<p>“I guess the kid from Brooklyn couldn’t get into Brooklyn Tech.”</p>
<p>LOL. Good to see Tech being mentioned. I still think its the best in NYC. I know that should provoke some response from all the Stuy and Bronx Hi students/alumni.</p>
<p>marny,
I agree with you that it’s a weighty decision affecting a whole family. Had we viewed a move as essential, it would have required a lot of research & risk to include factors such as parental employability & other aspects of the surroundings (climate, etc.). Most people with a lot at stake in their current environment choose to work around disappointing schools because of that. If there’s no site-based affordable school that works, they often opt (in my State) for the homeschool option now.</p>
<p>And I certainly agree with the lack of guarantee regarding Elite admissions, particularly if the new area has produced students with much <em>better</em> educational backgrounds previous to the family’s move.</p>
<p>Depends on how dismal one’s local school choices look.</p>
<p>Blue,
Lowell is a reach. There is no guarantee of acceptance. You apply to get in. People do not understand that because there remain some excellent, even top-notch public schools in every State, in some States the competition for those is more insane than for the Privates. Owning land in the neighborhood merely puts you on a “possible” list: that would include owning a mansion. The only exception is where the neighborhood or small city is small enough that the (usually, few) excellent publics will serve all of the families unless all those families move out & new families move in, each with 20 kids. In neighborhoods like that, where there are no foreseeable restrictions or waiting lists for enrollment, the starting price for houses is way over a million.</p>
<p>burn:</p>
<p>of course, and Harvard Westlake is not a bad private choice either. Both may not be necessary, however, if the goal is the Ancient Eight, since the top kids from thier local public also receive plenty of acceptances to the biggies back east as well as to Stanford. The key, of course, is to be in the top 10 of that school. If maximizing Ivy chances is the goal, the real question is whether the girls have a better chance of being in the top 12 of their excellent, local public HS, or the top third of (fill-in-the-name) private. More importantly, (as others have noted) if the girls are only at, say, the middle of their private class, then they become just another northeastern kid applying…</p>
<p>cross posted with epiph: yes, I realize that Lowell is a lottery, city school, but my point was more concerning their academics; (I consider Lowell to be the top public in the state). However, San Merino HS takes all city residents, and is only a few notches down from Lowell in academic quality (and competitiveness).</p>
<p>
Well, I drive three hours a day getting D back & forth to her h.s. Tuition, fees, uniforms, transportation runs over $15,000 each year. It would be wonderful to have a good public within walking distance. Unfortunately, we do not. Our NJ county has no magnet programs, either. We fell hook, line, & sinker for the “great schools” line from realtors when we moved here 20 years ago. </p>
<p>We don’t do this with the ivy or elites as a goal. We feel that just as a college experience should place you with like-minded peers who value a love of learning, encourage the ability & desire to stretch & explore, and include faculty competent enough to set kids out on that journey, the H.S. experience should do the same. Our town doesn’t provide anything close to that. It’s easier to travel for four years than it is to pick up & move. (It might take me four years to clear the clutter out of the attic.) Luckily, there are good all-boy options that son can commute to when his H.S. years roll around. The boys schools also give merit $$, so maybe we’ll get lucky with cost, as well.</p>
<p>D would have been successful at the public. Perhaps the val, if she wanted to aim for that spot. But we know the choice we made is the best one for her.</p>
<p>Stickershock,
We also moved to a community where the schools were supposed to be “excellent” several years ago. We were very disappointed. The kids now go to a small private school close to home. It’s not considered prestigious or the best private school in our metro area. We’ve considered at various times one of the bigger name schools. However, like you, it would probably involve 3 hrs a day driving back and forth and about $18000 a year per kid in tuition. For now, we have decided that the other schools are not that much “better.” </p>
<p>I agree with the poster who said that many of the elite private high schools are gatekeepers. The school here that is considered the best…but an IQ test is part of the admissions process. So, the low to average student will probably never get in. Their average SAT score is in the mid 700’s for each section. However, these are kids who probably would have scored that well no matter where they went to school.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t move across the country ONLY to send my kid to a specific school. I just think that most communities have some viable options locally. If there were truly no local options I would consider something like EPGY online high school as one poster pointed out. Also, as many posters have said, going to an elite high school does not guarantee admission to an elite college.</p>
