Does going to a Big 3 school really help with college admissions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ you essentially agree with the posters main point though. Top 10% at good public’s are working just as hard and are just as bright as the kids at $45k+ per year Big 3s. I can understand the bitterness that they feel when they realize all that $ paid didn’t confer an admission advantage.

I’m not that bitter. $90k ( we have two) just isn’t that much money. And probably worth it to get away from desperate, bitter people like you. We’ll get our third house after they’re done with college. It’s not that big a sacrifice.

Ha. We already have a third house. We chose public because the douche factor was so high at the privates we toured.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a parent who has spent $$$$ on a top flight non DC private. I think the answer is no. One factor you haven’t considered is that parents like me are more likely to be top school alums themselves. Between all those factors, I think it doesn’t much change admissions outcomes. And it certainly isn’t why I pay for private.

Same, but we're in DC.

I don't think our teens will end up at more competitive universities than our neighbors' kids at public HS, controlling for confounding variables.

I am certain they're getting different education experiences right now. Sometimes, it's the journey

This. I want my kids not just to have a *good* education but also a pleasant education. Both me and my spouse went to publics, spouse to TJ, and me in a differentiated T&G program within my neighborhood school. We both found the experience frustrating and wanted to opt out of the bureaucracy. It’s just a better experience, both for us as parents and for our kids as students.

We aren’t as rich as some people in this thread, but it also isn’t a huge strain financially. We aren’t trying to buy our kids’ way into Yale. We are trying to buy *our* way *out* of the public school experience.

This is us too.

It’s gotten frustrating watching our County use certain years as “experiments”. Then if something does not work, like compacted math, the grades caught in the middle of it are screwed over. There’s also the fact that 18 out of 20 Clubs are “girl only”. And they really shove way too hard with the lbgtqcis, etc stuff. I’m all for gay marriage, etc.- but do 10-year olds really need a lgbqtcis club before they even hit puberty?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. The kids at top public HS in MoCo, VA are very bright too. Their parents aren’t paying $40k/year for school—but these kids are as bright or brighter than Big 3 and have SAT scores and AP credits through the roof. You have to remember in this area, kids are coming from homes from parents with multiple degrees, PhD, law, medical, MBA, etc. that do choose strong public schools. It’s different than areas that the only option is private. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect. The same in places like Palo Alto.

+100 to this and the other poster about public HS in Ffx. Arlington,Montgomery counties.

The top 10% of all of these schools study hard and its extremely competitive. These aren’t kids that get into a school merely based on tradition or a family name and don’t have much under the hood.

It’s insulting and insular to think only top students at a Big 3 work that hard. Your kid would fail out of TJ.

Let me be more blunt. Lady, your kid ain’t that bright. It’s time to come to terms with the fact that she’s not as brilliant as you thought she was. Damn those top 10% nerds and all their studying/hard work.

This is not true. I've had kids at both TJ and a Big 3 and the workload is equivalent. The difference is that the intense classes at TJ tend to be STEM-focused and the intense classes at the Big 3 tend to be humanities/social science-focused. Each of my kids - whether at TJ or private - are doing 3-4 hours of homework/night.

The jobs are not in social science/humanities. Better to be a STEM major.

So pp with TJ kid and big 3 kids- if your kid is STEM-oriented- do you advise public since they seem to have better STEM?

[Anonymous]

My experience with watching the graduation stats at a big3 is that about 10% of the kids make it to an Ivy. However, I'd say that 95% of the kids at the big3 are really, really bright and work very hard. So that's a LOT of bright, impressive kids who are not getting into a top 10 school. Which means most kids from the big3 will be going to schools under the top 10 or top 20 or top 50. Which are exactly the type of schools that this kid (baseline very bright, hard worker) would end up in from most (or even any) publics. Our public is Wilson and I have no doubt whatsoever that my kid will not get an admissions bump from attending the big3. The kids at the 80% at the big3 are attending the exact same schools as those in the top 10% of Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Previous poster again. To clarify again--my kid is at the big3 and our public option is Wilson. I've watch the matriculations for both schools over the past 2 years and I"m convinced that my kid would have just as good or better luck with college acceptances if he/she had gone to Wilson (being outside the top 10% at the private).

