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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Been told by our college counselor that this year colleges are turning away from selecting most private high school kids because of their privileged education. That you now have a better chance coming from a public high school with good grades and top scores and activities. There’s no advantage anymore paying more money for private. None at all.

So for those of you looking to go private, don’t waste your money. Your private school kid, despite top gpa and test scores, will probably will be bumped in favor of someone from a good public school.

Regrets, regrets, regrets…[/quote]

Perhaps. I don't have anything other than anecdotal evidence, but from what I've seen I would say the opposite is true.

One of my kids is graduating from a private (Catholic) school this year. His grades and SAT scores are nearly identical to those of another student who attends public school (FCPS) and whose family we are friends with. Our kids applied to several of the same schools and our kid was accepted at most of them while their kid was not accepted at any of them (UVA, VT, W&M, etc.). It was a head-scratcher for us given that both are good students with great GPAs and nearly identical SAT scores; both have extracurricular activities outside of school that in my view are comparable. It's been somewhat awkward to commiserate with my friends about their kid being rejected from schools that my kid was accepted into.

The only thing that came to mind for me was that given all the grade inflation taking place, especially in public schools (e.g., even skipping assignments gets you a 50% score, focus on ensuring "equity" of outcomes etc.) perhaps the GPA from FCPS doesn't look "as good" as the same GPA from a more academically rigorous private school. I don't know whether or how college admissions departments try to factor those differences in when they're comparing candidate students with similar GPAs.

It's possible that essay questions made the difference, although (1) the "essays" these days are all very brief short-answer type questions and (2) to be honest, I didn't think my kid's essay question answers were anything special---so it's hard to believe that made the difference for several universities.

Anyway, our anecdotal experience is the exact opposite -- our student from an area private was accepted at several schools where a seemingly equivalent student from an area public was rejected. While I'm open to the possibility that it was random luck, the fact that it happened at multiple schools even where my kid was applying for a more selective major (e.g., my kid was accepted into engineering at VT, where our friends' kid was applying for business) leads to me believe it was something other than luck. [/quote]

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