First, these private high schools are highly selective themselves, so you may be looking at the selection effect rather than the treatment effect.
Second, if you have to borrow to pay for a private high school, you may not be able to afford an expensive private college.
Third, elite colleges are not necessarily that much of an improvement in job prospects other than certain school-elitist types of jobs like management consulting or Wall Street (see other long thread).
^^this
The selective colleges still want the students at the top of their class- and to be fair to the top students at the top ‘elite’ selective secondary schools, they are very strong. They are not just in the top few places in their class (with formidably challenging course loads and test scores to match), but they generally have top roles in several other areas (captain of a varsity sport and editor of a school publication and leader in student government. In other words, they stand out against a stronger than average pool. They are big fish in big ponds.
And remember that even at the super-elite feeder schools (from @eiholi’s list), 60 to 70% of the students do NOT get into the Ivy League.
Posters here were pretty convincing, but I was surprised by the huge success rate of the feeder schools. As a few posters mentioned I need to know what’s behind the rate and it may not be a “treatment effect” @ucbalumnus at all. I don’t jump on things fast and usually stay miles away from debts.
With only 50-70 students per grade and possibly 20-30 EC clubs, I assume many can be captains/leaders. They at least have the experience participating. In public schools many students cannot even get in.
You’re willing to pay $120,000 so your kid can be the president of a high school club with 10 kids in it, or play a high school sport?
My kids’ hs is a large public school. First kid was indeed disappointed that she couldn’t make a team she tried out for. Yes, it’s a problem, and yes, it was a little frustrating knowing that kids with comparable or even less ability were able to make the teams at all the other, smaller schools in our area. But guess what, she found other things to do, she enjoyed her activities and her hs experience, and she got into plenty of top colleges. It’s also true that none of the private schools in our area can hold a candle to our public school, either academically, or in terms of variety and quality of ECs. No, it’s not a perfect or elite public school. I doubt it’s as good as yours is.
In evaluating schools you should consider what is available to students like yours. I have a very hard time believing that a public high school in a +2 school system would not offer a good education and everything a kid needs to get into a top school. Whether or not there are many kids who don’t isn’t really relevant, but in a +2 community there must be a lot of academically serious kids. What matters is whether there is the coursework your kid will need at an appropriate level and whether there is a decent size peer group to interact with, and whether there are some activities that your kid will enjoy and can participate in.
OP, colleges don’t actually give a monkeys about clubs. Any EC is perfectly legitimate, whether it’s a job, taking care of siblings or other family members, volunteering, tutoring, etc… No one gets into Harvard just because they were on the debate team, were secretary of student government, and went to XYZ private school. ECs do not have to be school clubs, or acrobatics lessons, or flying lessons in order to be impressive.
The point of looking at a kid’s ECs is to see if a kid is involved in stuff outside of school, because they want kids who will be involved at their colleges. If your child does go to private high school, doesn’t get tippy top scores and doesn’t achieve the highest positions possible in those private high school clubs, he might in fact be at a disadvantage, because colleges will have a profile of that high school, and will be able to compare him to his fellow students. It is harder to stand out when everyone is a high achiever and has the motivation and money to do all kinds of impressive after school activities. You will likely be putting your child in a very high-pressure environment.
Let’s say you ignore all this advice and go into to debt to put your child in private school. What happens if your child doesn’t get into an Ivy school? What if you child really loves Big State U? What if your child wants to major in Puppeteering at U Conn? (Yes, that is a real major at a real university.) Was that debt to put your child in private high school worth it?
I pay close attention to what posters say, @Lindagaf. Collectively they are way smarter/more knowledgable than I. And I didn’t say my son has no chance getting into a particular college from my current local public school, @mathyone. I came back to this topic due to the shocking high % Ivy admission rates of the feeder schools. To paraphrase @porcupine98, a rate doesn’t apply to individuals. Several parents who moved their kids to private schools out of ours stated that if their kids stayed they’ve have little chance getting in the colleges they got in. Unfortunately there isn’t data out there that can help us see the picture clearly. CC is a great place strong on qualitative analyses however, and that’s helpful.
I personally would not pay for private school while sitting in an excellent or very good public school district, unless there were a special circumstance. You haven’t given any compelling reason for this move. If the school is two grades above average - and I have no doubt you’re talking about a very nice affluent suburban area - I would just go with that. It’s not like the money is insubstantial to you.