[Anonymous]

If the goal is to buy your way into a T20, given the high price point, seems like there are better ways to do it. Investing deeply in the kid’s “pointy” interests, international travel, intensive SAT prep... it’s a game-changing amount of money for that sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ you essentially agree with the posters main point though. Top 10% at good public’s are working just as hard and are just as bright as the kids at $45k+ per year Big 3s. I can understand the bitterness that they feel when they realize all that $ paid didn’t confer an admission advantage.

I’m not that bitter. $90k ( we have two) just isn’t that much money. And probably worth it to get away from desperate, bitter people like you. We’ll get our third house after they’re done with college. It’s not that big a sacrifice.

Ha. We already have a third house. We chose public because the douche factor was so high at the privates we toured.

Ha. It seems that the douche factor is not a "private" exclusiity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ you essentially agree with the posters main point though. Top 10% at good public’s are working just as hard and are just as bright as the kids at $45k+ per year Big 3s. I can understand the bitterness that they feel when they realize all that $ paid didn’t confer an admission advantage.

I’m not that bitter. $90k ( we have two) just isn’t that much money. And probably worth it to get away from desperate, bitter people like you. We’ll get our third house after they’re done with college. It’s not that big a sacrifice.

Ha. We already have a third house. We chose public because the douche factor was so high at the privates we toured.

Ha. It seems that the douche factor is not a "private" exclusiity.

No kidding. Plus the constant teeth-gnashing on the public school threads around here, entitlement, fury, etc. it really doesn’t make me regret being a private school parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ you essentially agree with the posters main point though. Top 10% at good public’s are working just as hard and are just as bright as the kids at $45k+ per year Big 3s. I can understand the bitterness that they feel when they realize all that $ paid didn’t confer an admission advantage.

I’m not that bitter. $90k ( we have two) just isn’t that much money. And probably worth it to get away from desperate, bitter people like you. We’ll get our third house after they’re done with college. It’s not that big a sacrifice.

Ha. We already have a third house. We chose public because the douche factor was so high at the privates we toured.

Ha. It seems that the douche factor is not a "private" exclusiity.

So when their kid gets into college we can just say they bought their way in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. The kids at top public HS in MoCo, VA are very bright too. Their parents aren’t paying $40k/year for school—but these kids are as bright or brighter than Big 3 and have SAT scores and AP credits through the roof. You have to remember in this area, kids are coming from homes from parents with multiple degrees, PhD, law, medical, MBA, etc. that do choose strong public schools. It’s different than areas that the only option is private. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect. The same in places like Palo Alto.

+100 to this and the other poster about public HS in Ffx. Arlington,Montgomery counties.

The top 10% of all of these schools study hard and its extremely competitive. These aren’t kids that get into a school merely based on tradition or a family name and don’t have much under the hood.

It’s insulting and insular to think only top students at a Big 3 work that hard. Your kid would fail out of TJ.

Let me be more blunt. Lady, your kid ain’t that bright. It’s time to come to terms with the fact that she’s not as brilliant as you thought she was. Damn those top 10% nerds and all their studying/hard work.

This is not true. I've had kids at both TJ and a Big 3 and the workload is equivalent. The difference is that the intense classes at TJ tend to be STEM-focused and the intense classes at the Big 3 tend to be humanities/social science-focused. Each of my kids - whether at TJ or private - are doing 3-4 hours of homework/night.

The jobs are not in social science/humanities. Better to be a STEM major.

So pp with TJ kid and big 3 kids- if your kid is STEM-oriented- do you advise public since they seem to have better STEM?

Overall, the Big 3 is a better school than TJ - smaller classes, generally better teachers, superior resources and college counseling. If your kid is a comp sci or math genius then TJ might be the best choice, but I think for most kids - even STEM ones - the top private school (if you can afford it) is better.

[Anonymous]

That is a striking over-generalization. Real nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ you essentially agree with the posters main point though. Top 10% at good public’s are working just as hard and are just as bright as the kids at $45k+ per year Big 3s. I can understand the bitterness that they feel when they realize all that $ paid didn’t confer an admission advantage.

I’m not that bitter. $90k ( we have two) just isn’t that much money. And probably worth it to get away from desperate, bitter people like you. We’ll get our third house after they’re done with college. It’s not that big a sacrifice.

