Lol, too many CC kids complain about that, ucb. “But my parents have been paying for all 3 of us at Pricey Prep. Why didn’t I get more FA?”
My kids’ prep was very realistic with college suggestions.
Is this the reality? The cost for the private high school corresponds to the parents’ annual income. The cost for the private college also corresponds to the parents’ annual income. And parent annual income usually increases every year. So the high school cost does not drain college funds.
@coolweather, some families are just above the income cutoffs for need-based FA at both Pricey Prep and the private college and haven’t saved for college because they’re tapped out on prep school tuition for multiple kids and have unrealistic expectations about college FA. Not the majority of prep school parents by any means, but there are some.
I’m in a bit of a unique situation because my parents are older and self employed, but my college fund did get drained by going to pricey private. I definitely don’t have the grades or work effort to show for it.
I’ll be sending my kids to public school no matter what.
@whatisyourquest I like that, “patently false.” I guess it is! I shouldn’t have said “all,” just writing off the cuff. But, many private schools do post their ivy heavy lists. And, my S was given a list that included Stanford, lol. And, it was heavily suggested he apply ED at an ivy where he’s a legacy. H and I did not think the school was a good fit for him, on the off chance he got in. So, at least in our experience, the school was pushing the higher rated schools.
It’s not just privates that publish the colleges where they send students. Our local public school publishes a list of colleges on their website each year. I’m sure they are thrilled that ivies and Stanford are usually on that list. What I did not know before last year is that all of those kids are athletic recruits. Kids with great grades and athletics…but still. The bright non-athletes go to plenty of top 20 universities but, before you dig deeper, you may be under the impression that your math bowl or science Olympiad star might go to Stanford. At far as I can tell, that has not happened in the last five years. So, it’s easy to have that expectation if you don’t hunt down the fact that athletes are taking the spots at the tippy tops.
Even when there is financial aid, the net price of a private high school is higher than that of a public high school that charges no tuition (and different private high schools may have different net prices). So it is certainly possible that, for a given family, spending on a private high school reduces the amount of money available for spending on college.
“My kids’ private and most of the top ones I know publish a matriculation list of ALL colleges. Parents would be wise to focus on the whole list not just the ivies.”
But when the name of the private high school is “Harvard-Westlake”…what are the expectations lol…
http://www.hw.com/about/HW-at-a-Glance/Matriculation indicates that the last five classes at Harvard-Westlake included one student each who matriculated to Montana State, Northern Arizona, Redlands, and Pacific, and three students who matriculated to Santa Monica (a community college). The biggest numbers of matriculants were USC (98) and NYU (89).
Does anyone really think that the students that go to Harvard Westlake are of the same skill set level as the students that go to Poly high a few miles away? I just cant imagine Snoop Dog or Cameron Diaz going to Harvard Westlake.
People who succeed big always overreach. I don’t at all believe overeaching is bad as long as you prepare for the worst scenario. Besides, the very attempt brings new insights. I think everyone should overreach with one college application. A way to go is one overreach and one underreach and then several in between.
My kids mediocre public school has a much more impressive list than the prep school I attended. (Our class had an amazing record, but once the boy’s prep schools went coed - they lost a lot of their strongest students - and some other things happened as well.) Many prep schools really try to manage admissions so that legacies apply ED and other students are discouraged, from applying to those schools. My SIL complained bitterly about what she experience at the (very highly regarded) school her son attended. He landed on his feet though - ended up at Rice which was not on the radar of students there, and had a fabulous experience.
There are many kids in prep school who are full pay or on full financial aids. By going to these prep schools, they see the opportunities, therefore pursue it, push envelope and take risks, fail sometimes in the process, but it is an extremely great learning experience, therefore push further and in return get more encouragement from school faculty who cheer them on sidelines. Parents are may be talking 5 to 10 minutes in a day. Not much interaction as they have faculty guiding them. Summer they do more stuff, meet more interesting kids and process repeats itself next year, this goes for college years too, yes indeed it is a lot of work but awards are there too, and it can only happen if there is inner drive to succeed.
This process happens at public school too, and one does not have to go to college even to get somewhere in life. But path becomes easier if you have gone to good places as one has a pedigree that opens the door. But that end there, one has to work throughout life to go somewhere.
It is a life long learning experience.
Adcoms know some students st H-W will be intentionally cultivated differently, some opportunities facilitated. Fine, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect their own activation. It’s not so simple to compare with the best at LB Poly.
Do prep kids always fit the image nynycasino gives us? Absolutely not. No way.
And though many who succeed big do overreach (not arbitrarily limiting themselves,) that doesn’t mean all kids who overreach will meet success (or are necessarily even qualified.) And that’s what I think this thread was after.
Well, they reach, typically knowing that they were/are reaching.
But the common situation of reaching while believing that the target is a “safety” or “match” is what this thread mostly is about. I.e. unknowingly reaching, rather than knowingly reaching (“I got rejected from all of my colleges including my safeties”).
I think it would be more accurate in that they are “assuming” a lot of things about “holistic” admissions. At a minimum most look at the stats for accepted applicants. However the real issue is, every universities “holistic” admission is particular to that school. Being able to accurately determine a particular universities ideal admission candidate is really not something anyone can do because its a moving target. Still most successful candidates have a good idea of what the school is looking for; which sometimes we refer to as “fit”.
To add to OP’s original list of reasons, we did not understand merit scholarships are often school/department specific. My son is a science kid who tries to pursue both science and dance. He has fairly realistic view of both his academics abilities and dance talent. USC and NYU were his ideal schools, offering strong academics and dance programs. We thought he would likely get scholarships because my daughter who didn’t have his academics got half scholarships to both universities 4 years ago. Very wrong assumption. For double majors involving dance, the applicant has to pass audition and get accepted at dance school first. He got into NYU, but with no scholarship. He was told NYU Tisch school of dance does not offer merit based scholarship and he would not be considered for merit scholarship at his second choice of major. As for USC, he was wait listed at dance school and his academic application was not even evaluated. For academics only applications he did not have this issue and got into one of his reach schools and all match/safety schools.
Financial overreach is a very big additional problem, like @SCMHAALUM said.
When I was first looking at colleges I went to aggregators like college navigator or college data and saw those reassuring numbers, “people with your income got on average $x financial aid from this school”. Some schools looked totally out of reach financially because they looked stingy with financial aid, on average. The income bands are also obsolete, they aggregate everyone who is $110k+ but plenty of people in the $111k are still eligible for substantial aid at various colleges, while others at the higher end of the band drive down average aid.
If you don’t run a net price calculator at each specific school you won’t know what your precise economic situation will give you with aid. And if you don’t look at a school’s specific scholarships and grants you will not know whether your child is a likely recipient of an easy to get cheap grant or will be competing against 1000 others for a really big grant.
And the net price calculators are more accurate at some schools than at others. And if you are self-employed or divorced many NPCs are wildly inaccurate.
So all of that can add up to selecting Podunk University as an admissions and financial safety, getting in, and discovering that the cheapest price they will offer is unreasonably high compared to your income.
lookingforward Smart and motivated kids are present everywhere in life. When I talk about prep school, I say that those tecahers when they get a motivated kid, they provide necessary resources at much better rate than a public high school could facilitate. That is why lot of us flock to CC in order to get information as how our kids can get into a better school. But life does not end with just attending college, one has to work after that throughout life.
The fact is you won’t find out you overreached until you really did overreach. Lol. Yeap, I really did think I was applying to a safety when I applied to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Berkeley or Pomona etc.