<p>You could move across the country to Kalamazoo Michigan if you wanted to get free tuition at the U of Michigan (assuming your child could be accepted at the U of Michigan)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kalamazoopublicschools.com/education/dept/dept.php?sectiondetailid=10657[/url]”>http://www.kalamazoopublicschools.com/education/dept/dept.php?sectiondetailid=10657</a></p>
<p>^^^ That’s kinda what I would do… maybe not across the country, but if it were convenient to move to a state with a great flagship public univ, like Michigan, California, Virginia etc, and I had say four kids nearing high-school age, I’d do it in a flash. Sometimes I wonder if people in those states know how lucky they are!</p>
<p>Marsden- sounds like a good idea to me too- Now I may be wrong and I don’t know where I heard this info–BUT I thought I read somewhere that if you are a resident of DC, you get instate tuition throughout the USA. </p>
<p>I might be totally off base, but I do think I heard that somewhere. Just wanted to pass this along as I see you are from DC.</p>
<p>Now don’t get too excited, because I could be totally incorrect!! It won’t be the first (or the last) time.
Marny</p>
<p>Re Post 27:</p>
<p>They <em>do</em> know, & that’s why families move to CA in droves, esp. recently. They often get educated in much better K-12 environments (the NE, overseas, wherever), then move just in time to establish residency for U.C.</p>
<p>I believe that a while ago there was a very long thread about people complaining that elite public and private h.s students are at a competitive DISADVANTAGE compared to if those who attend a high school that sends less students to selective colleges. You can look at it either way - students at a school less geared to selective college admissions may have to do more on their own as far as guidance, taking advantage of opportunities outside of school, knowing when to take SAT 2s while students at the h.s. more geared to selective college admissions may have better guidance counseling and more in-school ECs available, such as science fairs, etc, but may “stand out” less from the other students in the class. I believe that an able and motivated student whose parents are keyed into college admissions will do fine at either type school, as long as the h.s. is not truly deficient in its offerings (no APs, etc.)
My kids went to a huge “average” public h.s. not highly focused on selective college admissions. It is not considered one of the better schools in our area and I would say that many of its students are unmotivated, but there is a large enough peer group and broad enough offerings for those interested in academics and academically-related ECs. My kids have very different academic and EC interests, and sought to attend very different types of colleges. Both were admitted to excellent schools, although I will say that they received no useful guidance from their guidance counselors regarding college admissions.</p>
<p>
I’m sorry you feel that way. My kids both attended Calif. public high schools that are considered reasonably good but not at the top academically (state API 8 or 9), and they found themselves very well prepared for college. They were intimidated at first by some of the elite private schools attended by their college classmates - but once classes started it was clear that there was no differential. </p>
<p>My son, who went to the statistically weaker high school, had some amazing math and science teachers. In college, he was repeatedly complimented for his lab work – two college profs told him that he was much better prepared than the others in his class, who had probably had more text-book focused AP courses. My son’s high school didn’t offer any AP science courses at the time he was there, and they had a rather iffy integrated science program in terms of overall content – but he learned how to think, how to structure a scientific experiment, and how to document his work in lab reports. </p>
<p>My daughter started college with almost a full semester’s worth of AP credits – she only took 3 AP courses, but was able to easily get 4s and 5s on 5 AP exams – and she did well with advanced courses (geared for sophomores & above) that she took the first semester. </p>
<p>One of the biggest surprises my kids both remarked upon was how poorly prepared some of the private school kids were. I certainly am not saying that they were all poorly prepared – just that it was a surprise to see some kid who seemed to be on the lower end of the ability spectrum at a highly selective college and then find out that kid came from some prestigious prep school. You’d expect the public school kids to be struggling to keep up with their better-educated peers, but that simply is not the case. Of course there are also kids who are amazing and brilliant from private schools as well – I am not trying to put down the private schools, just saying that they are really no guarantee of college “preparation”. </p>