Ha. We already have a third house. We chose public because the douche factor was so high at the privates we toured.

We chose magnets from a k-12 private because the SJW brainwashing was so high at half the upper schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. The kids at top public HS in MoCo, VA are very bright too. Their parents aren’t paying $40k/year for school—but these kids are as bright or brighter than Big 3 and have SAT scores and AP credits through the roof. You have to remember in this area, kids are coming from homes from parents with multiple degrees, PhD, law, medical, MBA, etc. that do choose strong public schools. It’s different than areas that the only option is private. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect. The same in places like Palo Alto.

+100 to this and the other poster about public HS in Ffx. Arlington,Montgomery counties.

The top 10% of all of these schools study hard and its extremely competitive. These aren’t kids that get into a school merely based on tradition or a family name and don’t have much under the hood.

It’s insulting and insular to think only top students at a Big 3 work that hard. Your kid would fail out of TJ.

Let me be more blunt. Lady, your kid ain’t that bright. It’s time to come to terms with the fact that she’s not as brilliant as you thought she was. Damn those top 10% nerds and all their studying/hard work.

This is not true. I've had kids at both TJ and a Big 3 and the workload is equivalent. The difference is that the intense classes at TJ tend to be STEM-focused and the intense classes at the Big 3 tend to be humanities/social science-focused. Each of my kids - whether at TJ or private - are doing 3-4 hours of homework/night.

The jobs are not in social science/humanities. Better to be a STEM major.

So pp with TJ kid and big 3 kids- if your kid is STEM-oriented- do you advise public since they seem to have better STEM?

Overall, the Big 3 is a better school than TJ - smaller classes, generally better teachers, superior resources and college counseling. If your kid is a comp sci or math genius then TJ might be the best choice, but I think for most kids - even STEM ones - the top private school (if you can afford it) is better.

If you can stomach the “U.S. history and society is terrible” vibe, the stem classes and clubs are very well-founded at some of the top private schools. We’ve seen robotic club projects get funded within 72 hours with grants from alums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the goal is to buy your way into a T20, given the high price point, seems like there are better ways to do it. Investing deeply in the kid’s “pointy” interests, international travel, intensive SAT prep... it’s a game-changing amount of money for that sort of thing.

Fencing. Works like a charm. But oh so obvious why you’re doing it... (and no, it’s not because you love Princess Elena as a youngster...).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. The kids at top public HS in MoCo, VA are very bright too. Their parents aren’t paying $40k/year for school—but these kids are as bright or brighter than Big 3 and have SAT scores and AP credits through the roof. You have to remember in this area, kids are coming from homes from parents with multiple degrees, PhD, law, medical, MBA, etc. that do choose strong public schools. It’s different than areas that the only option is private. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect. The same in places like Palo Alto.

+100 to this and the other poster about public HS in Ffx. Arlington,Montgomery counties.

The top 10% of all of these schools study hard and its extremely competitive. These aren’t kids that get into a school merely based on tradition or a family name and don’t have much under the hood.

It’s insulting and insular to think only top students at a Big 3 work that hard. Your kid would fail out of TJ.

Let me be more blunt. Lady, your kid ain’t that bright. It’s time to come to terms with the fact that she’s not as brilliant as you thought she was. Damn those top 10% nerds and all their studying/hard work.

This is not true. I've had kids at both TJ and a Big 3 and the workload is equivalent. The difference is that the intense classes at TJ tend to be STEM-focused and the intense classes at the Big 3 tend to be humanities/social science-focused. Each of my kids - whether at TJ or private - are doing 3-4 hours of homework/night.

The jobs are not in social science/humanities. Better to be a STEM major.

So pp with TJ kid and big 3 kids- if your kid is STEM-oriented- do you advise public since they seem to have better STEM?

Overall, the Big 3 is a better school than TJ - smaller classes, generally better teachers, superior resources and college counseling. If your kid is a comp sci or math genius then TJ might be the best choice, but I think for most kids - even STEM ones - the top private school (if you can afford it) is better.

If you can stomach the “U.S. history and society is terrible” vibe, the stem classes and clubs are very well-founded at some of the top private schools. We’ve seen robotic club projects get funded within 72 hours with grants from alums.

Thanks. Must have been so hard for you to acknowledge this.