The Death of Private School As We Know It

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Im sounding the alarm. The end is near.

For any one of you paying full tuition at a Private School for college admissions purposes (hoping you'll get into a better college), you are 100% wasting your money. I have several children in Big 3's and unless you are URM, QuestBridge, Athlete or Legacy - you are completely wasting your money. No one cares that your school is tough. That a 3.7 is really great. No one cares about ACT/SATs anymore.

You are wasting your money. 100%

The college admissions process is now washed of achievement. And there is backlash against wealth and privilege.

Dont do it. Dont waste your time. And your money. And stop perpetuating the dummying down of our system.

I wish someone would have told me 3 years ago before I enrolled my kids. Total waste of money.

For about the fifth thread on this topic -- we do not send kids to private to get into a better college. That factors into it zero. Probably would do better if at public. Not why we are there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh welcome back! It’s the lying troll who has _several_ kids at multiple different big 3 school. Is that, like, six kids? Seven?

+1. OP is a troll. Always amusing to see the many public school moms who eat this stuff up and absolutely flock to these types of posts to pile on. We get that you’re happy with your decision. Good for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Privates work better with athletes since colleges can see that the athlete can handle more rigorous course work, but for everyone else private schools don’t give much of an advantage with admissions.

Agree with this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s killing private schools is the tuition. It’s creating a barbell effect where only extremely wealthy families and those on financial aid can attend. Kids of journalists, government workers, and not-for-profits, not so much, and that makes for a less appealing school environment.

The college admissions bump comes from being able to apply ED because you were full pay at your private and will be full pay at the university.

This is the reason we ended up not sending kids to private, though I will admit that I still struggle with the decision to reject. However, I didn't think that the student body was diverse enough financially or intellectually to warrant the astronomical tuition. Many of the parents in our neighborhood are lawyers, engineers, researchers, etc., and are well educated and value academics. We all send our kids to public. The privates that we looked at had student bodies and families (that we know personally) which are incredibly wealthy, of course, but lacked the diversity mentioned above. That alone makes me question the value of $50K privates for a family who does not already have millions at their disposal in the bank.

Thanks for the post, OP. I still struggle with the decision and often wonder if we made the right choice.

[Anonymous]

I teach in a public school and have seen the behind the curtain. It’s just pathetic. We basically beg students to come to school at this point. When they show up, they sleep, play on their phones, socialize. They pass the vast majority of them because it would look bad if too many kids failed. It was bad before the pandemic but it’s really bad now. My kid could go to my school and be the #1 student in the grade. I’d never send him to a public school. I agree that the expectations in private school are so much higher. I work two jobs to send him to private school. I’d work a third job if I needed to.

[Anonymous]

The early admissions decisions coming out of NCS and STA right now are very impressive so I am not sure that things have changed that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of absolute nonsense flying around in this thread.

Because schools publish admissions, and at least my school shares in one way or another specific students with specific colleges so you can tell who was URM/athlete/legacy/etc, I am really confused that people think it's possible that parents don't understand the lay of the land by the time their kids get to junior year. In many cases, these kids have been in the same school since pre-Kindergarten!

Parents know. It's not a last minute surprise that the majority of the class isn't going to an Ivy.

I don't think you really know until it actually hits you in the face.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The early admissions decisions coming out of NCS and STA right now are very impressive so I am not sure that things have changed that much.

Care to give us a taste?

[Anonymous]

I think OP is right.

[Anonymous]

There are kids who do fine in public and don't need to go to college to make a good living; same for kids in private. Hard to believe that people pay for something their kids don't really need. Don't let schooling waste your child's time and family's money.
Getting a good education and/or graduating from good school in order to make money is so 1990s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is an interesting contrast to of all the threads bemoaning the poor admissions from the top publics in the area (Wilson, BCC, Whitman, etc) and the constant drumbeat on the public school threads that the only way to get your kid into a top college is to go private.

Looks like there are no easy answers! No one is happy with their kids' schools right now

Actually, if you can read, most of us private school parents are happy because we aren't looking for ivy admission.

[Anonymous]

Our (Baltimore) private ha a banner year in terms of admissions last year, and I suspect that the dc private schools did just fine. The era of a large percentage of kids going to ivies ended a decade or two ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume if anything, private school will hurt my kids’ chances in college admissions because they will have a lower class ranking. The flip side is they’ll end up better educated and more well-rounded than they would have had they gone to public school, so we’ll take the trade-off.

+1000

They'll also have a much better 13 years of school before going to college. Why people don't understand that that outweighs four years in college I don't know.

I came on to say just this. Come on. Everyone here went to college. It’s not irrelevant to various things, including grad school prospects, and it tends to be fun and somewhat formative. That second point is true wherever a kid goes, so long as it isn’t their parents’ basement. But did anyone here really think the prestige of their college was the make or break for work ethic? Love of learning? Learning to work as a team? Forming your basic values? Those mostly happen before college. Even if some things change in college—political views, etc—they’re changing from a baseline that was already formed. K-12 forms you—far more than college. K-12 is not a mindless path to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume if anything, private school will hurt my kids’ chances in college admissions because they will have a lower class ranking. The flip side is they’ll end up better educated and more well-rounded than they would have had they gone to public school, so we’ll take the trade-off.

+1000

They'll also have a much better 13 years of school before going to college. Why people don't understand that that outweighs four years in college I don't know.

I came on to say just this. Come on. Everyone here went to college. It’s not irrelevant to various things, including grad school prospects, and it tends to be fun and somewhat formative. That second point is true wherever a kid goes, so long as it isn’t their parents’ basement. But did anyone here really think the prestige of their college was the make or break for work ethic? Love of learning? Learning to work as a team? Forming your basic values? Those mostly happen before college. Even if some things change in college—political views, etc—they’re changing from a baseline that was already formed. K-12 forms you—far more than college. K-12 is not a mindless path to college.

x1000!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the 2021 admissions from a Big3 (does not included multiple admits at many of the schools). Is there one college on this list that you wouldn't be happy that your kid is attending?
Personally I think it's awesome and guarantee that my kid will attend a decent college---never mind that they are also learning to to write well and think critically.

Boston College
Boston University
Brown
Bucknell
Colby
Colgate
William and Mary
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Georgetown
Georgia Tech
Harvard
Johns Hopkins
NYU
Northwestern
Oberlin
Princeton
SMU
Stanford
Syracuse
Tufts
Tulane
UCLA
Chicago
Michigan
Penn
Richmond
Sewanee
USC
St. Andrews
UVA
Wisconsin
Vanderbilt
Wake Forest
Washington and Lee
Wash U
Yale

Is this the complete list?

Yes, complete list from alumni magazine this month

this list looks like the list from my nephew's class at a public high school in howard county except it was a bigger class so 2-3 liberty university (shudder) and like 10 to UMD, a few at towson/umbc but a there was at least one kid going to each of these places plus some to slacs. i think there was one person going to Mcgill not St. Andrew but this was river hill high school so i dunno if "big" 3 is worth it for college admissions alone. How prepared you are when you get there is a whole other consideration. . .