What pros and cons do you see to this boy transferring to a private high school after middle school?
We live in a two grades ahead of average school district ([url = <a href=“http://nyti.ms/1Ulvfms%5DNYT”>http://nyti.ms/1Ulvfms]NYT data) with a HS of about 2000. We are close to better private HS of 400 students or so that would cost us 30K a year to attend. We are not a full-pay family for tippy top colleges.
DS could be a top 5-10% HS student in our school, with no special talents or visible weaknesses, and not a bookworm. I won’t call him a typical Asian boy. I see in him potentials at any colleges and at many careers, and as a parent I’d love to help him lead a fulfilling life.
Pros and cons to transferring to a private HS struggling with 30K annual tuition?
$120,000 could be a substantial contribution to college costs.
You did not mention how the private school would be better than your good public school. But having $120,000 less money could severely limit his college choices.
When you say a ‘better private’, what do you think would be better about it for your son? If your son is doing well academically and socially, and is happy in his environment, I can’t see why you would move him. If you are thinking in terms of college admissions, being a star in his current school could be better than being middle of the pack at the private school, esp as you are clearly involved enough to help supplement the efforts of a possibly overstretched GC.
What are you hoping that the $120K will buy you?
Would having that $120K possibly be helpful come college tuition time?
My question is: Why on earth are you considering spending that much money for a private school when you have a much better than average public school available for free?
Send the kid to the public school. Start living as though you were paying for the private one, and stash that $30k each year into the college fund. Your kid will have a lot more choices four years from now if you have $120k sitting in the bank to help pay for college.
My kids attend(ed) very selective prep schools. The academic competition is beyond intense for unhooked kids. While both of their schools send a large number of kids to the top colleges, a lot of those kids get admitted on factors that have nothing to do with academics (e.g. development case; Kennedy scion; athletic recruit; URM; parent is head of state of some country). I only recommend prep schools to middle class families if the child’s present school provides inadequate academic or extracurricular activities, or an unconducive social/personal-safety environment. Don’t do it thinking you’re buying a ticket to Harvard.
Your kid is already in a high performing school, and is at the top. If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.. Save the 30k per year for college or go on a vacation or retire early.
This is an article from 1998. But from what I have observed at my kids’ schools, the competition to stand out at these prep schools has gotten even worse…
^^^ Park was accepted by Johns Hopkins and Caregie Mellon, not chump change. In any case some parents who value HS education for its own sake, not just as a launching pad to somewhere, see a value in private schools.
In our school district, it’s much more common for kids to go to private up through middle school, and then transition to a public magnet school (with a rigorous IB/AICE program). We don’t often see it go the other way (public up to 8th grade and then switch to private), unless the student can’t get into one of the magnets and the local high school is horrible.
Not all private/public schools are the same, so it’s impossible for us to do a “comparison”, but if the public offers a rigorous program, plenty of EC type opportunities, and a social enviroment where your child could fit in and find friends, then I’m sure a strong case can be made for it.
“What are you hoping that the $120K will buy you?” That’s the question and hence this thread. In most cases in life you get what you pay for.
“In any case some parents who value HS education for its own sake,” I know some parents see pros and some see cons to such a transfer based on their own experiences or evaluations. Love to see they share their thoughts.
“I thought college admissions had something to do with academics.” I’m not as naive as Ms. Park back then, and getting into any particular college isn’t a goal. Would love to see the kid get into any college he carefully picks however.
We live in a place with tons of private high schools in close proximity…and some quite selective. We looked int these schools WITH our son. At the end of the search, he decided he wanted to stay at our good public high school. So…that’s where he stayed.
What does your son think?
I’m not hearing a compelling reason in your post for switching schools.
Without naming the schools and describing the characteristics of the student, it is impossible for anyone else to say anything in particular about whether one school may be better for the student. (And, even if the $120,000 option is better, it may not be $120,000 better.)
Actually, you can easily get much less than what you pay for, if you are not careful.
It sounds like you are looking for a reason to spend $120k on private school despite being satisfied with your public school. There are sometimes good reasons to switch schools and make that investment: mediocre public school, need for smaller classes and more individual attention, availability of advanced classes. It is not necessary to attend public school to achieve success in life. Unless you have a compelling reason to spend a huge chunk of change, save the money.
