Class of '26 Instagram College Decisions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:(Mamdani's educational path has some parallels with Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose dad was also a Big Deal but who also went from a top-tier NYC public high school to a second-tier liberal arts college)

I’m not taking anyone seriously who calls Wesleyan a second-tier liberal arts college

[Anonymous]

If you go by USNews Wesleyan is tied with 8 other schools for 13th place.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Starting to question if SHS could be better route...

Best path for unconnected seems to be K-8 at private for the community and transfer to public for HS.

That’s what Mamdani did! Bank Street to Bronx Science to Bowdoin. Seemed to work out for him.

Mamdani is not “unconnected” lol.

lol, I guess you’re right, he is pretty connected.

OTOH Columbia rejected him despite the fact that his dad was on the faculty.

I am not sure what happened there. I would think being a son of the faculty and being from top public high school would get him admitted.

[Anonymous]

Yes, if your goal is to send your kid to a school to meet the child of a billionaire who might allow your kid into their inner circle, TT is way to go, but I’m not sure Turtle from Entourage is the highest aspiration my kids will have. So much of the argument for the value of these places is “you get to be close to really rich people who might like you and invite you to a party.”

quote=Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All fair — I think what we are responding to is the very one dimensional take that these
places are a guaranteed meal ticket. I worked like a dog in high school (outside NYC) and was motivated to do it, but I never expected it meant that I was destined for great things. It just meant I might get into a college which might be a boost if I worked hard there and took advantage of the opportunity. There is a mystique to the NYC prep school that you are destined or owed greatness that a lot of parents really start to buy into and instill in their kids. Some of these schools are fantastic, some once were but are now poorly run or mismanaged. All are only really important to the people who attend or send their kids there, but they think of themselves as national brands. I went to a really good prep school outside of NYC, got into one of THOSE colleges and sailed through. I have classmates from that school who didn’t go to one of THOSE colleges who are engineers and very successful people, doctors, math professors and some who aren’t much of much but are happy.

NYC prep schools aren’t a notch above everyone else, but they train the kids to think they are and for some kids, it’s not good for their longterm success. No one is surprised mediocre people graduate from Horace Mann other than people who went to or send their kids to Horace Mann.

The network you get from a TT in NY is better than any other HS in the country and it’s not close. I went to an Andover Deerfield level boarding school in the last 20 years. Take away financial aid recipients, affirmative action, day students, athletic recruits, and you don’t really have that many classroom aces or daughters of billionaires. TTs are full of them and can carry you through life.

[Anonymous]

The top kids at Bronx Science are at least on par if not academically more impressive than private school kids, not always but a lot of the time. Part of that podcast Zarna did, she and her husband discuss how her kids ERB scores at their private school were lower than their local public when they looked at them.


quote=Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know which TT school her kids were in? Very surprised that the kids themselves had great experiences with the transition. The comments about leadership opportunities not being meritocratic in private is very concerning.

Horace Mann. I am not very surprise given public school is more diverse and less competitive. They were open about discussing the country club aspect and how they were not a cultural fit. They spent a lot of money on private tutors, so they were going to come out on top in a public school setting compared to private.

[Anonymous]

If you look it up, the average SAT scores at Bronx Science are 30 points higher than Horace Mann, just FYI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, if your goal is to send your kid to a school to meet the child of a billionaire who might allow your kid into their inner circle, TT is way to go, but I’m not sure Turtle from Entourage is the highest aspiration my kids will have. So much of the argument for the value of these places is “you get to be close to really rich people who might like you and invite you to a party.”

quote=Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All fair — I think what we are responding to is the very one dimensional take that these
places are a guaranteed meal ticket. I worked like a dog in high school (outside NYC) and was motivated to do it, but I never expected it meant that I was destined for great things. It just meant I might get into a college which might be a boost if I worked hard there and took advantage of the opportunity. There is a mystique to the NYC prep school that you are destined or owed greatness that a lot of parents really start to buy into and instill in their kids. Some of these schools are fantastic, some once were but are now poorly run or mismanaged. All are only really important to the people who attend or send their kids there, but they think of themselves as national brands. I went to a really good prep school outside of NYC, got into one of THOSE colleges and sailed through. I have classmates from that school who didn’t go to one of THOSE colleges who are engineers and very successful people, doctors, math professors and some who aren’t much of much but are happy.

NYC prep schools aren’t a notch above everyone else, but they train the kids to think they are and for some kids, it’s not good for their longterm success. No one is surprised mediocre people graduate from Horace Mann other than people who went to or send their kids to Horace Mann.

The network you get from a TT in NY is better than any other HS in the country and it’s not close. I went to an Andover Deerfield level boarding school in the last 20 years. Take away financial aid recipients, affirmative action, day students, athletic recruits, and you don’t really have that many classroom aces or daughters of billionaires. TTs are full of them and can carry you through life.

I’m the trin/harvard poster again. Not sure wtf the person talking about networks is saying. Things don’t work that way. Think it’s just a bad faith argument which holds about as much truth as a lot of other assumptions people make about tt schools. mostly exaggerated or just false.

