Big 3 Nightmare
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
This may be a bit off topic, I moved to this area 30 pus years ago. I went to public school and turned out ok. However, when we looked at public schools in the DC area, we found results similar to these that were reported last year.
Fairfax County, VA public schools have an average cost per student of $16,505. Math proficiency score of 61%, and reading proficiency score of 74%. Montgomery County Public Schools spends $20,648 per student each year. 87% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 91% tested at or above that level for math. DC spends $22,856 per student per year. 33% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 20% tested at or above that level for math. We chose to live in DC and chose to send our kid to a private. Our kid was a lifer at a Big 3. Our kid is admitted to 8 schools, all amazing in what the colleges offer. Our kid will be fine. My point is that I'm not sure if your kid went to a public school with the stats I mentioned above, they would have the same options my kid has today. I I think it is foolish to say that public school kids can't compete with private school kids and get some of the same admission results. |
Anonymous
I’ve never seen this. |
Anonymous
Or maybe those kids are just smarter? Perhaps they have to work les hard? Maybe if they were at your “top private” they would be coasting there too because they are just that good? For the record, I don’t think the above is true but you honestly have no idea how hard the kids in public school who are in competition with your kids for college spots really work. And how smart and dedicated they are. You diminish both them and your kid with statements like you are making. |
Anonymous
First of all who cares if some kids work harder. More work is not always better. There is no competition to create mindless worker bees. There were always students at my Ivy who studied all the time. They were in the library 24-7. I didn’t do that. Many other kids didn’t do that. Public school students who get into top schools are very smart and they have put in a lot of work. You are making a mistake discounting these kids because if you knew them, you would understand that if they went to GDS or Sidwell, they would be top students there. Public schools are not all trash as you like to portray. There are some excellent teachers and students. There is a lot of learning going on despite some of the well publicised issues |
Anonymous
As a private school parent, I agree 100%. |
Anonymous
You don't have a kid in public school, so you have no idea whether they are comparable either. I've had kids in both public and private schools and can say with certainty that MCPS kids work extremely hard. Maybe it's not cool to say so, maybe your kid's attitude is as snooty as your own so they play up their experience, or some other reason. But they work very hard. Also, many of the MCPS kids I know who got into top ivies all had something extra, like national and state recognition in an EC (my kid and a few others I know), and that takes work too. |
Anonymous
My kid went to Jackson Reed and is now at an Ivy. She took 6 APs junior year and almost had a breakdown because there was so much work. She was up until 2am every night. She also had multiple intensive activities that required a lot of time. I’m not saying that JR is as good as GDS but there are some dynamite kids there and I’m sure MCPS is the same. JR still does rankings and my daughter was not even top 5. Every school, public and private, has some amazing kids. And they are all competing for the same schools |
Anonymous
That’s too subtle, because everyone unhooked knows that Brown is a long shot, and they want to proceed anyway. The CC needs to say that the internal SFS competition for Brown is not likely to work out in their favor. |
Anonymous
DCPS has a much needier student body than MCPS. DCPS also has higher expenses for land & buildings. |
Anonymous
Yes, my kids came out of DCPS and many of their friends are at JR and some are very impressive. However, being up well past midnight is par for the course for the baseline (not AP) course in even 9th and 10th grade at some of these Big3 schools. Then 6 APs would be impossible. My kids' schools give 1.5 hours a night per AP course. That ends would be 9 hours of homework nightly if a kid took 6 APs. I think what the frustration is, is that the Big private school kids are doing the equivalent of your daughter's JR course load every year for 4 years, getting a mixture of As and Bs (because many teachers simply don't give As) and then have no chance in hell of the Ivies or (as of 2023) any school in the top 40. If I had to do this again, I may not have moved them and we would have stuck with JR. Their high school years have trained them to be phenomenal students but their options for college have really narrowed by our choice to move them from DCPS to private. |
Anonymous
New parent of a big 3 type private in another area of the country. I would 100% let your DC leave if that is what they want. We regret our decision to go private. Sure, smaller class sizes and teachers seemingly happier (in our district teachers are working without a contract and are pretty unhappy) but the entitlement of the other kids is horrific and our local public would have provided a solid education which we could have supplemented with tutors as needed. |
Anonymous
You just had unrealistic expectations from the beginning. The locus of Ivy-bound kids in this area has always been TJ and the MCPS magnets/RMIB. If your kid wasn’t going to get in there, they weren’t going to get into an Ivy. When you pay for private school you do not actually pay for the strivers and the “smartest” - those kids have always been in public. What you pay for is getting into a namebrand SLAC of some sort, especially if your child is less impressive. In some ways your kid working hard at the private was a waste. They could have coasted with the same result - that is actually what you paid for! |
Anonymous
This is complete bs. The smartest kids have definitely never “always been in public,” any more than they have always been in private. Most kids don’t want or try to get into TJ or RM, it has nothing to do with not being able to get in. Your scenario is a fantasy, since 30-40% of Ivy classes come from private. And what private school families pay for is a rigorous curriculum with smaller classes that teach students how (not what) to think and write, not college admissions. |
Anonymous
Yes, when we moved my eldest in 9th we honestly were not thinking about college at all. Really. We did not attend top 50 universities ourselves and that world (elite universities) had never been on our radar. You mention TJ and MCPS (neither were a possibility as we live in DC). We moved because my kids were among the top students in DCPS (all top As, algebra 2 in 8th) and were just sort of treading water. They couldn't write worth crap, they barely knew more than some random nouns after 3 years of foreign language, they weren't self-starters who we could anticipate would challenge themselves to learn more outside of school. So we moved them. And it's been incredibly from an academic stand-point. They have learned to write beautifully! They finally really learned grammar in foreign language classes. They learned math at a deeper level (not just able to the superficial level stuff that DCPS taught them) but really to puzzle out and think through the unexpected at a deep level. So for all those reasons I don't believe (at all) that these years (and the money) were wasted. The college piece is frustrating because they're at least twice as well prepared as they would be had we left them in DCPS. And yet their options are about half of what they would have been. |
Anonymous
If you'd bought a house in Virginia the public high school options and in state college options would have been different. |