I should have kept my kid at Wilson; college admits are much better than the Big3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Upper Class make up about 1/4 of top 1% of the greatest held wealth in this country.

But, they don't actively work to earn that wealth. Instead the money works for them and their descendants

They also serve as gate keepers on the reigns of what makes society function. Not politics per se, but the controlling interest on the boards of the most powerful Banks, Utility Companies, Weapons and Natural resource companies, Museums, Universities, Medical research institutions, the Intelligence community and the Foreign Service.

To the PP who bragged, " BUT, my husband made 2 million last year.... " well, you just proved my point. Your husband worked for that money- probably 60-90 hour weeks at that. Even billing $700/hr and closing major mergers - that is still a worker Bee. And your fixation on material possessions as a marker of social class distinction is the hallmark of the upper middle class that aspires to be more, but will always just be UMC.

Says who?

“According to a 2018 report from the Pew Research Center, 19% of American adults live in "upper-income households." The median income of that group was $187,872 in 2016. Pew defines the upper class as adults whose annual household income is more than double the national median. That's after incomes have been adjusted for household size, since smaller households require less money to support the same lifestyle as larger ones.”

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/14/how-many-americans-are-considered-upper-class.html

Don’t post generic studies that are cost of living adjust by City or region. Seriously. You just discredit yourself, even in a HS math or stats class.

A high schooler could see you don’t have a cite for your 0.25% of wealth figure, you just made that up. Give me Pew over some rando on the internet.

You’re creating a false and unnecessary distinction between income and wealth. Why? Academia isn’t on your side about this, and common sense isn’t on your side either.

Are you the poster from the BB gun thread in OT who thinks the upper classes spend all their time shooting ducks? Some of you have a fascination with the upper classes that’s tinged with ignorance because you’re seeing it from such a distance. For example, to correct your post, you sit in a board but you have a “controlling interest” in a company’s stocks. No individual has a controlling interest in public utility companies—that’s not how public utilities work, but maybe you meant big oil or the private energy sector or something. And why are you capitalizing everything, that’s a marker of a bad education.

You don’t know the difference between the wealth, income and income tax rates of the top 0.1% versus the top 1.0%~0.1% (ie don’t include the top 0.1% which totally skews the information).

Look it up. You’re still fixated on average or medians, which isn’t informative and frankly hides what’s really going on. Too bad the average American and Dac person is so easily fooled by generalized information.

So you really don’t have a cite, and you clearly don’t know the income, wealth or tax cutoffs either. And you have no answer to the criticism of your understanding of how boards, stocks, and public utilities work.

But for some reason you’re fixated on making up your own, arbitrary cutoff points.

I do this for a living (and I’m the beneficiary of 3 family trusts). A ratio to the median, like the ratio Pew uses, is the standard way of doing this.

I was a different poster. And run a large family office. I don’t know nor care who you are bickering with about utilities or board seats of public or private or utility companies, but I stand my what I wrote before your last odd post on this. And clean income strata data is everywhere, just not mass media articles. We all know Pew biases as well. Never invested a cent based on their studies but fun to read what the left is wasting time on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I was a different poster. And run a large family office. I don’t know nor care who you are bickering with about utilities or board seats of public or private or utility companies, but I stand my what I wrote before your last odd post on this. And clean income strata data is everywhere, just not mass media articles. We all know Pew biases as well. Never invested a cent based on their studies but fun to read what the left is wasting time on.

Translation: I have the odd notion that Pew provides investment advice and economic analyses [reader: they do not]. And I still have no cite for my made-up numbers but would be happy for you to waste your time digging up income percentiles to support my thesis that I can’t be bothered to support myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid from Deal to private for 9th. The workload is about 5 times that of DCPS. My kid is finally learning to write and study.
It's night and day over DCPS. I can't stress this enough. It's easily 5 times the workload and my kid is actually learning.. I have kids left in DCPS. This year is another shit-show.
English school english classes that don't read a single book or write a single paper. AP classes that DON'T HAVE A TEACHER so the school is giving every kid an A as a default.

College admits are out and the Wilson admits (of white, upper class kids) are better than those at the Big3. These kids are the siblings
of the my kid's friends. They are getting in (unconnected) to Brown, Yale, Northwestern, Penn, and on and on.
You know how a Big 3 was shut out of Brown? Well, not Wilson. They have several kids going and they're not URM. They're upper middle class white kids.
DCPS grossly inflated grades during the pandemic. 19-20 quarters 3 and 4 counted any assignment as extra-credit. So if you did anything (EVEN ONE ASSIGNMENT) quarters 3 and 4 you
got an A. They those quarters were added to 1 and 2 and rounded up. It was almost impossible to get a B. Like statistically impossible if you turned in a SINGLE assignment.
Then last year (20-21) they barely had school and the lowest grade anyone could get was a B. Anything lower than a B was a "P".
You could get As for breathing (and my kids did). I can't emphasize enough how easy it was and is. It was insanity. My kids (19-20 and 20-21) had 98%+ in all classes
with next to no work). It was really stressful for us (and a lot of parents) because we knew our kids weren't learning anything. As such, many of us pulled our kids out.
But now, the kids graduating with this DCPS education are getting the top acceptances out of DC. I'm happy for them but it just seems insane.

I'm sure I'll get crucified for this but it's wacky. These kids are in some giant loophole or elite college admissions. Colleges are not taking the suburban public kids either
(with their 1600 SATs and 15 APs). Urban is where it's out--whether or not anything was learned.

If my goal for the outcome of HS for my child was as superficial as college admissions I would have sent my kid to Wilson too. Of course a talented student has a better chance of elite admissions coming from a DCPS. But that’s not really the point to sending a child to an independent school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

I thought Brown didn't give grades.

When I was in HS Brown was the quirky Ivy that admiited PS kids who were good writers and very rich kids and well connected kids who weren't

[Anonymous]

Family friend's bright kid got into an Ivy coming out of Wilson. Last we heard the kid was an eclectic layabout in Brooklyn. Who cares if you can scheme your way into an Ivy from an inner city public high school if you can't hang when you get there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

Yeah, sure. So all of the books, articles, op-eds, NPR interviews, and tweets from Ivy alums who say the exact opposite are lying. They share they were in fact forever behind, not just academically but socially and demeanor-wise i.e. assertiveness, polish, and how to work academic bureaucracy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

Thanks for chiming in, anonymous public schooler passive-aggressively trolling a private school forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Family friend's bright kid got into an Ivy coming out of Wilson. Last we heard the kid was an eclectic layabout in Brooklyn. Who cares if you can scheme your way into an Ivy from an inner city public high school if you can't hang when you get there?

“Scheme”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

I thought Brown didn't give grades.

When I was in HS Brown was the quirky Ivy that admiited PS kids who were good writers and very rich kids and well connected kids who weren't

This was decades ago, but I know someone who got into Brown having written their application essay on a pair of blue jeans that they mailed in. But I am sure that was actually incidental to the fact that they came from generational wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But then your kid will have an easier time in college as they know how to write and study. Many kids have a horrible first year as they realize they have major gaps in knowledge and study skills.

+1. So true. And when you literally can't have one bad quarter or semester, let alone several, if you have dreams of attending medical school or a top law school. You are quickly weeded out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Family friend's bright kid got into an Ivy coming out of Wilson. Last we heard the kid was an eclectic layabout in Brooklyn. Who cares if you can scheme your way into an Ivy from an inner city public high school if you can't hang when you get there?

So, all public school kids who get into an Ivy just schemed their way in (why don’t private school parents know these Machiavellian tactics?!) but it’s all wasted on them because none of them have any work ethic or even got in by hard work. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
The other thing that is that my kid and other friends who left DCPS for private (Big5 and otherwise) are having a hard time with academics this fall. It hasn't been easy to suddenly be accountable for writing and reading.
Don't get me wrong--it's been AWESOME to watch as a parent (my kid is learning!!!) and they're all getting there. But the learning curve has been straight up. My kid is getting his/her first B (ever).
Meanwhile, their peers left in DCPS will have better college outcomes, having done 10% of the work. I just shake my head.

And to the poster who said that the kids at Wilson are disadvantaged unlike their coddled private peers? Give me a break. We're talking about wealthy, upper NW white people at Wilson.
Many are wealthier than I am. In fact, most are. These kids are at no disadvantage. They're just attending a high school that asks nothing of them and the colleges are non the wiser.

Read the bolded again. And again. And maybe it will click. Also note, with the college rankings obsession, the Ivies are balancing wanting to load up with rich kids and wanting to finesse the data they send to US News. Perfect GPAs, title 1 urban public school, and URMs are the top hooks. I remember one Ivy admissions book said the "golden goose" applicant is a rich Black girl with a 4.0 GPA who clicks 'no' on financial aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

Yeah, sure. So all of the books, articles, op-eds, NPR interviews, and tweets from Ivy alums who say the exact opposite are lying. They share they were in fact forever behind, not just academically but socially and demeanor-wise i.e. assertiveness, polish, and how to work academic bureaucracy.

NP. Not my public school DC who went to Columbia—they did as well or better than their private school peers. But keep telling yourself anything to justify $300k or more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended Brown after graduating from a mediocre high school from which only about half of the students went to college. After struggling for a few weeks, I figured things out and finished the first semester with good grades. None of my public school friends at Brown had any academic issues either. In fact, the truly academically outstanding classmates I knew were all public school graduates.

Thanks for chiming in, anonymous public schooler passive-aggressively trolling a private school forum.

DP. Sorry you’re so bitter. Talk therapy might help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My "big 3" student is at a "top 20" school and knows a bunch of kids from Wilson. Yes, more kids from Wilson than DC's school are attending college with him, but they are all struggling with the workload and are not getting particularly great grades. My kid is continuing to get excellent grades and has far superior time management skills.

UVA or Georgetown?