I agree that, at trin, there was a fairly pervasive sense of entitlement. BUT it was mostly contained within a certain clique, and never extended much beyond it. For most of us, it was the opposite: we worked like dogs all through school in part because none of us believed we would be handed anything. If we wanted to get into harvard or yale or stanford or whatever, we all knew that there were minimum 40 other candidates at least as good as us. COmpetition was FIERCE. You needed to be smart and figure out a way to differentiate yourself from a pretty talented student body all while navigating the strange politics of trinity and (occasionally) new york’s stratospheric classes and dealing with the insane workload. It’s a weird scene. Some of this is true at every school of course. But competition is so extreme at new york privates that it really feels zero sum. And thinking on those terms is itself a destructive, harmful way to go through high school - one of the things i only learned once i was in college and was able to breathe for the first time.

What I’d say about the mystique of ny tt is that some of it is cultivated by the schools, but so much of it comes from the outside and all the school can do is try to manage it. It’s what happens when there’s that much competition for few places in the biggest US city. And honestly, what people do to get their kids into these schools can be hilarious. I don’t think most of my trin classmates or my sib’s believed it was a ticket to anything, but an opportunity we had the choice to seize. Some kids did, some didn’t, but we were conscious of our choices.

I also don’t think anyone, NYC privately educated or not, who denies that you can go to any school and eventually become successful or that people who go to TT’s can wind up pretty poorly off. Mediocrity abounds wherever there are people, because most people (myself included) are pretty average.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you look it up, the average SAT scores at Bronx Science are 30 points higher than Horace Mann, just FYI.

1470 vs 1460. Basically the same.

[Anonymous]

I’m the trin/harvard poster again. Not sure wtf the person talking about networks is saying. Things don’t work that way. Think it’s just a bad faith argument which holds about as much truth as a lot of other assumptions people make about tt schools. mostly exaggerated or just false.

I agree that, at trin, there was a fairly pervasive sense of entitlement. BUT it was mostly contained within a certain clique, and never extended much beyond it. For most of us, it was the opposite: we worked like dogs all through school in part because none of us believed we would be handed anything. If we wanted to get into harvard or yale or stanford or whatever, we all knew that there were minimum 40 other candidates at least as good as us. COmpetition was FIERCE. You needed to be smart and figure out a way to differentiate yourself from a pretty talented student body all while navigating the strange politics of trinity and (occasionally) new york’s stratospheric classes and dealing with the insane workload. It’s a weird scene. Some of this is true at every school of course. But competition is so extreme at new york privates that it really feels zero sum. And thinking on those terms is itself a destructive, harmful way to go through high school - one of the things i only learned once i was in college and was able to breathe for the first time.

What I’d say about the mystique of ny tt is that some of it is cultivated by the schools, but so much of it comes from the outside and all the school can do is try to manage it. It’s what happens when there’s that much competition for few places in the biggest US city. And honestly, what people do to get their kids into these schools can be hilarious. I don’t think most of my trin classmates or my sib’s believed it was a ticket to anything, but an opportunity we had the choice to seize. Some kids did, some didn’t, but we were conscious of our choices.

I also don’t think anyone, NYC privately educated or not, who denies that you can go to any school and eventually become successful or that people who go to TT’s can wind up pretty poorly off. Mediocrity abounds wherever there are people, because most people (myself included) are pretty average.

I appreciate your feedback.

I would say the value proposition is what drives this debate for me. When you will be spending $1mm+ prior to college and the return on the investment is based on future potential rather than grounded in reality. Realistically the money is best served to save for them to have financial flexibility after college.

I am a fan of the K-8 model where the child needs to show talent and drive in wanting to pursue TT schools before investing a lot of resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The top kids at Bronx Science are at least on par if not academically more impressive than private school kids, not always but a lot of the time. Part of that podcast Zarna did, she and her husband discuss how her kids ERB scores at their private school were lower than their local public when they looked at them.

I didn’t take much away from the ERB scores because it is well known that public school can be more academic rigors in elementary school. There are incremental jumps in rigor at middle and high school that you will find parents complain that the school doesn’t prepare the students for.

It is more difficult to quantify how the soft skills and exposure to many niche subjects helped when arriving at Bronx Science, given the importance studying latin was to her college application.

To me the interesting part of was the cultural fit, fund raising, and how they couldn’t afford it anymore. With the husband being laid off and the wife needing to reinvent herself as a comedian. The reality of going to TT private school when you are not super wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Yes, but one costs a lot less.

quote=Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you look it up, the average SAT scores at Bronx Science are 30 points higher than Horace Mann, just FYI.

1470 vs 1460. Basically the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
To me the interesting part of was the cultural fit, fund raising, and how they couldn’t afford it anymore. With the husband being laid off and the wife needing to reinvent herself as a comedian. The reality of going to TT private school when you are not super wealthy.

I thought Horace Mann had very robust financial aid? If they wanted the family to stay, I expect they would have supported them through a financial downturn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
To me the interesting part of was the cultural fit, fund raising, and how they couldn’t afford it anymore. With the husband being laid off and the wife needing to reinvent herself as a comedian. The reality of going to TT private school when you are not super wealthy.

I thought Horace Mann had very robust financial aid? If they wanted the family to stay, I expect they would have supported them through a financial downturn.

I believe the layoff came after she pulled her children from HM. She was determined to leave because she felt her eldest daughter wouldn’t get pushed by the school for top colleges and they had already spent over $1mm in tuition. She said the school catered to the donors and board members.

[Anonymous]

You don’t have to be turtle. You have to be Kevin Federline and get a billionaire or celebrity’s daughter pregnant. Then you’re set for life all because you could hang in HS

[Anonymous]

Fair — you could be the blonde one. You’re right about there important info being how corrupt some of these TT are.