Reply to Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=SAM2][quote=Anonymous]... And even at the most academically elite private schools,  there just aren't that many super-high achievers academically-speaking -- measured in absolute terms, as a percentage of the class, or compared to elite public magnet/selective admission schools.[/quote]
There's a ton of evidence proving you're wrong. Here's just one set, using the number of Presidential Scholars 2000-08 (http://wdcrobcolp01.ed.gov/CFAPPS/PSP/search1a.cfm):

DC (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/DC_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 56% of students, but only 10% of Presidential Scholars (2 total)
Private + religious schools have 43% of students, and 90% of Presidential Scholars (18 total)

MD (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/MD_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 83% of students, but only 76% of Presidential Scholars (28 total)
Private + religious schools have 17% of students, and 24% of Presidential Scholars (9 total)

VA (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/MD_09_03_03_01.pdf)
Public schools have 90% of students, and 95% of Presidential Scholars (20 total)
Private + religious schools have 10% of students, but only 5% of Presidential Scholars (1 total)

Total for DC/MD/VA
Public schools have 86.5% of students, but only 64% of Presidential Scholars (50 total)
Private + religious schools have 13.5% of students, and 36% of Presidential Scholars (28 total)

(Note that I've lumped private & religious schools together, which actually is not really fair to them, because many of the religious schools don't even hold themselves out as focused on top-tier academics. But some do, so they're have to suffer this unfairness in my calculations.)

None of this is meant as criticism of public schools. They clearly have lots of extremely smart kids and are capable of great teaching. I went to public school, and several of my close relatives are public school teachers. If PP had simply been posting that public schools have tons of super-high achieving students, I'd completely agree with her. But PP's claim that private schools are lacking in super-high achieving students is just absolute horseshit.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics