<p>Just wondering, as a college student myself, why there’s so much push to go all-out for the elite college. But no similar feeling toward getting in and attending an elite prep school.</p>
<p>I just realized this. Aren’t the situations comparable? I mean, besides college leading to a job of course.</p>
<p>I know tons of students who in high school wouldn’t have dreamed of attending an elite high school. Yet they all had dreams of going to an elite college “for all the opportunities” and “to be around the brightest and talented” and “to grow and mature intellectually and spiritually”. Hm.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Most parents don’t have the means to pay for the expensive private school (I don’t like the term ‘elite’ as applied here).</p></li>
<li><p>Most middle school kids aren’t focused on the stats of the HS and are more focused on attending school where their friends will attend, that’s close to home, that has sports they might be interested in, that has other programs (band, orch, etc.) they might be interested in, and that has other EC type programs they might be interested in - dance, drama, etc. They’re also usually more focused on skateboarding, surfing, going to the beach, hanging with their friends at the middle school age than worrying about what high end college they might get into and attending some expensive private HS.</p></li>
<li><p>There are a lot of public HS across the country that offer lots of AP courses and/or an IB program so the educational level of those who take these courses is high and is competetive for college admissions.</p></li>
<li><p>Attending an expensive private HS doesn’t matter so much since plenty of students who attend public, less expensive privates, and home school manage to gain admission to top colleges. </p></li>
<li><p>Employers and grad schools care about the college and what/how the student did at that college and don’t care at all about what HS the kid went to.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I just assumed most of the kids at these types of expensive private HS are there because their parents want them there - not because they’ve been dreaming of attending it or necessarily even want to attend there (for the reasons stated above).</p>
<p>In some of the districts in my wealthy suburban county, there IS a culture that worships the elite high school. Parents hopeful that their children will eventually attend elite colleges are devastated if their young children are not admitted upon their first attempt (usually as early as preschool), and will often try again after a year or two. In other districts, the cachet goes to the public school “gifted” program at the elementary level, and the AP tracks at the high school level.</p>
<p>Teachers and others who serve as gatekeepers to these programs often swagger in their positions of power, while many parents whose children do well in this early sorting can be quite snarky when around the “less fortunate.” Whole crises can unfold around the reading group a young child is assigned to, let alone whether a kindergartner needs to be held back a year for added maturity. Sometimes a child regarded as extremely “gifted” at age 5 turns out to be quite ordinary(or sometimes even “slow”) by the time they hit middle school or high school, in spite of early entrance to the “gifted” pull-out, or a child in an elite private school turns out to have an LD that was not detected upon admission and is asked to leave.</p>
<p>And, yes, among parents “in the know”, and students in private schools, there is definitely a perceived hierarchy of schools.</p>
<p>There is tremendous competition to attend the “elite” private boarding schools. The most competitive have acceptance rates under 15%. And it is the kids who want to go…just check out the prep school boards for proof.</p>
<p>I would question the premise that for most high school students there is the push to go “all out” for a selective college. In practice a very large percentage of college bound high school students go to their local community college, or a branch of their State University.</p>
<p>If you were to look at the statistics regarding incoming freshman at the most selective colleges, you’ll see that a significant percentage of students come from private college preparatory high schools. Clearly there is significant pre-selection going on for parents of very bright middle schoolers in choosing private versus public high schools. If you were privy to the buzz among those bright middle schoolers this week in some part of the country you’ll get a sense of the importance of private school admission decision to them. This is the time of year when the decisions come out.</p>
<p>There is a huge amount of attention paid to college-prep high schools where we live in Southern California. It’s all anyone talks about for years, once you’ve finished talking about where they’ll get in for kindergarten and until it’s time to talk about college. </p>
<p>Education-focused families here either find a way to live in one of the satellite small towns with good public high schools (and sky-high home prices) or find the money (or score financial aid) for one of the 12 (yes, 12) private college-prep high schools that kids in our community attend.</p>
<p>It’s a regional thing. In most of the country, parents who want a good education for their kids just move to the better school districts if they can. In some parts of the country, especially the urban areas with poor public schools, that doesn’t always work so well. The public HS that serves our neighborhood is a troubled place that locks kids in every day and has only a very small minority who attend college. So every single kid on our street went to or will go to a private. Sad but true.</p>