Has your son spent a day at the public, shadowing, and a day at the private? That may be the best way to gather information on this decision.
The obvious difference is size.
Which school has the biggest choice of courses, and the biggest choice of extracurriculars?
During high school years, my family made sure that academics were adequate but avoided hours and hours of homework that can cause burnout. Instead, they worked hard outside of school at things like performing arts or technology, and developed those interests. I suspect these interests helped them in admissions, but that is not why they did them. We felt balance was important in these growing up years.
I hope your son lands in a place where the soil is rich, so to speak, but where competition and workload are not too stressful. The high school years are a great time to get to know oneself and explore interests and some free time is important for that.
The money is most likely not worth it unless your son has some need that the smaller private addresses.
SOMETIMES you get what you pay for. Not always. Do I buy last year’s car at a discount, or do I buy the new model at full price? If I buy the latter, I am not getting anything better for my money than last year’s model. I am just getting temporary bragging rights to this year’s car. I don’t see any compelling reason for your son going to a private school other than bragging rights, and no guarantee of anything when it comes to colleges. I do guarantee that the $120k you spend won’t be any kind of money well spent if your child only gets into match schools that offer the same kind of merit aid to a public high school kid as they do to a private high school kid.
Your son is Asian, and like other ORM students applying to top colleges, I don’t think applying from a private high school will give him any advantage in the college admissions game. You state that “getting into any particular college isn’t a goal” so why even consider spending that kind of money when you might well need it for whatever college he ends up at?
@GMTplus7 is quite right that selective prep schools (and we don’t know that the school under consideration falls into that category) don’t appreciably change college outcomes. They do provide a much richer high school experience than a public school can. They also provide better college counseling. But in your situation, unless your kid desperately wants to go the private school for really sound reasons, I would keep him at the public school, and, since you are concerned about college outcomes, spend a small fraction of that $120K on a private college counselor and save the rest for college. My $0.02, because it’s such fun butting in on other people’s business on a quiet Sunday morning.
How about the social aspects of it? Where will his friends go? Will he know kids in the private school? Socially, does he make friends easily? Where do the kids at private school attend middle school? Is it likely groups of friends will have been formed with less interest in outsiders joining? Or are the kids in the private school drawn from a number of middle schools who will be looking for new friend groups?
What about ECs? Will there be any issues participating in them at the private school that wouldn’t exist at the public (such as availability of carpools, school transportation, etc)?
We pulled our kid from our excellent public high school because after 6 weeks I could see it was going to be the disaster that was middle school. My kid was bright but lazy and just didn’t do his work. There was no place for him to hide in the private school and within a week (literally) he was a changed student. He also was just not a number and the college counseling was worth it’s wait in gold - I didn’t have to do a thing - just tours and handing over CC to pay the app fees. That being said he wasn’t getting into HYPMS regardless of which school he attended but likely would have ended up at community college if he stayed at our public school. He ended up being excepted at every college he applied to and ended up at Bates (where being Asian he was considered a URM) and who gave him a ton of FA - much more than our EFC suggested. He graduated something like 25 or 28th out of 63 - so well below the top 5-10%.
As far as EC’s at the public school (approx 1200 students) he barely made orchestra - at the private school he was in orchestra and in the Jazz Band (which competed every year at Berkelee so not a slouch) and he also was on Mastermind team - which he had zero chance of doing at public school. He also ran XC and track - which he did at public school too - but I think he worked much harder to improve his times at private school.
Our ROI was fantastic -cost us $80k for 4 years of high school and $80k for college that full pay would have been $240k.
He graduated last year and got a great job in Boston and is self supporting. Our decisions were wins all around.
Public parents too often focus on the college admissions outcomes, or demonize privates because “they’re full of rich druggies,” or don’t understand the conditioning and polishing that’s occurring at the privates. My children became much more confident and assertive, which I’m sure public peers often take for [rich kid] arrogance.
Going back to college admissions outcomes. All matriculants are not created equal. There’s a wide difference between going to say, Univ. of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign, and being prepared to pursue engineering or pre-med … and being a sociology or psych major with a 3.2 GPA.