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[quote=SAM2][quote=Anonymous]Regarding the results shown in your table, I find it interesting just how much better the magnet schools (and many of the publics) are doing - on all the variables you show. I am wondering, for a smart kid that would qualify, how much more competitive it is to get into the magnets compared to getting into the BIG privates and how different the experience in a magnet is compared to the private.  Any leads / earlier threads on this by any chance?[/quote]
Public magnets in DC and other places do put up some absolutely incredible numbers. I have no magic insight, but my best guess is that part of the answer for their success is that they are selecting applicants in the 8th grade, so they have a good "body of work" they can use to predict how students will do in 9th-12th. By contrast, many of the K-12 private schools only select about 20-30% of their high school classes from 8th grade applicants. The large majority of the high school class is made up of students who applied many years (perhaps even 10 years) earlier at younger grades. Predicting the future abilities of those young applicants many years in advance is probably very hard. Some might blossom into superstars, but others might not show much academically. I've been trying for a while now to think up some way to compare/contrast between those multi-year applicant pools. I've got a couple ideas, but have had no time to try the math yet. If you have ideas for approaches, please let me know. (The one interesting exception I've seen is Hunter in NYC, which selects its classes at K, and then teaches them up through 12th.)

Also, I think most magnets select students largely on the basis of standardized test performance, so the skills that lead applicants to do well on the standardized admissions tests will readily lend themselves to high performance on other standardized tests like the PSAT and SAT, which in turn leads to strong numbers in the NMSF and Presidential Scholar analysis.

No matter how you slice it, top public magnets and top privates all seem to turn out incredibly smart graduates. I think trying to compare different schools in a ranking sense is really a futile effort. The best that you could possibly do is create some broad and vaguely differentiated tiers. There's also the very important point that your individual child (or mine) is going to develop best if she's matched carefully to the proper school, and not just forced into a top-performing school that does not mesh with her innate abilities.

I haven't studied the admissions percentages at public magnets, so I am not much help there. I've seen various private school admission rates that range from 1:7 to 1:15, but I have no idea how accurate those numbers are. I think I recall seeing sometime a report from Thomas Jefferson that detailed the exact numbers for that school, and I think the ratio was something like 1:8 or 1:10. (If you're motivated to find that data, I think it was the Blue Ribbon report that was studying the lack of racial diversity at TJ.)

I hope this helps.
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