Annoyed That Private School High School Students Have Better Admissions Results than Public School Students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between their inflated grades and $$ to do early decision (because they can pay), this system seems so rigged. Anyone else notice this?

In order to engage on this, I really need to understand what you mean by "their inflated grades".

Public schools are the ones with inflated grades.

Sorry to bust your bubbles, but no. Grade inflation is 3x higher in private schools.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/17/easy-a-nearly-half-hs-seniors-graduate-average/485787001/

Actually, they said, the upward creep is most pronounced in schools with large numbers of white, wealthy students. And its especially noticeable in private schools, where the rate of inflation was about three times higher than in public schools.

Out of date. That’s pre-pandemic, and everything has changed post-pandemic. Now publics are the ones with vastly inflated grades, because teachers were under massive pressure not to fail anyone during virtual learning while private schools were back in person.

Like you said, "out of date". That was like 3 years ago. Publics have been in person for 3 years now.
Grade inflation is still higher in private schools.

Nah. At my daughter's private, she needs a 93 to get an A. They don't have quarters, so she needs to truly get a 93 average of all tests and assignments for the entire semester in order to get an A. They don't use two quarter letter grades like MCPS (A + B = B). This grading policy means a kid with a 79.5 (B) in Q1 and 89.5 (A) in Q2 would get an A for the semester. Those sort of grades would be reflected as a solid B (84.5%) in my daughter's private school.

Also, you have to be recommended or approved to take honors or AP courses at her school, so the curriculum is never dumbed down like at honors for all MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duplicate: I have had more than one college admission counselor tell me straight "I throw the private school admission's application to the bottom of the pile. We all know a suburban public school with 500 or more students in a class, does not hold their kids' hands. The kids at the top are motivated to do the work, don't waste professors time, and put 100% of their effort in class. Private school kids on the other hand, whine that professors are too mean or pile on too much work, or have mommy/daddy call the dean's office."

The numbers absolutely do not support this. Private schools students are overrepresented as a percentage of the student body at the elite universities. 8.5% of hs students attend a private school, whereas 37, 40, 41, and 44% of students at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth attended private high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duplicate: I have had more than one college admission counselor tell me straight "I throw the private school admission's application to the bottom of the pile. We all know a suburban public school with 500 or more students in a class, does not hold their kids' hands. The kids at the top are motivated to do the work, don't waste professors time, and put 100% of their effort in class. Private school kids on the other hand, whine that professors are too mean or pile on too much work, or have mommy/daddy call the dean's office."

Of all the things that were never said, this was never said the most.

[Anonymous]

Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

[Anonymous]

I went to “tony” private schools and an ivy. I know tons of happy folks that went to public and then state school all the way through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duplicate: I have had more than one college admission counselor tell me straight "I throw the private school admission's application to the bottom of the pile. We all know a suburban public school with 500 or more students in a class, does not hold their kids' hands. The kids at the top are motivated to do the work, don't waste professors time, and put 100% of their effort in class. Private school kids on the other hand, whine that professors are too mean or pile on too much work, or have mommy/daddy call the dean's office."

The numbers absolutely do not support this. Private schools students are overrepresented as a percentage of the student body at the elite universities. 8.5% of hs students attend a private school, whereas 37, 40, 41, and 44% of students at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth attended private high schools.

Ok, but there is a long list of confounding variables that may impact that overrepresentation: socioeconomic status, geography, parent education and most important of all legacy. It’s very telling that among these top institutions, MIT doesn’t consider legacy and has one of the lowest proportion of private high school students among ‘elite’ universities.

