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IVY BOUND -- WHICH PUBLIC OR PRIVATE WILL GET ME THERE?
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Anonymous
Or if your overriding goal is an Ivy acceptance, spend PreK-8 getting your DC the best education possible, then for HS send your kid to the best school you can find where (a) he or she is likely to graduate in the top 5 of the class and (b) the other 4 in that group aren't likely to be legacy admissions to the Ivy of your choice. |
Anonymous
| Look, the bottom line is this...if your kid is truly smart enough to get into an Ivy, it doesn't matter if they go to private or public. You may have a slight advantage if you're coming from a well known private, but if your numbers (GPA, SAT, AP, etc.) are good enough you're going to get noticed. |
Anonymous
| Ok. I'll bite. If a boy, St. Albans. If a girl, either NCS or Sidwell. |
Anonymous
| If your kid is a legacy, and if your family has money, then do not worry about a thing |
Anonymous
Grades and scores are more likely to disqualify you than to get you into the Ivies. Generally, it'll be something else (or grades and scores in conjunction with other attributes -- e.g. legacy status, from an underrepresented geographical region) that gets you noticed and, potentially admitted. Smart's not the issue (high-performing matters more). Schools can make a difference, but it's hard to predict how (makes the best case scenario harder to attain, but least the worst case scenario looking pretty darn good). In the end, at least for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, your DC has to look special in some way (assuming non-legacy status). GPA and SAT scores, no matter how good, can't do that. |
Anonymous
Sorry, but this is just not true anymore. I know a guy whose family name was on a dorm and he didn't get into my (top 3) Ivy. |
Anonymous
| Were his grades and SAT scores pitiful? Did he have behavioral issues? |
Anonymous
I think they were actually fine, because he ended up at Dartmouth. |
Anonymous
Too many cousins. |
Anonymous
|
I find the preoccupation with the Ivy League on this board to be truly bizarre. Could it be a function of geography - the fact that D.C. is more "southern" than "eastern" and thus those eastern, Ivy League colleges have tremendous allure? I'm from New England, went to a NE boarding school , and have Harvard and Princeton legacies in my family stretching back five generations. But my family actually didn't care about sustaining any legacies - they cared about me and my siblings finding a college we liked and getting a good education. Do people on this board really think that Penn, Cornell and Dartmouth are superior to Williams, Wesleyan, and Stanford just because they're in the Ivy League? It's absurd. |
Anonymous
| In short, no. I assume that the majority of the people posting on this board are using "Ivy League" as a shorthand to include schools like Stanford, Williams, Duke, etc. |
Anonymous
|
I have to agree with 21:08. I'm in the same boat as her and NO ONE I know with a similar background thinks this way.
This is the thought pattern of someone who aspires to this arena, who thinks this will magically boost them into some velvet-roped world and always sees the grass greener on the other side. This is a person who lives for labels and not for substance. It is totally absurd to say that Dartmouth is not part of the "big 3". Saying this shows that you know nothing about these schools. They are all very different than each other and quite opposite in many respects. If you want Ivy, and want science, you will not be applying to Yale. And very few will apply to both Princeton and Dartmouth - two very opposite schools. These schools are not interchangeable with each other. The most important issue here, however, is what you are doing to your children. If you have this fixation, your poor child will feel forced to work towards these schools and feel like a failure if they don't get in. And if they do, and the school is not a good match, they will feel miserable for 4 long years. It has been, and should always be about the best fit for your child. Achievement and success are not limited to the Ivies. (And don't give us that song and dance about how Ivy degrees are so much more important in DC - they're not.) Your child has the best chance of success at a school that will feed their needs and inspire them to do great things. |
Anonymous
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That's because this board is filled with people who believe they somehow "just missed" the Ivies (however defined -- sometimes broadly as "the best schools" -- inc. Stanford, etc; sometimes quite narrowly as Harvard, Yale, Princeton) and feel that somehow the golden ticket or brass ring is eluding them as a result.
If you're from NE, you've seen lots of kids go to Ivies and not end up wildly successful in life. And you know the names of a lot more liberal arts colleges, than, say people from the Midwest or West do! At any rate, it's an outsider view of the Ivies and usually way off base about how to get there and what being there would mean. |
Anonymous
what a tragedy tragedy tragedy life is so unfair |
Anonymous
| The best way into an Ivy is being a serious legacy or a recruited athlete. My child was recruited as an athlete. She had really good grades and SATs -- but so did about 25% of her private school here. So, the athletic recruiting put her over into the accept column. |