Reply to Which W / BCC school is least difficult to not be very wealthy

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Reply to "Which W / BCC school is least difficult to not be very wealthy"

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[quote=Anonymous]Ooh. That's a lot of social assumptions, OP, just like my friend who doesn't live in Bethesda yet seems to have a large chip on his shoulder about the fact I live in Bethesda (I have a lower income than him, but somehow that doesn't percolate, because now I'm one of those rich Bethesda snobs).

So. There are rent-controlled apartments in downtown Bethesda (BCC) and in the Walter Johnson cluster - not sure about Walt Whitman and Winston Churchill. There will be lower-income people at every high school. There will furthermore be middle class people who do not want to pay for tutors and private college counselors, for various reasons.

Only a very small number of families actually pay for private college counselors: it usually goes like this. In 9th and 10th grade, they're very scared of the college process and talk about hiring one. Then they inquire around and realize that for the price, their kid could better increase their chances with tutoring and that the family can do their own research, come up with a college list and make an effort with essay drafts. So the immense majority do not have private counselors.

What most families do pay for is tutoring! One acquaintance found a $15/hr student in another state willing to tutor her son, and she's very happy with the result. Others look at Wyzant online. Others pay for local $100-$350 math tutors (they usually command a higher fee than other subjects, since they're most in demand). The founder of Prep Matters asks for, what it is now, $400 or $500 an hour to personally tutor your kid! Point is: you can find tutoring at any price point, and I encourage you to do so: the personal one-on-one is very effective to teach some tricky concepts your kid might have missed in class.

Cars: my kid at Walter Johnson drives my 13 year old non-luxury car. Also, very important point. There are many city-raised and/or international kids from families who do not have the "driving at 16" culture. My son's friends did not take driving lessons in high school. One started at 18, the rest still don't drive. We're all international families. Far fewer teens drive in this area today than they used to. Of course, one day I parked next to a teen's brand-new Tesla at Walter Johnson. Some families are wealthy and do this for their kids. But most families do not. However, insecure people with observation bias will jump on those sightings and wrongly conclude that "everyone is stinking rich and this is not the bubble I want my kid growing up in", which is untrue.

College applications: you can read all the threads about this in the College Forum, OP. It's a huge, controversial topic. Suffice it to say that most kids do not have padded resumes. Of course well-connected families will have lined up impressive internships for their kids. But colleges aren't duped. The most important criteria for selection to a good university is GPA. Your kid has to play the Honors/AP game, if he's a good student, because that increases his weighted GPA. No regular class if he can help it. Always pick the Honors version, and if he feels up to it, pick the AP. And that's why tutoring is so important.

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