The CPS magnet schools are the top schools in the state. If your kid is accepted to one of them (or to IMSA for a STEM-oriented kid), they would be the very best choice. IMSA, Walther Payton, Whitney Young, Northside Prep, Jones, Lane Tech, etc, are world-class high schools. The only high school in Chicago which I would even consider as matching these would be the Lab High School in Hyde Park.
The high acceptance of students from the Chicago private schools to “elite” colleges is almost invariably because their parents are legacies/donors or these students are being trained in sports which Ivies and such like.
I would only consider a parochial school if your own local public school was truly underperforming.
PS. IMSA isn’t really a Chicagoland school, since it is open to students from everywhere in the state.
Could somebody please put this as the first thing that every parent or student who visits CC should read?
These are all good options and none will be the reason your child doesn’t go to a “top” school. Top schools require way more than scores and grades, so you pick a school where it’ll be easiest for your child to do more than hammer the Calc BC exam.
Do they have EC offerings that intrigue your child? Might the extra driving make it harder to participate in theater/swimming/DECA/whatever? Is the rest of the school so high-powered that your kid may not make a team outside his core academic areas of strength? Did he choose the word “cliquey” or did you?
I guess I’d make him produce the Pro/Con list, augment it with some fact-based stuff like drive/bus times and then have him walk through this with you and explain his priorities and concerns.
Oh, and stop thinking in terms of individual schools for another few years. You could have a chemical engineer on your hands and find that half the “Top 20” are LACs without his program. Shout out to GA Tech and Purdue! Just stay open and flexible, make sure he has enough runway to keep taking math with his friends, help him find ways to enjoy school through ECs he has passion for, and be a kid who remembers high school fondly. It’s harder than it sounds, so be sure to keep your eyes in the present. Good luck!
It might help to reduce your concerns if you share your list of what you think are the Top 20 Colleges & Universities.
This exercise should lead to the realization that the “Top 20 Colleges & Universities in the US” are actually closer to 100 colleges & universities, rather than just 20.
My daughter went to our gifted public option (top 98%). It was pretty rigorous (13 APs by graduation). Most kids go on to a top 100 school or our state flagship (which is excellent). Mine rejected private school wholeheartedly. The downside was the rigorous part although a lot of that is part of the culture and peer pressure. Kids in the program (some since 1st grade) were taking classes like alg 1 in 5th or 6th grade so by HS only options were to go AP route. I feel like she lost of little bit of her childhood. Bonus was the nationally ranked music program and plethora of clubs were pretty much anyone could find their people. The school was incredibly diverse. So it ended up being a good choice all things considered. She was accepted to 15/17 of the schools she applied to. All in the top 50 LAC group (we were looking for merit). I will say for all my complaints about rigor she was incredibly prepared for college…more so than most of her friends who struggled to adapt to the academic challenges. All choices have their pluses and minuses. Also too I might add she would really have been happy in most academic environments so don’t limit your thoughts to just top schools.
College admission shouldn’t have anything to do with selecting a high school. You want to pick a HS that will be the best fit for him now - where will he have the best social and academic experience. If he’s enjoying HS, he will be much more likely to work hard, get good grades, and do well on the tests than if he is unhappy. And that give him a lot more options for college. And he’ll have a much better quality of life for the next four years
The issue is he does not like his two options, the SE high school, or the small private school. Boarding school is not an option.
The private school contract is binding in two weeks (will owe entire tuition). We won’t know if he will get off his first choice school’s waitlist for another month, at least.
I put the question out since if all things were equal, I hoped college admissions stats might sway our decision. I don’t think wanting a h.s. with good college placement is unreasonable. My parents moved to a suburb so I could go to a top high school.
It has been a horrible year, with his studying for three sets of entrance exams, worrying about grades and now this. His counselor said he was a golden at his top choice–everyone said he’d cinch it due to his being such a good student, and now this. I feel so sad for my little guy. This high school process has stripped him of his remaining childhood years.
Ditto the against college admission for selecting the HS. I really like post # 24.