If you’re not a legacy kid, attending a private with a bunch of legacies is actually bad news because you’d be competing with those overrepresented kids that are likely to receive a boost on the same HYPS spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

Not sure I understand your point, unless you were just looking for an excuse to tell us you can afford many things. If you are saying that you pouring resources in your child’s education and extracurriculars will make them more competitive for college admissions, I think it’s actually not as clear cut as you make it seem. It’s more indicative of an overzealous mom, and I know public school kids that do the same exact things for their kids down to mandarin, Spanish, chess, piano, tennis and expensive camps since kindergarten. If anything this is more of an indication of an over scheduled child, with a helicopter/snowplow parent. While it could be great exposure for a child, it’s not going to make them get into Harvard.

If indeed top 25 college is not important, why do you do all that to your child? Genuinely interested to know because I actually see it as counterproductive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duplicate: I have had more than one college admission counselor tell me straight "I throw the private school admission's application to the bottom of the pile. We all know a suburban public school with 500 or more students in a class, does not hold their kids' hands. The kids at the top are motivated to do the work, don't waste professors time, and put 100% of their effort in class. Private school kids on the other hand, whine that professors are too mean or pile on too much work, or have mommy/daddy call the dean's office."

The numbers absolutely do not support this. Private schools students are overrepresented as a percentage of the student body at the elite universities. 8.5% of hs students attend a private school, whereas 37, 40, 41, and 44% of students at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth attended private high schools.

Ok, but there is a long list of confounding variables that may impact that overrepresentation: socioeconomic status, geography, parent education and most important of all legacy. It’s very telling that among these top institutions, MIT doesn’t consider legacy and has one of the lowest proportion of private high school students among ‘elite’ universities.

If you’re not a legacy kid, attending a private with a bunch of legacies is actually bad news because you’d be competing with those overrepresented kids that are likely to receive a boost on the same HYPS spots.

I was responding to the pp’s ridiculous statement that private school applications are moved to the bottom of the pile. They are quite obviously not. The personal bias one admissions officer supposedly communicated against private schools is not enough to overcome the many additional factors considered in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Not all private schools are the same. In Seattle for instance, Lakeside School (where Bill Gates and Paul Allen went) have a college matriculation list that is ten times better than the next best private school or public magnet high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

This. Imagine that your immigrant great-grandfather busted his hump to provide a new and better life for your grandfather. Your grandfather appreciated it and did not squander it, but instead compounded the effects to deliver to your father. And so on. Years of hard work and thrift to build (as Thomas Sowell says, instead of privilege) achievement. What would be unfair is if 100 or 200 years of social and financial progress had to be discarded to artificially diversify (socioeconomically) an incoming freshman class. Family is the basic building block of society, not the individual.

[Anonymous]

If a private college decides that their mission is to provide upward socio economic mobility and not be a reward for a kid having financially secure and invested parents then they have that right and families have the right to look elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

This is such an odd thread. No private school apps are not put to the bottom of the pile. Post Covid the private school kids are the only ones that went to school the whole time. They are ahead by a mile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

Not sure I understand your point, unless you were just looking for an excuse to tell us you can afford many things. If you are saying that you pouring resources in your child’s education and extracurriculars will make them more competitive for college admissions, I think it’s actually not as clear cut as you make it seem. It’s more indicative of an overzealous mom, and I know public school kids that do the same exact things for their kids down to mandarin, Spanish, chess, piano, tennis and expensive camps since kindergarten. If anything this is more of an indication of an over scheduled child, with a helicopter/snowplow parent. While it could be great exposure for a child, it’s not going to make them get into Harvard.

If indeed top 25 college is not important, why do you do all that to your child? Genuinely interested to know because I actually see it as counterproductive.

You are correct. You don’t understand my point.
The point is the child is immersed in privilege at all times, and in countless ways. They are socializing with other privileged kids, and forming bonds and connections.
They have 18 years of that before college.
Once they show up to college, they identify similar kids, because they have similar backgrounds and experiences. They self select together.
They start school with wealth and privilege and it just becomes exponential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

Not sure I understand your point, unless you were just looking for an excuse to tell us you can afford many things. If you are saying that you pouring resources in your child’s education and extracurriculars will make them more competitive for college admissions, I think it’s actually not as clear cut as you make it seem. It’s more indicative of an overzealous mom, and I know public school kids that do the same exact things for their kids down to mandarin, Spanish, chess, piano, tennis and expensive camps since kindergarten. If anything this is more of an indication of an over scheduled child, with a helicopter/snowplow parent. While it could be great exposure for a child, it’s not going to make them get into Harvard.

