<p>My point, poorly expressed, was that high priced prep schools are a loser for non-connected students.</p>
<p>Sure, lots of kids get in Ivies from prep schools. But many if not most of these kids are legacies.</p>
<p>For someone with no connection to the institution, a small rural high school would give a better chance of admission. The prep school “quota” is filled by legacies.</p>
<p>For middle class families, save the money so you don’t need financial aid for college. Being able to pay cash improves waitlist admission prospects quite a bit. This is not an issue for tippy top schools who seldom need to use their wait lists.</p>
<p>POIH–you are generalizing based on the example of one far outlier–Albert Einstein. He was a genius in math and apparently lagged in language skills. As many gifted kids do, he developed unevenly, but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with not attending preschool.</p>
<p>"…then a private high school in Riverdale with the initials “HM.” "</p>
<p>??? Wait a second, what year did it go coed??
Because I was elsewhere in riverdale, at roughly the same time, and it wasn’t coed yet as far as I recall!</p>
<p>That Harker school seems like a mighty fine educational establishment.</p>
<p>Sadly, its two finalists this year didn’t make it to the top ten winners circle.
The winners came from eight public high schools (ranging from a rather unique independent study magnet to your basic everyone-inside-the-boundaries high schools), one Episcopalian general-studies prep school, and one general-studies all-girls Catholic school. Nice thing is that those students will probably all be able to keep all their winnings for their own uses, rather than being expected to give a portion of the money to the school to purchase university-grade equipment. (Must admit, I found the concept of expecting part of the cash from those prizes to be “gifted” to the school a stretch reaching toward the preposterous.)</p>
<p>Anyhows … sometimes as I stumble through ponderings on these matters that the fine folk delineate, I do find myself believing that true genius, save that it is not crushed, will bloom wherever it lands. </p>
<p>BigG: Thank you for your clarification. But, I will disagree to a point. (full disclosure: My kids went to a public high school which is a at least by name, very famous.) We know lots of kids who went to some of the nation’s top private prep schools. Most of our friends didn’t have the public school option. Upon graduation the kids went all over the place: Cal, UCLA, Emory, Harvard, WashU, Penn, and Duke just to name a few colleges. Some of the kids were the grandchildren of kosher butchers, some the children of show business moguls, and one (the least successful btw) the great grandson of one of those moguls from the 1800s (with grandpa to the whatever) on the Declaration of Independence. </p>
<p>Coming from real money and ties helps everything in life…but just a little. Yes, the former president can talk about your kid’s qualities, the kid can have travelled all over the world…but the kid is applying for the job/spot in college/internship. And the moment the acceptance or rejection comes in…your kid is on their own.</p>
<p>I read the a disproportionate number of CEOs and CFOs of Fortune 500 companies came from a certain university. It wasn’t Harvard or Yale…it was someplace called something like…Northern Arizona State. The only requirement for admission was breathing. But they’re doing something right.</p>
<p>Illyria: You can let your genius sit at home and hope some day (s)he will bloom but I think the popular believe is that even geniuses get benefited by attending fine institutes of learning.
If that was not the case then the competition to get into HMSPY won’t be there.</p>
<p>The whole concept of having fine institutes of learning is to make geniuses succeed more reliably and efficiently.</p>
<p>After reading through the OP and the responses, I felt compelled to reply. The mother who is suing the pre-school is stupid and is doing her child a disservice. Pre-school is supposed to be a place to nurture growth and development, not prepare one for an ivy-league education. However everyone here who is replying about their child in pre-school and the entrance examinations they take appall me. How can you subject a child who is 4 to 5 years old to entrance exams. That is just terrible. People do not need to go to an elite pre-school/kindergarten. I am a college bound high school senior who went to a regular pre-school where I learned shapes, numbers etc. Than I went to a parochial elementary and middle-school. Finally I attend a private high school, but more for the religious affiliation and I consider myself pretty smart. It amazes me that people are so elitist in their personality that they feel they need to get their child into an “ivy-quality” pre-school (while paying, no wasting, absolutely staggering amounts of money). Does that mean public-school students have no chance in life. That sucks because I know some pretty smart public-school children Its ridiculous and I am so glad my parents did not waste their hard earned money to subject me to that. There is an amount of good that comes with not having the absolute best of everything and I wish people would value that more.</p>
<p>She will have the right to do so too if her child has to pay higher tuition to susidized others tuition (because of Financial Aid) at HMSPY or any other elite college. </p>
<hr>
<p>Some folks need to get out in the real world once in awhile. Anyone who pays $19k/year for preschool does not NEED financial aid. And believe it or not, financial aid is actually intended for those who need it.</p>
<p>I didn’t say her DD will require any FA but said she might have a right to complain if she had to pay a tuition of $40000/year to subsidized 60% of the students tuition. Because if the college won’t subsidized those 60% of students tuition then she would have to pay only $28000/year.</p>
<p>So $12000 of her tuition go into paying other students tuition and she will have a right to complain about it.</p>
<p>No one has said so. There are many paths to success.</p>
<p>In my opinion it’s about the journey that counts. Learning at fine institutes is a life time experience. That’s the greatest gift a parent can provide for their children.</p>
<p>If I’ve to do it again I’ll still do my best to provide such an experience to my DD. We do value “amount of good that comes with not having the absolute best”. We chose to spend on something we think our DD will cherish all through her life over other absolute best things in life.</p>