<p>I think public schools get a bad rap because of statistics and averages - if the average test scores at Suburban High are lower than the average scores at Magnet High or Ivy Wannabee Prep, then everyone assumes Suburban High to be offering a substandard education. But the reality is that there is a wider demographic at Suburban High, and by 10th grade, if not before, the more capable students have moved toward mostly honors-level courses, and are taking AP’s their final two years. There are many dedicated teachers who have high expectations, and for the most part these are the ones who end up teaching the APs & honors courses and higher level math. </p>
<p>So yes, my kids were sitting in some classrooms with other kids who were really poor students – there are always mandatory courses like Health that end up with a very heterogeneous makeup – but a good foundation for college is there for the students who want it. Now the story at Inner City High might be different – it is a scandal the way that resources vary among public schools – but I think it is reasonable to assume that most people with the financial means to relocate for the sake of their kid’s schooling probably are looking at Suburban High and not Inner City High.</p>
<p>Cal Mom’s experience with public high school education in California is similar to my kids’ experience in Pennsylvania. And, in our area, public schools are better than most or all private schools in some ECs such as instrumental and vocal music and drama.</p>
<p>calmom’s hs sounds very much like ours. At the low end, a too-high percentage of students do not pass the high-stakes exit test. At the high end, students are admitted into top schools such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc…</p>
<p>we also have many internationals moving into Calif public HS to take advantage of in-state tuition at the UCs.</p>
<p>MofTwo: It depends on how you want to guage your chances for rank – highly selective colleges will not go down far into the class at poor performing school, whereas they go deep into a competitive HS. For example, a poor high school in Los Angeles or Santa Ana may get their val & sal into Berkeley (or UCLA), and zero into an Ivy, but a top public in the state easily sends 30+ kids to the state flaghips, and ~10+ to HYPSM et al. However, GC efforts are limited, even at great publics, since the ratio is so high (500/1).</p>
<p>I am not talking about a poor inner city school but an average suburban school. In our graduating class of about 800, only about 50% go on to four year colleges and about 25% to community college. At our school, the top 5% is usually considered the top of the class (as opposed to the top 10% at schools where more students are highly motivated). This top 5% is still a fairly large group of about 40 students. Many of the top students go to our state university, and do not apply to private colleges so we cannot really know how many would have been admitted if they had applied. Top students who apply to private colleges have had good success - my daughter’s classmates are attending Penn (3), Cornell, Colby, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Univ. of Michigan, UVa, Wesleyan, Penn State’s Shreyer Honors College, Georgia Tech, NYU, among others. In other years, students have gone on to MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Stanford - almost any school you could name (though not many each year).</p>
<p>Where I live, which is a very affluent place, but certainly not Chappaqua or Scarsdale (average SAT around 1100’s or so), I think over 90% of kids go onto four year colleges, maybe 1-3 go into military, 5-6 don’t graduates because of a failed class or get kicked out. A minority go onto community college. This public school! Not too shabby. </p>
<p>We send about 7-8 to Ivy Leagues each year, if you count Cornell. (Ha.) We send maybe 2-3 at most to HYPSM out of a class of 230. I personally have felt my school not to be incredibly challenging. I procrastinate a lot, my attention often drifts in class, etc, but I still do fine. Despite in living in an affluent area where the vast, vast majority of kids graduate and go onto four year colleges, we are not academically cutthroat. At the very top, there are little spats over who gets to be valedictorian, etc. but nothing serious.</p>
<p>Last year: 1 Dartmouth (athlete), 1 Columbia, 1 Stanford (val), 4 Cornell. Majority of classes ends up at SUNY’s, BU, Northeastern, Stonehill, Fairfield, URI, etc.</p>
<p>I have yet to go to college and comment on how well-prepared my high school made me feel. I’m taking the usual Ivy-bound courseload at my school - 3 APs junior year, 5 APs senior year. So we’ll see. Anyway, my dad was exulting a little over how all he paid for was public school, and I still got into Harvard. I have to admit, it feels good not to go through ridiculous lengths to send kids to the RIGHT nursery school so they get into the RIGHT elementary school, so they get into the RIGHT prep school which gets them into the MOST PRESTIGIOUS college. Take that! :D</p>