THE BEST FIT HS, to repeat the above, is most important. Remember to give your child the best childhood you can. This means meeting academic needs but also social ones. Life is a journey, not an endpoint. Who knows the path his life will entually take- meandering from your plans I bet.
“Top Twenty” college. In what fields? I can name many that UW-Madison (close to you) fits- even some top ten. Some Ivys rank far below some flagship U’s in various fields. Get rid of your notions about college prestige.
Regarding the three options listed. Too small a HS that he isn’t thrilled about? Yuck. Limited options by size for exploring different fields. Catholic- again yuck unless you are of that religion. Good public schools. Maybe the unmentioned option #4 , the public school you are districted for is the best one. Since finances are not a problem I suspect you live in an area with a top public HS. Educating the whole child may be best served there. Transportation time, making friends/associating with those who live fairly close by is valuable.
btw- parent of a gifted kid (2 grades ahead), now grown, here. He was NOT out of his league in a top 20 in his majors college coming from a regular city HS. Life is never perfect (our kids make sure of that). But- if for some reason he had died before reaching adulthood I would have been satisfied that we gave him a good childhood. We did not neglect academics but also he had a HS life full of experiences. Will you be able to say the same? I’m the American born mother of a half Asian (Indian).
Remember that there are far too many elite kids for the number of spots in the “top twenty” colleges. Forget about planning your son’s life. He will have his own opinions about where to go to college by the time he is applying. And guess what- it could be none of the schools that fit your current wish list will be good choices for him.
Remember, it is the student, not the school. Get over any prestige factors in your decision. btw- UW currently rates academics (including taking rigorous classes as offered by a school) and the essay while placing extracurriculars at the low end of consideration. Keep this in mind over the next few years. Let your child explore his world. Do not go about attempting to create the foolproof resume that will get him into any school. It won’t work.
I hope this post comes out right, but NO: it’s not the (getting in to!) HS process that has “stripped him of his remaining childhood years”
THAT is what has made this year miserable for him, and will make HS miserable for him: your choosing to make HS all about college. YOU have a goal for him to get into a tiny group of colleges, and were the one who made him study for “the three separate entrance exams”. Your approach to achieving YOUR goal is what is making his life miserable and ‘stripping’ him of his remaining childhood years. Your childhood experience is not his, HS is not what it was, and college admissions are not what they were. You have to evaluate the choices based not on the past but the present.
@wis75 noted that you probably live in a suburb with a good public high school: why not have him go to the local school and let him be a superstar there?
So basically he’s gone through a version of the stressful college app process, four years early. Poor kid. I think there’s a lesson in this though, and it’s that rather than “stripping him of his remaining childhood years” somewhere, choosing the school where he will be happier overall is a better option than somewhere that’s going to just focus on a bigger version of the process he just went through.
I went to a school very much like the first school. I found a group of intellectual girls and we remain friends to this day. (I didn’t want to go either.) I got a terrific education, small classes meant that essays in particular got graded quickly and with lots of comments. OTOH our science department at the time was pretty terrible. (It’s much better now.)
My kids went to a large public school and found their intellectual friends there, but the school itself is always in the bottom half of the county because there’s a big group of kids who are ELL and others who are just not that invested in school. The younger one in particular benefited from the amazing arts offerings (several orchestra, all kinds of choral music, regular and jazz band - etc.) Their teachers were excellent, but the larger class sizes did mean they did not write as many papers as kids who are in private schools. They got into top schools - the oldest was in the top 2% of his class, the youngest the top 6%.
My nephew went to a well-known private school and his mother felt that there was a lot of pushing kids to where they were legacies and that the big donor kids got more attention. It all worked out fine for her. Her kid got into Cornell, U of Chicago (where he was a legacy) and Rice where he got merit money and got a fabulous education. He was perhaps in the top quarter of his class, but his school, like many privates did not rank.
