Big 5 = "most desired" schools, not necessarily "the best"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did look at ratios a bit to think through the GDS vs "Cathedral Schools" issue, though I had to estimate the size of NCS's senior classes (anybody actually know?).

Article appears to list an average class size for most schools: http://www.electricprint.com/edu4/classes/readings/edu-eliteschools.htm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did look at ratios a bit to think through the GDS vs "Cathedral Schools" issue, though I had to estimate the size of NCS's senior classes (anybody actually know?).

Article appears to list an average class size for most schools: http://www.electricprint.com/edu4/classes/readings/edu-eliteschools.htm

NCS has about 70-75.
STA 80-85.
SFS 125
GDS 115

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: If you, like seemingly so many others on this thread, only evaluate a top school by how many eggheads - pardon me - National Merit Scholars a school graduates... then you are likely a geek in good company.

I'm with the PP who believes a top independant schools education is SOOOO much more than just academics, it's the full package of experiences that you are paying $30k per year, per child, for.

Otherwise, by the data shown above, you should save the $400k-$1.2M in tuition ($30k x 3 kids x 13yrs) and send your kid to a top public.

(Not the PP.) I want excellence along multiple dimensions. But if a school does not cut it on academics, I don't view it as a "top" school, whatever you might think.

I value the individual attention etc. that that my children are getting as part of the package. However, at $30+K per child per year there is absolutely no excuse for a school which is failing to be academically competitive with a top public at the top end of the ability scale.

[Anonymous]

What I don't get about everyone throwing public schools into the mix is that many of us don't have the option of sending our kids to high quality public schools; we live in the district and are not in a position to relocate. So the comparison relevant to us is to other privates.

[Anonymous]

I am pretty sure that St. Anselm's (a very small, Catholic boys school in DC) has the highest percentage of National Merit Scholars. True?

[Anonymous]

If you are right that St. Anselm's is in DC, then it did not have any National Merit semifinalists last year -- it was not on the list. And a school needs semifinalists to have NM "Scholars." (So it's not that they had no semifinalists because their kids all went on to become Scholars.)

Actually, semifinalists is arguably the "merit" cut -- after that it comes down to who sponsors scholarships and what relationship students have to sponsoring institutions. (There's a minimalist cut to finalist -- 16,000 SF become 15,000 F -- but no list. NM "Scholars" are the ones who get $$). (There's a cut lower than SF called "commended," and it's nation-wide, but I think that's another case where there doesn't appear to be a publicized list.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: If you, like seemingly so many others on this thread, only evaluate a top school by how many eggheads - pardon me - National Merit Scholars a school graduates... then you are likely a geek in good company.

I'm with the PP who believes a top independant schools education is SOOOO much more than just academics, it's the full package of experiences that you are paying $30k per year, per child, for.

Otherwise, by the data shown above, you should save the $400k-$1.2M in tuition ($30k x 3 kids x 13yrs) and send your kid to a top public.

(Not the PP.) I want excellence along multiple dimensions. But if a school does not cut it on academics, I don't view it as a "top" school, whatever you might think.

I value the individual attention etc. that that my children are getting as part of the package. However, at $30+K per child per year there is absolutely no excuse for a school which is failing to be academically competitive with a top public at the top end of the ability scale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I don't get about everyone throwing public schools into the mix is that many of us don't have the option of sending our kids to high quality public schools; we live in the district and are not in a position to relocate. So the comparison relevant to us is to other privates.

So by that logic, we really should expect the raw number of merit scholars at the top DC privates to be very high - as, unlike their peers in MD and VA, they are not competing with top public schools for the smartest kids. Frankly, under that logic, I'm surprised then that the raw numbers of Merit scholars at these schools is not higher. Look how many are at TJ.

[Anonymous]

You really can't compare TJ with any other schools. It offers a focused program with grueling testing and admissions. If you don't cut the testing, which is only part of the whole admissions picture, you are automatically out of consideration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I don't get about everyone throwing public schools into the mix is that many of us don't have the option of sending our kids to high quality public schools; we live in the district and are not in a position to relocate. So the comparison relevant to us is to other privates.

So by that logic, we really should expect the raw number of merit scholars at the top DC privates to be very high - as, unlike their peers in MD and VA, they are not competing with top public schools for the smartest kids. Frankly, under that logic, I'm surprised then that the raw numbers of Merit scholars at these schools is not higher. Look how many are at TJ.

