College Placement Disappointment from Big 3 Grads?

[Anonymous]

Umm pp --have you been to Wisconsin in the winter? Wisco is a great school -- but many kids from some of the top suburban publics in this area go there. So, if someone is going to pay the big bucks for Maret -- they're probably hoping for something bigger

[Anonymous]

There's a book called "The Price of Admission" by a local author. It is chock full of stories about top-of-their-class kids who were rejected by the Ivies in favor of legacies, big donors, and the rest. One story that stuck in my mind concerned a kid from a top boarding school, maybe Exeter, who was at the very top of his class but was passed over in favor of kids with lower GPAs because they had connections; also he was Asian, an over-represented group. He ended up somewhere like Penn State, and the book quoted his very bitter mom extensively.

Sometimes you can't tell how much in the book is just anecdotal. But there was such an avalanche of this type of story that you started to think there was something behind it.

[Anonymous]

Well said, 19:52. My dad also refused to pay for private school, and I had to take 1/2 my college credits at the local (crummy) university, b/c I was a liberal arts major and he anticipated "no return on the investment." Too bad he did not live to see me graduate magna from Harvard Law and clerk at the Supreme Court. Maybe he was right, b/c I did "ok" by his standards w/o the frills, but a great private school and 4 years at the college I loved would have been an investment in me as a person that would have meant the world to me!

[Anonymous]

Ok, I admit at the outset that this is probably more sour grapes than anything else. But from those soon-to be Big 3 graduate families, after spending over 300K on the private school "investment," please share stories where the investment, at least measured purely on college placement, turned out to be a bust.

Here's my story - Big 3 applicant rejected from UMD. We're MD residents.

If there were no significant issues such as prior felony etc it appears your child did not make the cut for UMD. What's the surprise here? Entitlement syndrome doesn't necessarily spill over to State educational institutions (similar to rejection for TJ or Blair Magnet).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If OP's kid was applying to the UMD "honors" program, I hear that's actually difficult to get into. I don't know the exact admissions stats, but apparently UMD has come up a lot in the past few years.

The fact is that no Ivy or other top college is going to accept more than a handful of kids from any single HS. So if all the kids at Sidwell are applying to all the same Ivies, and only a handful have the requisite athletic/legacy/urm(?!) or whatever hook, that can make it hard on the rest of the graduating class. And it's not inconsistent with the other PP who said that top colleges reaching down into the middle of the class rank, if they're looking for the athletes and legacies, so that even some at the top of the class rank might be left out.

19:39 -- what's an "urm"? That's a new one for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If OP's kid was applying to the UMD "honors" program, I hear that's actually difficult to get into. I don't know the exact admissions stats, but apparently UMD has come up a lot in the past few years.

The fact is that no Ivy or other top college is going to accept more than a handful of kids from any single HS. So if all the kids at Sidwell are applying to all the same Ivies, and only a handful have the requisite athletic/legacy/urm(?!) or whatever hook, that can make it hard on the rest of the graduating class. And it's not inconsistent with the other PP who said that top colleges reaching down into the middle of the class rank, if they're looking for the athletes and legacies, so that even some at the top of the class rank might be left out.

19:39 -- what's an "urm"? That's a new one for me.

Not 19:39, urm is an under represented minority.

[Anonymous]

'urm' is a new one on me too.

[Anonymous]

OP, I recently read an article about the trend now for state universities to put a new preference upon takingmany more students from outside their state. The reason is budget cuts and that they need the extra money. It could be as simple as that for your child.

[Anonymous]

Considering all of the cuts that public institutions are dealing with, I wouldn't be surprised if pulling in the higher out-of-state tuition was a consideration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering all of the cuts that public institutions are dealing with, I wouldn't be surprised if pulling in the higher out-of-state tuition was a consideration.

Probably right.

But I think that the point of the OP was that they could have found themselves in the same place and have had several extra hundred thousand dollars sitting in the bank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering all of the cuts that public institutions are dealing with, I wouldn't be surprised if pulling in the higher out-of-state tuition was a consideration.

Probably right.

But I think that the point of the OP was that they could have found themselves in the same place and have had several extra hundred thousand dollars sitting in the bank.

I'm with OP, wish I had saved my money.

[Anonymous]

Seems to me that it would be hard to judge what makes the most sense for your child, and most people will be wise to continue evaluating throughout your child's life. Maybe your 8-year-old is a perfect candidate for private school, and does well there. But when he reaches age 14, if his grades put him at the bottom of the class, and he's spending his time smoking pot and skateboarding, then you might as well save the money.

There are always going to be people who don't really take proper advantage of the opportunities their parents give them. That happens no matter where you are. It doesn't mean parents will (or should) stop trying to give their kids opportunities. You can only lead the horse to water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm with OP, wish I had saved my money.

I'm curious why? Was it because, in your judgment, the education wasn't $30K more than you could get in public, in terms of "extras" or simply challenge? Or because, as PP suggested, your kid frittered away the opportunity? Or because exmissions were disappointing?

There are many reasons to prefer private over public, or public over private for that matter. We switched from private to public -- in our case it was the comparability of the educations available (a top 3 school vs. MoCo magnets, but I realize not everybody lives in MoCo) . Plus the fact that we're not in the income bracket where it doesn't matter if we spend $30K on something we could get free at a similar (but certainly not identical) quality. Now that we're in public, I'm a little relieved that DCs won't be competing against all the legacies and politicos' kids for college spots - but that didn't drive our decision.

I'm just curious as to what drives the decision for people.

[Anonymous]

We live in DC pp -- so I never considered public.

[Anonymous]

Making it past the exclusivity barrier in private school admission does not mean every door thereafter is open. I have met way too many ivy grads that think all they need is an ivy diploma. There needs to be something besides the paper. Since I don't know the OP's child's "package", I can't tell you whether or not he/she should have gotten into UMD, but for heaven's sake, going to a big three is not the key to everything. If it were, I'd really consider more closely spending $500K+ for my kid to attend pre-k through 12.