I agree that a top-20 school should not be the goal. Generally the kids who end up at those schools are self-motivated and often performing at levels beyond their peers, because of their own curiosity and drive. Kids can succeed at every type of school
Reading CC always makes me think of the movie Say Anything. For those who haven’t seen it, the female lead is the valedictorian but realizes how much she missed out on because she was so focused on her grades and such and didn’t spend any time having fun. I can’t help but think that so many of the kids who post here (or have parents who post here) are going to have the same regrets.
It’s not just grades vs. fun, or regrets about not going to that party. That trivializes the issue.
It’s orienting your life towards something that’s symbolic, but not truly valuable in and of itself (e.g., getting admitted to Harvard, or wherever), vs. orienting your life towards things that are truly valuable: being a good person, being productive, being resilient being engaged, being educated. If you make your child miserable in order to improve his chances of getting into Harvard, and he still doesn’t get into Harvard (as is always a very significant possibility, even for the best applicants), you are left with a crippled child who believes he failed. And if he gets into Harvard, he may be a time bomb, ready to explode from the pressure he feels, or petrified that the next hurdle he faces will be the one he can’t get over. If you help your child be good, productive, resilient, engaged, etc., and he doesn’t get into Harvard, he is poised for success no matter where (or whether!) he goes to college.
And the thing is, those qualities are what Harvard is looking for, and what it symbolizes. Even if in the darkest part of your heart all you care about is having your child get a brand-name college diploma, the best path to pursue that is to provide the context in which he will develop into the best person. I can’t tell you which of your options that is, but if you are looking at college admission statistics you are looking at the wrong data.
I understand that you felt he doesn’t like any of his options, so everything being equal he might as well decide on which might be the best choice for college placement. Which is a reasonable factor to keep in mind when making that decision. But it is not clear that everything else IS equal yet.
The schools he doesn’t (or didn’t, in the case of the catholic school that is out of the running) like are so different, it doesn’t give us any sense of what he DOES like, What was the school like that he did like and is waitlisted for? What is special about it that he cannot find at his other options? If you tease that out, you may find the option where this might be most easily (if not perfectly) replicated.
Another factor that isn’t clear yet: if he is and remains unhappy, which choice would give him the easiest do-over? Would he have to stick out the year at the private school because you not afford to just write off the tuition? Is the magnet a now or never deal? Is there a local school that might be a second best option for a kid that is desperately unhappy at their first choice?
And lastly, is the private school worth the tuition or may it limit his choices financially later on?
Tigere, you make some excellent points. He is currently in a small private school. His top choice (waitlisted) school is small,private. He enjoys having small classes, close relationships with peers and teachers, nice environment.
The private school he was accepted to is extremely small (80 kids per grade)JK-12, so he will be one of a handful of new students. None of his friends will be attending this school, and he is extremely anxious about this.
The magnet public is over 220/class. He is scared about attending an urban public school. despite having several friends who will be going there.
Is transferring from private to private or public to private easier?
Local public school is definitely not an option–not good or safe.
He had visited private school twice and was neutral afterwards. He missed most of the public school’s open house last fall due to test taking that day. The public absolutely won’t allow anyone to revisit, even if accompanied by a current student, until next month. We have to commit to the private school next week (non refundable contract).
So it’s private/small environment which he (in general) likes, but without friends, or big, public environment he is scared of, but with some friends.
Personally, I don’t think 80/year JK to 12 is that small, nor is 220/year, 9 to 12, that big. (I graduated in a cohort of 35 myself, so take that with a grain of salt…). But 80/year with small classes is still like 4 or 5 different classes in the main subjects, right? Not like an extremely tight knit group it would be impossible to find an “in”in, unless the kids were really absolutely, horribly cliquish. Anyone you can ask?
What’s his personality - is it easier for him to make new friends, or to find his way around in and get used to an unfamiliar, scary environment? Would he be able to be in classes with his friends or would they have to expect to be so spread around they hardly ever see each other?
When my oldest changed to a huge middle school where he didn’t know anyone in his new class, it was a comfort to him that another kid from his elementary school was around, to occasionally chat to at recess. It was only for a few months, and he never even noticed that the other kid had dropped out (I met him on the bus to another school, which is how I found out) but it helped for a bit.
