<p>How well-prepared are you going to be for that Ivy you might get into out of your public high school? Will you be as good a writer as you would coming out of a prep boarding school? Will you have had classmates pushing you to debate concepts and take on new challenges? Will you have close relationships with teachers who will encourage you to pursue new fields and help you determine where your real interests lie? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, then maybe you have a public school that is different than most. I know the experiences my kids had at boarding school went way beyond anything they would have had at our particular public school (except they didn’t get to go through metal detectors…), and these experiences prepared them in ways that are not quantifiable.<br>
There are a lot of public school kids who manage to be at the very top of their class and get high SAT scores who decide they “want to major in finance and be an investment banker”. Do they have any idea what an investment banker does or what economics really IS?? Maybe at boarding school there is a lecture series where business people come in and actually share career information and paint a picture of what different fields of study really involve.</p>