<p>^^^Yes. There is the “elite” private HS that gets 10-15 students in to Stanford every year (out of a class of about 80, many of whom don’t apply). There are a few other top high schools, and in the private middle schools in my area the race to get in to such schools mimics the college admissions process in many ways. Must have excellent grades, good teacher recs, strong extracurriculars, ace the essays and interview… things get very contentious right around now as acceptances come in. I did this process as an 8th grader and I have to say it would have been just as stressful as the college process had I applied to the same number of colleges and high schools (I applied to more colleges). I ended up choosing the public magnet with the AP program over the elite private, but such a culture worshiping the elite private high schools IS very, very evident in many places across the country. And many who can’t afford the privates aim fro the public magnet I attend, which still asks for grades and scores on a test in evaluating candidates. It accepts about 700 from 1900 applicants, so the process is very competitive and stressful for 8th graders. If you don’t go to this public school you’re looking at a HS where you’re prohibited from wearing certain colors b/c they’re gang colors…</p>
<p>Well then, why not ratchet it up and wonder about the pre-schoolers pining to get into THE expensive private Kindergarten (which no doubt has a greater percentage of admits to the expensive private HS which has a greater percentage of admits to the top colleges). Of course, we’ve read of the cases where there are parents caught up in this so I know it exists but on a lower scale (I hope).</p>
<p>In Chicago there are a handful of elite magnet high schools called “Selective Enrollment” schools. To get into these schools they take your 7th grade grades, your ISAT (Illinois State Achievement Test) score, and your entrance exam score for the school and use these scores to create one raw score out of 1000. But this score really doesn’t mean anything because, similar to college applications, scores alone aren’t guarantees. (There was an article in the paper about a year ago where some kid scored a perfect 1000 and got denied from the best school in the city.)</p>
<p>The competition to get into the top tier Selective Enrollment schools is worse than some colleges, with often 25-30 kids applying for every 1 spot. The top 3 schools in the state of Illinois (not top 3 publics, top 3 SCHOOLS period) academically are public Selective Enrollment schools, which is pretty great because I was able to get a fantastic high school education for practically peanuts. To get anything close to the academic quality of some of these schools, you’d need to be rich enough to live on the North Shore and go to New Trier, or rich enough to pay for your kid to go to Latin or UChicago Lab School.</p>
<p>The competition has been getting even worse now with the downturn of the economy. People can’t afford private school and Chicago Public Schools outside of the Selective Enrollment schools are abysmal, especially on the South Side. So everyone tries to cram their kid into one of the 5 good schools in the city. Something will have to give eventually.</p>
<p>Because the majority of the people in the country aren’t even aware of the existence of elite private schools when their local publics are such convenient options? I don’t know that many people outside of CC who dream of attending elite colleges either. Most of people I knew from high school went on to attend the local universities nearby in the area, if they chose to go to college at all.</p>
<p>The “elite high school” phenomenon may be more subdued because almost all students of such schools go to university; after that happens, their identification of “eliteness” or lack thereof becomes based on the university attended or graduated, not the high school.</p>
<p>But it is likely to be just as big a thing as an “elite university” for parents whose children are at high school entrance age, as the “elite high school” is often seen as a way to go to an “elite university”.</p>
<p>Note that some private high schools (even those whose course catalog does not suggest academic “eliteness”) cost more in tuition than the total cost of some good universities. In many cases, there is little or no academic reason to spend the tuition if one can attend a decent public high school. Parents who can afford such tuition probably live in areas with decent public high schools, so it may be more of a status symbol type of thing in many cases.</p>
<p>I’m with Fogcity on this one. There’s a whole lot of college-bound country out there that hasn’t heard of a whole lot of places mentioned with great reverence on CC. Isn’t there even a thread called Just Smile and Nod about all the comments made from us ignorami who’ve never heard of some ranked place junior is headed?</p>
<p>A friend of mine went to Pomona. Never even heard of it before we met. I know, around here, saying something like that is almost blasphemous. </p>
<p>Bottom line, there’s a subset of people who really care about the brand name of a school. There’s a subset who really care about private prep schools. I suspect where one lives has a lot to do with how important it is. In some places, there’s just no market.</p>