Best private schools in NYC?

[Anonymous]

"I am a very recent graduate. Honestly this school is overrated. I could never understand the hype. The school gets by on its brand name and wealthy families. But it’s a toxic environment. Most girls are miserable. Girls would leave if their parents allowed them to. Please send your daughter somewhere else. There’re other girls schools that do a much better job a providing a nurturing, well balanced, happy environment This place is not worth it." -- this was a review on niche from a recent grad, one star.

[Anonymous]

Oh, sorry, just noticed -- the top five five star review are all from exactly 11 months ago. Someone in admissions must have told people to post. They all sound like canned reviews, with the type of talking points the school thinks parents want to hear "future-leaders" "great close knit community." Even the people I know who are happy with the academics don't think the community is close knit or warm.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, not to join the pile-on - I have nothing against Brearley, and suspect if this was organized it was a parents Facebook group thing and not a school thing - but it is a serious mistake for any private school to elevate Niche rankings.

I don’t think this is a widespread problem *yet*, but by their very nature Niche reviews are easy to fake and impossible to verify, and any school that rejects more students than it accepts is going to have a whole lot of people with grudges against it who might take the time to write a bad review if they thought it would make an impact.

So if your website touts your #4 Niche ranking or whatever then you’re pretty much begging people who are mad at you to do something about that ranking.

[Anonymous]

Agree with all of the above. Please don't send your kids to Brearley! (It will make it easier for mine to get in over the next couple years .)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So if your website touts your #4 Niche ranking or whatever then you’re pretty much begging people who are mad at you to do something about that ranking.

Just don't go looking at Trinity's Niche reviews...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with all of the above. Please don't send your kids to Brearley! (It will make it easier for mine to get in over the next couple years .)

Would be pretty funny if the Brearley Basher was actually just someone whose daughter was applying there trying to reduce competition

[Anonymous]

The new admissions department asked people to do this (I was told this by a parent who is there). They should have broken it up over time so it’s less obvious.

I like reading niche reviews because it always ends up with some kid who is clearly actually a kid talking about the food and is a good reminder of how these places are at the end of the day schools for kids. Also, I like reading employment reviews of these places on like glass door which often contain nuggets of info parents don’t think about when looking, including reviews of faculty interviews which reveal more than you think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The new admissions department asked people to do this (I was told this by a parent who is there). They should have broken it up over time so it’s less obvious.

Yeah, that's just a terrible idea all around - I don't know why Brearley of all places would feel the need to worry about Niche reviews, they could just put a big banner on their front page with the % of their graduating class that's attending Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Minus the kids who were legacies from their parents. At my kids, TT I was told it’s lucky my kid is a double legacy because if they weren’t they wouldn’t even be allowed to apply to a HYP. Actually, weirdly mentioned the former head of Brearley as someone who really kept those slots for big donors to Brearley and played particularly dirty pool for who was let to apply to those schools or who the school would endorse, application-wise. my kid would die before going to my alma for reasons I won’t go into here. But you can’t just look at their percentages. They also don’t publish how many of the kids going to Harvard have been there since kinder and what percentage of kinder does well in their HS. For all you know the kids who got into harvard are the ones who didn’t go to the school since K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Minus the kids who were legacies from their parents. At my kids, TT I was told it’s lucky my kid is a double legacy because if they weren’t they wouldn’t even be allowed to apply to a HYP. Actually, weirdly mentioned the former head of Brearley as someone who really kept those slots for big donors to Brearley and played particularly dirty pool for who was let to apply to those schools or who the school would endorse, application-wise. my kid would die before going to my alma for reasons I won’t go into here. But you can’t just look at their percentages. They also don’t publish how many of the kids going to Harvard have been there since kinder and what percentage of kinder does well in their HS. For all you know the kids who got into harvard are the ones who didn’t go to the school since K.

"Wouldn't be allowed to apply" sorry, how exactly would they prevent that? If I were a Brearley parent and they told me my daughter couldn't apply to Harvard, I would apply anyway, forward that letter to Harvard's admissions office as an explanation for why Brearley was withholding my daughter's transcript, and CC Brearley. If it was simply a matter of withholding an "endorsement" I would trust Harvard to see through that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Minus the kids who were legacies from their parents. At my kids, TT I was told it’s lucky my kid is a double legacy because if they weren’t they wouldn’t even be allowed to apply to a HYP. Actually, weirdly mentioned the former head of Brearley as someone who really kept those slots for big donors to Brearley and played particularly dirty pool for who was let to apply to those schools or who the school would endorse, application-wise. my kid would die before going to my alma for reasons I won’t go into here. But you can’t just look at their percentages. They also don’t publish how many of the kids going to Harvard have been there since kinder and what percentage of kinder does well in their HS. For all you know the kids who got into harvard are the ones who didn’t go to the school since K.

"Wouldn't be allowed to apply" sorry, how exactly would they prevent that? If I were a Brearley parent and they told me my daughter couldn't apply to Harvard, I would apply anyway, forward that letter to Harvard's admissions office as an explanation for why Brearley was withholding my daughter's transcript, and CC Brearley. If it was simply a matter of withholding an "endorsement" I would trust Harvard to see through that.

They can’t prevent you. I would imagine that that poster has zero affiliation with any private school. I would also venture to guess that the majority of the posts are based purely on rumor or shoddy data. However, in my experience, it is true that they don’t necessarily encourage certain people to apply to certain schools, and that’s pretty consistent across tt’s. They also have good reasons for it, too. Some kids simply don’t have the grades to be competitive and guidance can actually be really good at their job in some ways. In other ways, they can be terrible. During my time at trinity, they weren’t exactly encouraging to students who wanted to attend schools for fine arts-based courses, which was pretty demoralizing to some friends of mine who wanted to pursue those fields. But no school is capable of telling you where/how/why/when to apply to any schools.

[Anonymous]

these places horse trade. You can apply, but the school gives the thumbs up to only a couple. I am glad you have that much faith in Harvard’s integrity, but part of what you are paying for at these schools is the head of school who can call the admissions office at Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:these places horse trade. You can apply, but the school gives the thumbs up to only a couple. I am glad you have that much faith in Harvard’s integrity, but part of what you are paying for at these schools is the head of school who can call the admissions office at Harvard.

Harvard and these privates only care about money. That’s all any of this is about.

[Anonymous]

Legacy and donor advantage skews college stats in all TT/2T schools. I remember reading in a blog from one of premium college consultants that the legacy status on its own (without major donations) increases Ivy admission chances by a factor 4 (i.e. 400%). It is an opinion/intuition, not science but it sounds plausible.

It is also true that some (many?) TT schools encourage bright unconnected students to maximize their chances and play it safe by - say - ED’ing University of Chicago or less popular Ivys instead of going for HYP.

[Anonymous]

Harvard is the school that docked asian students on “personality points.” there are all sorts of games they play. I don’t know anything about Trinity, but it’s so known at Brearley I once heard my friend’s daughter openly discussing a kid “who has a double Harvard legacy” with another friend in second grade. She was horrified but she says it’s really common with the kids.