DH is not impressed with college admissions from the private schools
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Anonymous
If you know this much, you know that most colleges' FA packages have a very large loan component, which many kids aren't willing to take on. If your kid can get into HYP they will get grants, but otherwise, lots of loans. You also will know that a family with $120K is NOT going to get any FA, unless there are one or more other siblings in college. (You would also know that the FAFSA doesn't take siblings in private school into consideration.) Some of you really crack me up. Please step out of your private school bubble and join the rest of the world, the great unwashed middle classes. The two-government-worker families, the families with one or both parents teaching. You may have a handful of these people in your private school, most likely they are getting parental help with tuition. But thousands upon thousands of them send their kids to public schools instead. These people will not think that paying for an Ivy is easy, not matter how many times you repeat that stuff about the great grants at HYP. |
Anonymous
| Oh not to say that it is easy, or that a family with 120k will receive a lot of aid unless multiple siblings are in college at the same time...just that on this board it seems to be either the poors will their full rides or full pay. In reality there is a lot of in between, and a lot of people who finance college through a combination of savings and financial aid--some of which are loans. At least people with professional parents who are financially savvy will be able to guide them through this process and figure out which have the best interest rates/how to consolidate. |
Anonymous
Sorry, but it sounds like you're saying that MoCo public school families, all those government workers' kids, have the exact same budget for Ivies as private school families, once you take all that super-generous grant aid into account. That can't be what you meant. There's still no way that $200k HHI families are going to find it easy to pay $60k for the first kid (because $200k and one kid won't get FA) and can expect to finance the second kid through 100% grant aid because DC#2 will definitely get into Harvard. There is a whole middle class that attends public schools and is only modestly present in private schools, and your casual references to FA and grant aid if your kid gets into Harvard show how oblivious you are about the very real financial decisions that these very real people face when considering applying to an Ivy. That's the point. |
Anonymous
| I tend to think DC privates are overrated. Sure, Sidwell, STA, NCS, Maret etc. are great schools but I don't think the compare favorably with other top privates in the large cities in the US (NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc.). Notwithstanding, I do think that privates have better results at placing kids into top schools. Even if you took the top 20% of the Whitman, Churchill, BCC (TJ would be 100%), the privates would have a better placement rate. There are many reasons why but the results don't lie. |
Anonymous
| Why don't you just admit that you want to send your kids to private schools because you need more ammunition for your snobbery? |
Anonymous
| I am interested in why OP wants private schools. Since my thoughtful posters have said college admissions probably shouldn't be the deciding factor, but cite many other sound reasons, I wondering if any of these reasons match OP's thinking, or if there is some other factor going on? |
Anonymous
That's "many thoughtful posters" I do not "own" all of these PPs, or their posts! 
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Anonymous
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OK, 17:52 from page 3, this is for you:
Like you, I'm not sure where to start. You accuse me of having a "wishful and naive view" of the ability of public school students in Besthesda/CC/Potomac to afford college. I think your view is off-base. Here are some examples. I'm using Whitman as a proxy because it's often tagged as the highest-performing MoCo public school, and in 2013, it had the highest average SAT score of any public school in MoCo. 1. You say, "At all of these schools, you will find FARMS rates of 5-15%." At Whitman, the FARMS rate is "<5%." Note that "<5%" is the reporting limit, so the actual FARMS rate may well be far less than 5%. 2. You suggest the "non-English-speaking" percentage is also high. In reality, Whitman's ESOL rate is also "<5%." 3. You say " many public school kids don't even take the PSATs or SATs." In fact, 393 of Whitman's 462 grads in 2013 (over 85%) took the SAT. That's down from 86% in 2012, and 87% in 2011. 4. You say "many public school kids ... aren't planning to go to college." In reality, 97% of Whitman's seniors go on to college. 89% of them attend 4-year colleges. 5. You argue that public school students are limited to only low-cost colleges. In reality, 76% of Whitman's graduates attend out-of-state colleges. In other words, 85% of those attending 4-year colleges are going out-of-state, and only 15% are attending UMD or equivalent. If finances are such a huge strain, why such a small % attending UMD? So let's compare ... % of NMSFs (last 5 years) STA 11% Holton 7% Sidwell 11% NCS 8% GDS 8% Whitman (out of whole class) 4.5% Whitman (out of 97% attending college) 5% Whitman (out of 89% attending 4-year colleges) 5% Whitman (out of 76% attending out-of-state colleges) 6% % attending Ivy colleges (2013) STA 25% Holton 14% Landon 12% Whitman (out of whole class) 4% Whitman (out of 97% attending college) 4% Whitman (out of 89% attending 4-year colleges) 5% Whitman (out of 76% attending out-of-state colleges) 6% Looking at just top 25% of the class % NMSF from just top 25% of STA: 57% % NMSF from just top 25% of NCS: 42% % NMSF from just top 25% of Holton: 40% % NMSF from just top 25% of Landon: 15% % NMSF from just top 25% of Sidwell: 57% % NMSF from just top 25% of GDS: 31% % NMSF from just top 25% of Whitman: 16% % attending Ivy from top 25% of STA: 100% % attending Ivy from top 25% of Holton: 55% % attending Ivy from top 25% of Landon: 48% % attending Ivy from top 25% of Whitman: 17% You quibble about my statement that top students "flock" to private schools, and you instead want to say private schools "skim the cream" by selecting the top