If indeed top 25 college is not important, why do you do all that to your child? Genuinely interested to know because I actually see it as counterproductive.

You are correct. You don’t understand my point.
The point is the child is immersed in privilege at all times, and in countless ways. They are socializing with other privileged kids, and forming bonds and connections.
They have 18 years of that before college.
Once they show up to college, they identify similar kids, because they have similar backgrounds and experiences. They self select together.
They start school with wealth and privilege and it just becomes exponential.

Nobody is disputing that some people have a privileged life, is there a follow up to this that’s relevant to the thread?

You seem to imply that the “exponential” privilege results in better admissions to college, or that the college admission to Top25 doesn't matter because they’re already wealthy, or that it’s the social network from meeting similarly privileged kids that is the recipe for success, which is very narrowly defined as more privilege and more wealth. I can’t tell what your point is because you make all these arguments in the same post.

Most of the educational experiences you mentioned are well within the reach of middle class. Foreign languages, chess, sports, camps etc, don’t strike me as particularly selective and hard to get. Private high schools of $50k tuition are a higher bar to clear, but again well within the reach of the upper middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s so much worse than you realize.
My kid goes to an elite ( not east coast ) private school.
Her summer camp is 10k
We belong to a country club.
She is 9 but can competently ride a horse.
She plays tennis and golf. She’s been in the chess club for 2 years. She wants to do fencing this year. She plays the piano and will start another instrument in fourth grade. She began Spanish and Mandarin in kindergarten.
And she’s in third grade.
She socializes with all kinds of kids because we pay a fortune so the school can afford to be diverse. Her bestie’s mom is a single parent nurse.
My completely obnoxious point is this…

College doesn’t matter.
For the families that are easily swallowing 40k a year for a country day school, a top 25 school isn’t important.
The fact that they are so over represented in college admissions is just another privilege added to the list.

Not sure I understand your point, unless you were just looking for an excuse to tell us you can afford many things. If you are saying that you pouring resources in your child’s education and extracurriculars will make them more competitive for college admissions, I think it’s actually not as clear cut as you make it seem. It’s more indicative of an overzealous mom, and I know public school kids that do the same exact things for their kids down to mandarin, Spanish, chess, piano, tennis and expensive camps since kindergarten. If anything this is more of an indication of an over scheduled child, with a helicopter/snowplow parent. While it could be great exposure for a child, it’s not going to make them get into Harvard.

If indeed top 25 college is not important, why do you do all that to your child? Genuinely interested to know because I actually see it as counterproductive.

You are correct. You don’t understand my point.
The point is the child is immersed in privilege at all times, and in countless ways. They are socializing with other privileged kids, and forming bonds and connections.
They have 18 years of that before college.
Once they show up to college, they identify similar kids, because they have similar backgrounds and experiences. They self select together.
They start school with wealth and privilege and it just becomes exponential.

Nobody is disputing that some people have a privileged life, is there a follow up to this that’s relevant to the thread?

You seem to imply that the “exponential” privilege results in better admissions to college, or that the college admission to Top25 doesn't matter because they’re already wealthy, or that it’s the social network from meeting similarly privileged kids that is the recipe for success, which is very narrowly defined as more privilege and more wealth. I can’t tell what your point is because you make all these arguments in the same post.

Most of the educational experiences you mentioned are well within the reach of middle class. Foreign languages, chess, sports, camps etc, don’t strike me as particularly selective and hard to get. Private high schools of $50k tuition are a higher bar to clear, but again well within the reach of the upper middle class.

My point is that college acceptance doesn’t matter.