<p>It is disturbing that someone that has the outward appearance of having " the correct education", has such a narrow & provincial view of others & cannot even apparently conceive that others will make different choices than they have. ( even with similar resources & information)</p>
<p>What a shock it must be to realize that the only one who can validate their choices are themselves- that others can make different decisions and end up at perhaps the same place or perhaps some place even * better*. :)</p>
<p>I am slightly embarrassed that I just spent five minutes reviewing this thread. I opened it only because I attended a highly regarded prep school, but apparently prep schools in the flyover states do not make the top anything. The elitism in this thread is amusing at first and then nauseating.</p>
<p>My older brothers went to the boys’ prep school next door to my girls’ prep school (now one in the same). They went on to Yale and WashU (with a transfer to UVa.) I was the newspaper editor and #2 ranked student in my prep school class. Due to family economic circumstances, I went to our state flagship instead of the Ivy where I had been admitted and was registered. The administration of the prep school saw it as a travesty–a waste of my 11 years of schooling.</p>
<p>However, I loved every bit of my experience, graduated in 3 1/2 years with no debt, have no regrets, and my degree from this flagship’s premier program has kept me employed for 34 years.</p>
<p>My husband is also a flyover state prep/boarding school grad and a Tulane graduate as is his younger brother. His parents and two older brothers are Vanderbilt graduates. We now live in a rural corner of a flyover state and our sons have excelled at a mediocre public high school with surgeon’s children and children who live in subsidized housing. The school sends maybe two of their 400 graduates to what CC calls “Tier 1 schools” per year. Our younger son could be one of those two this year. He has “the stats.”</p>
<p>Maybe his stats at a prep school would be a sure ticket into his dream school, maybe not. But in the long run, his exposure to a wider range of backgrounds and experiences may allow him to be a better supervisor or manager or professor in his chosen career.</p>
<p>Just had to get that off my chest. I love CC but sometimes it seems the posters here have no clue that life exists and students are quite successfully outside the east and west coast prep school/Tier 1 world.</p>
<p>I see a school like Harker is very achievement oriented or college matriculation driven. Considering its west coast location and short history, it is indeed doing a great job in placing its students into elite colleges like ivies+MS. OTOH, it is a different type of prep school than the east coast prestigious boarding schools, IMHO. I may be wrong, but it feels like if you are in an Andover or an Exeter, you are getting more than just selective college admission while in Harker it’s close to what you get. By that I don’t just mean the difference in academic training - though I am sure there is difference in that area as well, I have no doubt one can expect good academic training from Harker. </p>
<p>Does prep school help one get in elite colleges? I think Harker does more than its east coast big brothers. Why? To determine whether the school helps, you need to see how much effective college admission related support you get from your prep school that you wouldn’t get from a public school. In that sense, I don’t see the top prep schools in New England are as college admission focused as schools like Harker are, so I “estimate” less support from them than from Harker. Do prestige, reputation, and who-know-if-existent connections of these NE prep schools help? Maybe but it too complicated and nuanced for anyone to have a meaningful assessment. </p>
<p>As for the Forbes ranking, it’s using a simple formula with two elements only: total endowment and Ivies+MS matriculation. Harker is a young school so its endowment may not be on par with the ones on the list. Just hang in there and fight on! ;)</p>
<p>We looked at private and prep schools in our area when my kids were younger. They could not begin to touch what one of my kids needed academically. Prep school would have been a dreadful fit.</p>
<p>Princeton has a ton to offer, but we manage our time well so we can do all these things at once.</p>
<p>Also, I’m not against public schools. All I’m saying is that prep schools do give one an advantage provided he does well at that school. If you’re at the top of the class at Andover, it’s very hard to be shut out by elite colleges, whereas that can still happen if you’re at the top at a regular HS. However, if you don’t feel you will get top grades at a place like Andover because of the competition, you might be better off going to a regular HS and getting top grades there. I do realize prep schools are not a fit for everybody, even those who can afford it.</p>
<p>While these prep schools might have a country club atmosphere, they have been trying very hard to change that by providing scholarship to students of modest means. Every year, they recruit from the ghettoes of NYC, Chicago, LA, Detroit, you name it, as well as from poverty-stricken schools near and far. Elite schools like Andover ironically have an anti-elitist atmosphere. It is not acceptable to flaunt your wealth at those places. Prep schools farther down the ladder, however, are a different story.</p>
<p>I guess it’s just hard for some people to accept that not everyone WANTS to go to HYP. My son had several friends (from his public HS) apply to Harvard and Yale - just to see if they could get in. They all did - and then they all turned down the ivies in favor of other schools.</p>
<p>To the contrary, I feel it’s fine that others make their college choices differently, without much regard for rankings. However, I also think it’s fine to value college rankings to help one make a decision. I’m fine with both approaches, but the people on this thread, on the other hand, have shown a clear preference, blindly dismissing the latter approach. I’m not the one who’s close-minded here.</p>