students. I stand by my phrasing, because it's the students/families who voluntarily choose to apply to the private schools. Most strong private schools are receiving 5-7 times more applications than they have slots. To the extent private schools are "skimming the cream," it's only skimmed from those students who choose to apply and attend the private schools. But nevertheless, we seem to agree that private schools derive at least part of their advantage in student success from the quality of students that choose to attend private schools. We probably could discuss at length how much "value add" those top students get from choosing private school over public; we might even agree on several points. But surely we can also agree (whatever the root causes) that students from strong private schools are more likely to demonstrate objective academic success than students from public schools, can't we? (Also, to repeat my comment from page 3, I'm not knocking public schools. I proudly attended public schools, and I turned out OK. And the public schools around here are far better than the ones I attended! We are blessed in this area with many strong schools, so I find it unfortunate that people insist on trashing any of them.) |
Anonymous
| whoa nelly...are you a furloughed government lawyer? Too much time on your hands! Go volunteer someplace. |
Anonymous
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11:22, you continue to miss the WHOLE POINT, which is the income disparity between even Whitman families (arguably the wealthiest parent body in the county) and private school families who mostly earn $350k or more, or who earn less but have parental help (according to DCUM wisdom). It means nothing to take the top 25% of the class (BTW, is this GPA, SATs, or something else) if you don't know the SES or HH incomes of these kids. YOU HAVE TO CONTROL FOR INCOME. WHITMAN IS MUCH MORE MIDDLE CLASS (forget the FARMS rates) than any private shool.
Sorry about the caps, but in your case, where you don't seem to have any idea how the middle class (say $200k) lives and makes decisions about big things like education, it seems so necessary. (And your OOS point is a minor one, but you also don't seem to realize how many, many high-achieving kids get merit money from 2nd-tier private OOS schools - I could rattle off a bunch of kids who got OOS merit money just from my kids' friends, whereas Ivies don't give merit money.) To rephrase this: if you had SES data for Whitman, so that you could prove that those top 25% of Whitman kids are just as wealthy as private school kids, then we might be impressed by this disparity in Ivy attendance. PS. Your insistence that the "best" kids "choose" private schools suffers from exactly the SAME PROBLEM: you seem incapable of understanding that a middle class family (say $200k) is probably not going to be able to afford EITHER Sidwell or an Ivy. |
Anonymous
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1. Whenever you refer to Whitman parents, or people making $200k, as "middle class," I cringe.
2. I think you're way overstating the income difference between those top Whitman students from Bethesda and the private school students. There are obviously some extremely wealthy people in private schools (just as there are in the public schools), but I also know plenty of two-govt-worker families in private, and others who receive financial aid. I also know plenty of law firm partners, doctors, and business executives with kids at Whitman and other private schools. There's no shortage of wealthy families there. 3. If your claim about many high-achieving public school students getting money from 2nd-tier private colleges is true, then are you positing we'd %wise see loads more Whitman grads than private school grads at such colleges? In other word, the private high schools clearly have a much bigger % attending Ivy colleges. But you think Whitman will have a much bigger % attending 2nd tier private colleges, because all those super-high-achieving Whitman students opted to turn down the Ivy colleges in favor of OOS money? 4. How does your money theory explain the disparity in NMSF and SAT scores? I assume the Whitman students try just as hard on the SAT, no matter whether or not they can afford Ivy colleges, don't they? I find it especially interesting that the NMSF % lines up closely with the Ivy % at so many of these schools. |
Anonymous
Where? Have called multiple places and they don't want somebody who is not long term or might oops go back to work at the whim of congress. Not PP btw but all my closets are clean and I already did yoga today. |
Anonymous
| #2 should read "...Whitman or other public schools." |
Anonymous
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Clear that most posters to this thread have no clue as the 1) public school; and/or 2) how to understand statistics. It’s not worth the effort to even try to educate you all, but just consider this:
1)Public schools are forced to enroll the full range of students in a district, including the lowest performing students 2)By high school students are grouped by performance aptitude so that if your DC is a high performing there is ZERO chance they will be grouped with the lowest performing students in any academic class. 3)The lowest performing students count as students in the denominator in any % based statistic, but have ZERO impact on the academic experience of the high performing students. 4)The only meaningful comparison of students in a public school to private school would be a comparison of students with comparable performance, abilities at the time of entry. |
Anonymous
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12:03, let me try to clarify our competing viewpoints, so we can at least make sure we're not talking past one another.
I think: Students from strong private high schools in this area have objectively more academic success than students from even strong public schools. I think a good part of that disparity results from strong students choosing private high schools over public high schools, but also that there may be other factors at play. You think: If we could control for family income, students from strong private high schools have absolutely no more academic success than their public school counterparts. Is that accurate? If I'm misunderstanding your position, then what exactly is your position? |