There are merit scholars from MD and VA in the DC privates numbers. TJ has about 450 students per grade - no legacies, no big donor families, no entrance from kindergarten. Plus it has a larger pool of candidates and sports teams are not as intense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I value the individual attention etc. that that my children are getting as part of the package. However, at $30+K per child per year there is absolutely no excuse for a school which is failing to be academically competitive with a top public at the top end of the ability scale.

The "excuse" is size. And it's directly related to the individual attention. Competition is a function, in part, of cohort. And cohort in private schools is restricted both by scale (125 kids in a class for 600+) and by income. Families who can/will spend $25,000+ per year per kid for private school are comparatively rare. Even if people whose earnings are in the top fraction of a percent of the population have kids who are 5x as likely to be highly gifted as kids whose families have less incomes, those extremely affluent families are still only raising a very tiny fraction of highly gifted kids in a particular cohort.

In other words, when you send your kids to an expensive private school, you're sending them to school with the richest kids, not the smartest kids. And if you're sending them to a top private school, they'll be with the smartest rich kids. But, again, that's a tiny group to begin with and it's spread thinly among a number of privates in the area rather than concentrated in a single magnet program like TJ.

I agree that private school is not worth it to me unless its academic program is significantly better than programs at the public schools available to my kid. (That said, I could certainly move to Fairfax County for TJ if I can afford to live in DC and pay private school tuition!) But I do think that it's unrealistic to believe that any private day school could match the resources (including classmates) of a program like TJ's. It's not the same clientele/market. (Most private school tuition paying parents don't actually want a fiercely competitive purely meritocratic math and science-oriented education for their children).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I don't get about everyone throwing public schools into the mix is that many of us don't have the option of sending our kids to high quality public schools; we live in the district and are not in a position to relocate. So the comparison relevant to us is to other privates.

So by that logic, we really should expect the raw number of merit scholars at the top DC privates to be very high - as, unlike their peers in MD and VA, they are not competing with top public schools for the smartest kids. Frankly, under that logic, I'm surprised then that the raw numbers of Merit scholars at these schools is not higher. Look how many are at TJ.

Again, Blair has 700 graduates for this year. St. Albans has 80. I mention that because that's the one I know, but I know Sidwell is nowhere close to 225, which is where it would need to be to give the same ratio of NMS finalists as Blair. Why are you thinking the comparison needs to be about raw numbers and not percentages?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did look at ratios a bit to think through the GDS vs "Cathedral Schools" issue, though I had to estimate the size of NCS's senior classes (anybody actually know?).

Article appears to list an average class size for most schools: http://www.electricprint.com/edu4/classes/readings/edu-eliteschools.htm

NCS has about 70-75.
STA 80-85.
SFS 125
GDS 115

Does this resolve the argument, occurring on a few threads in this forum, that SFS and the Cathedral schools are distinct from and superior to GDS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last year's "big 5" National Merit semifinalists

Sidwell 18
Gds 14
St Albans 10
NCS 9
Potomac 6
Maret 2

Drop in the bucket compared to TJ (or Blair which had 43, I think). Supporting the point that public magnet is probably the way to go if what you are looking for is a critical mass of high-performing kids with similar interests.

Also suggests that Big 3 makes more sense than the Big 5. But that's only if you're asking where the kids who do best on aptitude tests go/come from.

a PP just made an excellent point that you should expect the DC based schools to have more Merit Scholars - as they are not competing for smart talent like the privates in MD and VA. As to the above, sure seems that if TJ did not exist, Potomac would get a higher number of kids who are focused on the Merit scholarship.... given that TJ had like 150+ semifinalists. (by the way, the guy who ran and built TJ into a top school is now running Potomac).

Where are the 150+ "TJ like" semifinalists in DC??? Sidwell, GDS, STA, NCS, and Maret only have around 50 combined.

Shows the danger in trying to tier or rank schools as "best" based on one independent criteria alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You really can't compare TJ with any other schools. It offers a focused program with grueling testing and admissions. If you don't cut the testing, which is only part of the whole admissions picture, you are automatically out of consideration.

So you are arguing that it's the pool of applicants, rather than the school itself, that is largely responsible for the number of semifinalists? I agree with you, however that dismisses the argument that pp's were trying to make that you can rank schools based on this one criterion alone.

Frankly, if you try and argue it's the school, then you absolutly SHOULD be able to compare a top private with a school like TJ. Top privates have considerably more resources per student and provide more individual attention to students through smaller class sizes.

Sounds like we should focus the Big 5 discussion back to those schools which show theist demand for admissions, as OP suggested.