<p>The WSJ has an article today entitled “Anxiety High: Moving for Schools.” It tells the stories of several families. One family moved from LA to Boston so their daughters could attend a private school. They sold their house and are using the proceeds to pay for the $56000 a year tuition bill. They now live in a two bedroom apartment. The school, The Winsor School, sends approx. 1/3 of its grads to the ivy league. Another family decided their children should attend Germantown Friends School in the Philadelphia area. At the time, they lived in Brooklyn. They moved to rural PA and the mom commuted 5 hours a day to NY for a year and a half. THe dad became a stay at home dad so he could drive the kids to school. The WSJ says that “A number of school officials hail parent’s involvement, saying it reflects a growing realization of how important it is to find the right school.”</p>
<p>So, what would you do for the right school? Is there really any such thing as “the right school.?” Do kids need a specific high school to be successful?</p>
<p>If the aim is to get kids into an Ivy, and not the best possible HS education, and the kids is somewhat self motivated and has great SAT scores, I’d move to North Dakota or Idaho!</p>
<p>the O’Gourmans left San Marino, Calif, which has one of the top public high schools in the state, and sends kids to the Ivies and Stanford every year. Definitely not 33% to the Ancient Eight, of course, but then, I’d gather that it’d be an extremely rare Calif HS that had a third of its class want to leave the state.</p>
<p>I guess the kid from Brooklyn couldn’t get into Brooklyn Tech. </p>
<p>These officials “hail parents involvement” G-d Help us all- especially the kids. This micromanaging of these kids lives (and the rest of the family) truly disgusts me.<br>
And 2boys- I think you’re right-if you are going to move, I too would go to another underrepresented state like Idaho or ND.</p>
<p>Just what the Ivy’s/AWS need- another kid from Boston or Germantown Friends.<br>
Geez!!</p>
<p>We did nothing to get the kids into the right high school. We sent them 'round the corner to a School That Apparently Leaves Children Behind, with an average SAT rarely heard here in CC world. Somehow, they survived it.</p>
<p>That’s an extreme example but I’ve known people who moved to different states and to different areas within a state or county due to a perceived difference in the school systems and schools themselves. These people in the article will be quite disappointed if they end up finding out they weren’t able to get into their target schools despite the amount of money they’ve invested at that point.</p>
<p>I considered moving within the county to an area with a better HS than where I live but in the end stayed put. I’m still not sure what the best decision would have been.</p>
<p>They could have sent their daughter to Marlborough, in LA, with the same result (not to mention Harvard-Westlake and Polytechnic which is about ten minutes from their old San Marino home). And, while you’d think the kids from SoCal wouldn’t want to leave the state, it’s the rare kid at our school who doesn’t want to go back east for college!</p>
<p>I have heard of people moving within a state or even across the country for special education services. Some public school districts provide free services that are unavailable at almost any price in other parts of the country. When we moved to the New York City area, local public schools was a very big part of our choice of town, but I don’t think I would move to another state solely for high school. I would send the kid off to boarding school long before I would move closer to a private school.</p>
<p>Prefect: Moving across the country for high school is just one more VERY SAD example of parents going WAAAAAAYYYYYYY overboard with the whole college thing. It’s no wonder that there are so many adolescents who fall victim to depression, eating disorders, anxiety attacks, perfectionism, low self-esteem, etc. All in the name of an Ivy League education. What a waste!</p>
<p>Those of you who are familiar with my posts know that I love to use this expression: It’s not WHAT the Ivy League colleges are teaching that results in their graduates success…It’s WHO they are teaching. The students sitting in Ivy League classrooms would be equally successful professionally even if they attended less prestigious schools because a student’s success can be attributed to the qualities they bring to college (intelligence, motivation, character, etc.), not the college they attend.</p>
<p>The exact parallel holds true for the fancy private schools. The “gatekeepers” at those schools admit only the cream of the crop (the kids who are Ivy League material to begin with). So, of course they have a great placement rate into the “elite” schools. Again, it’s not the private school that is the reason for these students getting into the Ivy’s. It’s the qualities of the students themselves. They would have gotten into an Ivy League school even if they stayed at their public high school!</p>
<p>However, in the case of the Winsor school (a girls school, by the way), the entering class is grade 5.</p>
<p>I don’t know what percentage of the graduating class starts this young; there is no boarding, so it may be quite high. But one could argue that it is not that easy to tell which applying fourth graders will end up being stellar students, and therefore the actual education at Winsor is a significant contributing factor to their students’ success.</p>
<p>One girl from my S’s public k-8 school went to Winsor. She was smart but quiet; her parents felt she needed more support than what she would likely encounter at our public high school where she could easily be passed over. She is now attending HYP. Winsor has an excellent reputation, and part of it rests on its nurturing climate. I have heard from the neurobiologist father of one girl that it is stronger in the humanities than in math and sciences.</p>
<p>While I agree with marny’s post about the geographical risk in this case, ucla_dad reflects the sentiments of many in his and other States who have already seen the handwriting on the wall. (Now reduced to graffiti.)</p>
<p>I don’t know about the Marlborough School one poster mentioned, but as to being able in general to “send” a student to an excellent public, good luck, even if you move next door to the school. The ritziest neighborhoods North of there, consisting strictly of mansions, are not guaranteed to go to the schools they’re paying for. Demand is so intense that lotteries are in place even for these, as well as waiting lists.</p>
<p>Had my children not been lucky enough to go privates with fin. aid, we probably would have moved out of State ourselves, because of the quality of preparation for college.</p>
<p>A family decision to move OOS is of course an OK thing- if it also encompasses the parents needs and desires to change jobs, sell a house, etc. But if the main focus (as it seemed from the initial posting) is to get a kid into a HS to improve chances to get into an IVY, is way over the top.
I can also see this leading to dire consequences for the kid.
A move to another location to acquire special ed needs at a particular school is much more understandable (IMO). At least that is done out of necessity. </p>
<p>So what happens if the “family” makes the sacrifice - and 4 years later they realize that their precious child is an average kid and only gets accepted to BU or (OMG) U.Mass/Amherst. (now don’t all get huffy- my kid is at SUNY Cortland)
How is that child supposed to repond? Somehow these type of parents will wind up doing a number on their kid that will certainly lead to depression, low self esteem etc. and other conditions that old but wise mentioned.
A move solely to try to get a kid into the right HS, just seems to place a very unfair burden on the kid.
Haven’t these people heard of boarding school?? I think there is more to these parents (and this story) than meets the eye.</p>
<p>People are whacked if they think attendance or graduation from an elite secondary school will command admission to an elite college. I have waaaaayyyyy too many anecdotal stories to dispute that claim.</p>
<p>It is very possible that these parents are overprotective and have heard negative stories about boarding schools. So they want to keep an eye on their daughters and only send them to day school (and an all-girl school at that).</p>
<p>San Marino has homes that are easily in the seven figures by now. Moreover, San Mario HS is, by definition, their local HS, so admission would not be an issue. SMHS is #5 on the state’s academic index, just a few notches down from SF-Lowell; 90% of kids go to four year colleges. But, it is competitive as heck - perhaps it was that intense competition that the parents were moving away from?</p>
<p>Also, as I said earlier, if their goal was to get their children into a private school which sends 1/3 of their graduates to Ivy League schools they could have sent them to Polytechnic in Pasadena which ranks #1 in California for sending students to Ivy League schools. I question moving across country to accomplish something you could have done by applying to a school down the street (unless they didn’t get into Poly?).</p>