My S was recruited by a few elite boarding schools a few years back. My D recently asked me whether she can attend Exeter. My answer to them was “not a good idea.” I told them that the competition in elite boarding schools are much higher than in our local HS. I told them one of the main reasons why I stay in the US instead of going back to Asia is that they can therefore be free of the insanely high education competition in Asia. Just see how many Asian parents send their kids overseas to preventing their kids committing suicide (do not take this statement seriously). So why defeat the purpose. Since then, our family travelled a lot. 
Maybe I don’t have one yet. If I think he’s less capable of things I might bite the bullet and move him. What if I’m wrong and thence the wondering. At the moment I focus on his becoming truly capable, so to stay away from test preps or the need of packaging later. I hope he has the freedom to pick one among good colleges.
I’d like to see Asian colleges adopt holistic admissions procedures like we do here. They are not helping their kids. Your concern over unnecessary pressures is important.
Why are you so fearful he won’t get into a good college? The definition of “good colleges” extends far beyond the 8 Ivies, as I know you know. Anyway, I find it hard to believe that in your “good” affluent suburban public school there aren’t some kids going to good schools.
You’ve not said anything about the private school that you believe provides a better life experience that would be worth $30K per year. You’ve only framed it in terms of getting into college, but that’s silly, because he can get into a good college from a good suburban public school. It’s not like you are choosing between inner-city public school and a private school here.
It sounds like $120K would make an appreciable dent in your family’s income and ability to pay for college (as well it should - for the vast majority of people). So you send him to a private school and thus have a lot less money for college - that closes down options WAY more. I’d keep the $120K, personally.
Yes “good” is an individual definition. Mine may be top 500, yours may be top 50, and to another person it might be top 5. We all want to be as good as possible.
I looked up our district. We are +1. Our school has lots of AP classes, and the small handful of kids who excel do get into top schools which are top schools by anyone’s definition. In the past few years we’ve sent students to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, U Chicago, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Duke, probably a few more I am not aware of. I have a hard time believing that you have to spend $120k you can’t easily afford to get your kid out of a +2 school so that they can be successful.
Very small sample set here, and entirely anecdotal, but my experience attending a highly ranked school after coming out of private school is that the private school kids, myself included, arrived (generally) a bit blase and burned out, whereas the public school kids arrived a bit hungrier for the college experience, and got more out of it. YMMV, but my takeaway was that I wanted my kids to make the most of a good public school, and then take it from there in college. Early days yet, but so far, so good.
“Yes “good” is an individual definition. Mine may be top 500, yours may be top 50, and to another person it might be top 5. We all want to be as good as possible.”
The person who defines it as top 5 isn’t dealing in reality, though.
You’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Most people would kill to be in affluent public school district like you are. In the absence of some extraordinary circumstance, to spend money on a private school which would substantially reduce your college fund makes very little sense. If you were saying that the $120k was a drop in the bucket, fine, but it’s not. You give your child MORE choices with more money in the college fund. Honestly this is close to a no-brainer.
@mathyone It seems your school is better than mine. So, I question the validity of the -1, 0, +1, +2, etc. designations. I’m not convinced that my this particular kid can fair much better going to a private. I’m trying to make it work.
I’m not sure why you think our school is better. Your average student is a full grade level ahead of ours. That’s huge. Our school probably does better than many schools with comparable stats on college admissions because we have SES diversity, and I think we have more kids from higher SES, more highly educated families than is typical in that range.
Guess what, if you skimmed off the top 5% of freshmen from our school and sent them to a private prep school instead, you’d probably find that 20% of them got into top schools like that. School or student?
That said, of course I’d love for my kids to have the opportunity to be in classes surrounded by other kids that are so high achieving. But your local public school clearly has a much deeper pool of academically strong students. And $120,000 is a lot of money. My kid would also love to have a shiny new sports car…
Sorry to be daft, but what are these “plus rankings” you’re all referring to with regard to your local public high schools?
It’s a NYT article that features an interactive map. You can tell if your school is average, plus one, plus two, etc. I’m on phone so can’t link.
^Something the NYT cooked up (someone else but reported in the Times), see OP for the link. I suspect rankings of public schools measure something else, e.g., demographic and social economic compositions.