<p>Lingbo, I’m glad your dad is happy with the public school – and he has every reason to be proud of your admission to Harvard. </p>
<p>From my daughter’s experience with her first semester at Barnard/Columbia (she took half her classes at Columbia, but Barnard’s grading is tougher, so you can take your pick as to which side of the street is tougher) – she had to work a lot harder than she was used to in high school, but part of that was fear – her perception was that she was doing worse than she really was. (She was agonizing mid-semester about whether she should opt for pass/fail grading in a course she ended up getting an A in). So this semester is far more relaxed for her, now that she has her confidence bolstered by her first semester grades.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything wrong in that – better to get off to a running start and find yourself ahead, than to lag behind. The main thing she did right was to be very disciplined about keeping up with her reading and other assignments, and she went to the TA’s or profs for help as soon as she felt she needed it. </p>
<p>But overall, she says that she finds college easier than high school. And I think she was definitely at a high school where she was under-challenged. It isn’t the level of the work – college courses are generally more demanding, with much higher expectations. But she feels that in college she just has much more time available to do all the work – in high school she would start at 8 am and not get home until 5 or 6, and then have homework to do for the next day, and she says she was always tired. Now she just feels like she has a lot more time and energy. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m just trying to say that I think you will do fine at Harvard.</p>
<p>I have always wondered about the figure of “1/3” of a private school going to the Ivies. I can easily believe that 33% of a class at a top boarding or private school goes to the Ivies, but how many of those are legacies, developmental admits and athletes?? I would suspect that a greater percentage of boarding or private schools would be legacies or developmental admits than just about any public school, no matter how good. Once you take those kids out of the equation – I wonder what percent of the class gets admits to HYPS.</p>
<p>calmom, you misunderstood my comment completely. You should have contextualized it within my comments about what we could afford, which was pretty dismal/scary. The Arts magnet was an option, but not for D#1, who was not interested (nor did we discover that she would have qualified until too late), and D#2 was definitely not interested, though was offered that option multiple times & I was content with that as a choice.</p>
<p>At the various public schools – again few & far between given our lack of mobility at the time - none was a high enough profile for D#1, who wanted & is receiving the college experience she sought. Her classmates in college have had outstanding secondary school preparation in schools in VA, MASS, etc., including but not limited to boarding schools.</p>
<p>Calmom: Wasn’t your d’s h.s. a magnet school? That’s not available to everyone. We don’t have them in my county, so there is zero choice of public school around here. It’s not just the stats that I researched. I know the val of the town public who went to Princeton two years ago. (Rare occurance.) Sal to Tufts. Both told me that they had to teach themselves the AP Calculus because the teacher couldn’t. That’s very common here, because teacher hiring has been based on nepotism & cronyism for decades. The school isn’t big enough to have that academic peer group that a huge public would. And admission into honors & AP level courses is also based on nepotism, so the mayor’s D can be the village idiot & still earn a seat in the classroom. As nobody is required to sit for the AP test, the teachers aren’t knocking themselves out to cover material. Passing rates are terrible. Every academic superstar has to fend for himself. Ex: A good friend’s D is a soph. When she took that CTY exam in 6th grade (or 7th? I don’t remember,) only 7 kids in the country had a higher verbal score. She’s an outstanding student, & I was passing on info that the GC in D’s school gives to us. Told her to see about SATIIs in subjects that she might be ready for. The public GC told the mom, “Oh, don’t bother with those. Only the ivy league schools want them.” Now, if anyone is a candidate for the ivy league, it’s this girl. Plus, the GC seems unaware that schools other than the ivies require them. This is quite typical. </p>
<p>Anyway, those who have good publics should count your blessings. No school is perfect, but some are dreadful.</p>
<p>MOT: The vocal program at our public is fantastic. D gets emotional every time we attend one of their performances, wishing she could be part of it.</p>