<p>Forgive me, nychomie, but I am having a lot of trouble with many things you state! </p>
<p>I’ll speak from a personal experience viewpoint. My kids went to demanding colleges and grad school. They are both masters of time management. They were heavily involved in ECs and were scheduled 24/7 in college with very very little free time. This was not due to no time management but due to scheduled activities. They would not have time to chat online. Are you in EC’s in college?</p>
<p>Elsewhere, he implies he’s a Princeton graduate. Yesterday, he was posting because it was something to do while watching football. Today, who knows?</p>
<p>My latest theory is that he’s a plant from Harvard or Yale, tasked with disseminating disinformation about Princeton students and thus steering more cross-admits towards Cambridge and New Haven. :D</p>
<p>Regarding high schools and rankings, I’m reminded of when California started posting API scores and rankings of public schools over a decade ago. When I looked at the subscores for different populations, I saw that one of the most highly ranked elementary schools in our area (and, indeed, in the district) had lower scores for kids from low income households. The important thing often is if the school will help your specific child. Rankings are only part of the story.</p>
<p>By his name, I’m guessing that he’s a NYC Homie. He went to an elite prep school. As has been said about someone else, I think he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.</p>
<p>What’s so funny is the presumption that only certain prep schools and HYP are “elite.” Too bad NYCHomie isn’t worldly enough to get that the “elite” don’t need to fall all over one another with their H, Y and P acceptances, because true elites don’t need to impress anyone, and they do whatever the heck that it is that they want to do.</p>
<p>They are. If you get to know me, I’m very egalitarian. My posts on here have been seriously misinterpreted. If you’re not sure of my views, let me know what you think they are, and I’ll let you know if you’re right. In most cases, you will find that my actual views, including those I expressed on this board, are very much egalitarian.</p>
<p>I’d rather keep my identity as anonymous as possible. I’ve done a good job if I haven’t outed a profile of me in my post history.</p>
<p>We only know what you are posting and presenting of yourself on CC. Is it the “real” you? Several of your posts are contradicting and rather confusing. It might help if you give some general idea of whether you are a student or alum or parent, went to prep school or not, etc. to give some basis of context for your posts. If what you are posting is not the real you, let us in on the REAL you. :D</p>
<p>We all choose the degree of privacy and disclosure, and that’s the right of any poster here. By the same token, in order to give some validity to some posts, it works best when people are honest and forthright, rather than cloaked. One can be private and yet consistent and honest in their posts. When I post, what ya see is the real me. Are we seeing the real you? I have no clue who you are in terms of a general sense of age, background, or current situation in life. It makes it harder to take the posts as seriously.</p>
<p>When posters post inconsistent information about themselves, their past/present school, family, etc, whether it be for the purpose of “preserving anonymity” or what have you, it can be very frustrating for posters who are trying to help or to respond based on the content of the current thread and/or past posts. And when posters, like homie here, are provocative or play cat and mouse in their posting or in their selective responding, it simply adds to the tendency to assume that most said is disengenuous.
It just becomes a collosal waste of time.</p>
<p>My comments are directly in response to your posts on this thread so it shouldn’t be difficult to employ some of that critical reading you’re probably good at to read your posts here and see what image you’re projecting to several different posters here. If you can’t see this, then that’s another issue. </p>
<p>Look, we’re all very happy for the opportunities you and others who’ve attended a top prep school have had. Most people realize that attending one of these prep schools is only for the very small part of the population who happen to have been born into families (through no effort on their part) of means to pay for it (excepting some number of ‘full scholarship’ recipients who have the opportunity), who decide they want the kid to attend the prep, and who either live in an area with the top prep school (mostly in the NE) or are willing to have their kids no longer live with them and go off to the school on a boarding basis - something many people would never do regardless of their wealth. Note that I didn’t say that it’s for the most intelligent, knowledgable, and mature kids since that’s not the sole criteria to attend these schools - money plays a key role. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that many or most of the kids attending the prep aren’t intelligent, knowledgable, and some may be relatively mature, but those attributes apply to large numbers of kids at ‘regular HS’ locations throughout the country as well and aren’t the exclusive domain of the prep school. You’ll likely meet some of these at the college you attend (Princeton?) and hopefully will learn that even when not given the edge of a prep school education some of these people from the ‘regular HS’ can also be intelligent, knowledgable, and perhaps even more mature given a possibly more diverse background.</p>
<p>Quotable of the day. If I understand it correctly, it means that he got sent to a preppy school and went onto an ivy and thinks he’s smarter than others.</p>