<p>I went to 21k (not accounting for inflation) preschool and I don’t regret it at all. My parents were angry once because I played with the stupid children whole day, but that was the worst thing that happened to me there.</p>
<p>I think I was made smarter by going the the preschool; when I was admitted to my kindergarten, I was so ahead of my regular peers that I felt so superior and confident in myself that I became the best child of the year in my kindergarten. This feeling of superiority and confidence has helped me maintain success throughout my life.</p>
<p>As such, I can see why the mom sued the preschool. The child will obviously feel like garbage when he is admitted to his dream kindergarten and will live with an inferiority complex until he dies. This can have grave consequences for his Harvard admission chances. My heart goes out to this child and his mother.</p>
<p>POIH-
Most colleges will tell you that the cost to educate each student is more than the tuition charged. These costs may be defrayed by alum donations, endowments and various other sources of funding. So while parents of full fee students can whine about the cost of tuition, they cannot whine about subsidizing someone else’s education. And guess what? Probably many of those previously “subsidized” alums have done quite well and are making the donations that <em>do</em> help pay for the FA for need-based students like themselves.</p>
<p>Please understand, I have utter respect for parents who pay full fee for their children’s education. You have the right to complain about the high cost of education, whether it be preschool, private HS or college, because you have chosen to spend your dollars there, and it is expensive. On the other hand, those who shelter their money in grandma’s bank account, plead poverty and appear to qualify for need-based aid while then bragging about hitting the jackpot, those are the ones not worthy of respect and who have no right to complain.</p>
<p>** BTW, it is widely believed that Einstein was dyslexic, and thus may have had delayed language-based skills that can be associated with his dyslexia.</p>
<p>Obviously a legacy student wins over another student who is roughly otherwise equal, but that wasn’t your point. In fact that’s exactly their rationale for legacy admits, that they’re already strong anyway and the legacy factor gives them the differentiating quality that tips them over the edge. </p>
<p>Can you show me a study that says that legacies with lower test scores and GPA are more likely to be admitted?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>2/3? Hahahaha; did you just make that up? Legacies are 14% at Yale, and all of the other (apparently “less deserving”) people you grouped into that statistic are red herrings: Your point was about legacies dominating admissions and that’s simply false. I can’t find statistics for Harvard or Princeton but I doubt they’re much different.</p>
<p>ParentofIvyHope, of course we do not know each other or each other’s circumstances and personal histories. I would not be at all surprised to find that your family may be as full of scholars and minor geniuses as is mine, and your choices on how to educate your children are yours and mine are mine. I have no idea, however, why you chose to steer the conversation to a personal level. My ponderings were sparked by the title of your link and the audacity of the idea of creating a school for the “next Einstein.” I simply do not believe that going to or not going to a particular high school, even one as extremely endowed and equipped as Harker, will mean much for the “next Einstein” (and, going back to the premium preschool issue, certainly schools lower than high school will be practically meaningless to such a person.) That sort of supreme genius and creativity is set in motion before a child speaks a word. As long as a basic, adequate educational environment is provided in the early years, Einstein is going to be Einstein. </p>
<p>Then we get to high school. By this time, I think most educators and parents will recognize such incredible genius (in fact, I’m pretty sure we get a whole lot more false positives than we do false negatives in the identification of potential Einteins) and steer the student to the best environment available in that community for that brilliance to flouish. This could be a Harker, a magnet public school, independent study, early entry to university, etc. The many possibilities are made plain by looking at the variety of schools represented amongst the Intel Science Talent Search finalists. </p>
<p>And as to colleges? Seriously, in this time and this country, Einstein’s going to get into HMSPY, whether his circumstances landed him at Harker or not. </p>
<p>A school such as Harker is a marvelous resource for brilliant students and it would be an absolute blast for an Einstein. But it is only chance that will find that next Einstein, or Faraday, or Schrodinger, or Newton at that school as opposed to a more simple high school.</p>
<p>As to your last paragraph, I would find it interesting to learn if others believe that making “geniuses succeed more reliably and efficiently” is the “whole concept of having fine institutes of learning.” I have not found that to be the case in reading the histories of many of those institutions, but it is a somewhat interesting take on the matter.</p>
<p>Understood that the cost of educating each student is more than the tuition charged. Now considering ‘x’ amount of dollars university decided to put towards each student education and ‘y’ is computed as the cost remaining which should have become the Tuition. But the universities are keeping ‘a’ amount from the ‘x’ to distribute as FA there by increasing the Tuition by ‘a’.</p>
<p>So instead of paying ‘y’ as Tuition the full paying student have to shell out ‘y’ + ‘a’ where ‘a’ is the average FA provided to a student at that college.</p>
<p>Now simply it can be seen that ‘a’ paid by the full cost student is what used towards the FA.</p>
<p>It’s a 0 sum game. If university spends an equal amount on each student then the only things which is changing is the tuition charged to full paying students and that only is going to be used to fund the FA of students.</p>
<p>POIH- do not forget that there are funds specifically earmarked for tuition/education of the students (donation, endowment money, willed funds, etc), perhaps identified for certain subsets of students (such as 6 foot tall harmonica players with a last name that begins with a vowel) that cannot be reallocated to other university expenses. There are surely tax incentives figured into the allocation of funds as well. It can’t all be boiled down to a mathematical formula.</p>