, the equivalent kids at the two schools were accepted at equivalent institutions. And the kids for whom the private school had no equivalent – the first-generation, working-class, politically conservative strivers – got plenty of chances to “swing the bat” at the public school.

Now, this was a pretty well-known public school, but it didn’t even come close to making any national “Best High Schools” list. (Unlike mathmom’s school, which could well be the highest-quality non-magnet public school in the country. And if not that, in the top 10.)