The Death of Private School As We Know It
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Anonymous
| OP, did your kid get his ED application to an Ivy rejected today? Take a deep breath. Have a glass of wine. Take a yoga class. Please don’t spew this negativity all over your kid. |
Anonymous
Law is very snobby so the interest in name brands isn't odd, but your assumption is. No one ever said that, but you just assumed? |
Anonymous
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I have one in one of the elite privates and one in the SMCS program in MCPS. The private has been a better total education because the writing is so much stronger, although the variety of science/programming classes are pretty amazing in SMCS.
I also think the private is going to be helpful for college admissions for us because DC is the top student at the private school, which sends a number of kids to Ivies every year, rather than just being the top student at our local public school, which doesn't have nearly the placements. Now, if that child had also been in SMCS, it's hard to say what might have happened, because those placements are pretty good, I think. |
Anonymous
Read much? I said my "impression," not my "assumption." In other words, it was a conclusion based on actual observation. Now do you understand? |
Anonymous
Not that you care about that, of course. 
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Anonymous
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A lot of absolute nonsense flying around in this thread.
Because schools publish admissions, and at least my school shares in one way or another specific students with specific colleges so you can tell who was URM/athlete/legacy/etc, I am really confused that people think it's possible that parents don't understand the lay of the land by the time their kids get to junior year. In many cases, these kids have been in the same school since pre-Kindergarten! Parents know. It's not a last minute surprise that the majority of the class isn't going to an Ivy. |
Anonymous
Yes, complete list from alumni magazine this month |
Anonymous
It was your impression they were obsessed, but it appears, from your sentence construction, to be your assumption that that's why they sent them to big 3 schools. And anyway, we all know you were pushed out in your early 50s, and post derisively all the time about biglaw and biglaw partners, so I have no idea why we would put any stock in your assessment. |
Anonymous
| Maybe (biggggg maybe) if all you care about is a leg up for college admissions and don't think that the actual education part is worthwhile. Some of us actually invest in our kids' educations because we want them to love learning and have happier, more fulfilling lives. We've loved our experience with our kids' private schools, and we are much happier spending our money there than on a huge house and fancy cars. |
Anonymous
When I chose a private school for my child, it was because the public school was not a good fit for her. We struggled with her anxiety and trying to find a place where she could learn and be challenged. We found that in one of the Big3 schools. The college list is a bonus and not the reason we chose her school. |
Anonymous
Ok. So, looking at this list, clearly the large majority of this school's graduating class did not end up enrolling in an Ivy League school. Is there any way of knowing how many of the acceptances to the Ivies were to legacies? I ask because, as we all know, the Big 3 is full of parents with Ivy League degrees. Once you take out the Ivies, the list is really no more impressive than what you'd find mixed in with any of the top 1/3 or so public high schools in the DMV. You'd also find many other schools in the mix in those schools as well, of course, because the schools are much bigger and have open enrollment. In other words, I don't see any real "bump." |
Anonymous
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We did t send DC for Ivy or near Ivy college experience. Most of the people I know who are successful are from those schools anyway. I sent them there for
1) 13 years of traditional academics and smaller classes 2) 13 years of service and community 3) 13 years of acceptable behavior from classmates 4) once they get into college they will have had the discipline through homework, tests that mean something the first time, accountability for turning things in on time in order to succeed and not be a hot mess as some of friends’ DC have been. |
Anonymous
This isn't "schools where students have been admitted" which is NOT the same as "schools where 2021 graduates are going" because all seven Ivies are on the list along with Stanford. There's only a tiny number of high schools in the country that can boast graduates going to all seven Ivies plus Stanford in a single year. I do see these kids of lists in alum magazines but it's usually admitted, not enrolled, or it's over the last three years. And it doesn't take much to recognize that 2-3 kids could dominate all the Ivy/top school admissions. I do vaguely remember a heavy discussion on DCUM comparing Whitman with the Big 3s and it emerged that only Sidwell itself had something comparable, but Whitman does have a much bigger pool of students to start with. |
Anonymous
Yes, and this is all public information, and well known to all parents, but somehow it strikes people as suspect that parents really really don't send their kids to private school on the mistaken belief they're buying admission to Brown?? Such a bizarre and persistent DCUM myth. |
Anonymous
I'm not gonna lie and tell you I didn't care about that. But I have an extraordinary child and live in an area where the zoned public HS is nothing special. We knew DC had that level of potential, so it was, in part, about finding a school that could validate this ability rather than hoping for a place that could give a boost to a decent student. |