Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Anyone telling you you’re insane is insane. Do what’s best for your kid! My best friend who is incredibly talented / smart / pedigreed sends her child to a school considered to be second or even third tier when she had the option to go TT. Her child is thriving. I sent mine to a TT but only because it was the right one for her and don’t know if I would send her to any of the other TTs. Go with your gut and if you are truly unsure, ask your child’s head teacher for additional color on learning style (unless you’ve already had a PT conference in the last month or so).
This. I turned down Brearley a few days ago for a "2T" because I don't want my daughter crushed at a pressure cooker school while she is still so young. If she's genuinely capable, and not just a chatty preschooler who presents well in interviews, she will succeed regardless. My husband and I are public high school grads from the unwashed masses who went to colleges that all of you would be embarrassed to be associated with. His income is 8 figures and rising for no reason other than that he's brilliant and hardworking (and not to mention actually likable, which has played a huge role in his career success), which then lets me stay at home and give all of my attention to raising our kids. We have close friends from grad school who went to HM, Collegiate, and Trinity and are not even considering sending their kids there because they don't think the stress is necessary and do not believe their own life outcomes would have been materially worse without those schools. I have a friend who went to Trinity/Princeton who was in a mental health facility at one point and can barely function now.
All of this is to say that if your kids actually have the goods, they will succeed and go far in life. If not, no amount of scheming and machinations on your part will make them succeed, even with a Trinity/Harvard pedigree. All you should care about is that they are happy and healthy, because you can't control what ultimately happens in another person's life.