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[quote=Anonymous]I teach in MCPS but have also taught in private. Here's my anecdotal assessment. A few kids apply to both, but it's only the real superstars who get INTO both the magnet and a top DC private. Both types of schools are looking for good grades and test scores. BUT, a private also is a smaller community and truly factors in what the kid will bring to the social dynamics and extracurricular life of the school. By high school, the privates are less concerned about what their parents do, unless it looks like the parents are going to be total pains in the butt. Kids DO get rejected based on difficult parents at times. For a truly dynamic kid who's slightly weaker in math than other areas, those privates can take the time to appreciate what he could bring in other areas, especially if he's extraordinary in some other niche, like music, art, lacrosse or drama. He still might not get in depending on the applicant pool. He has to meet standards too, no matter how well he can throw a ball. Smallish privates know that one kid can wreak havoc on a place. But that same kid won't get into Blair. Blair's numbers are large enough that they can rely most heavily on grades/scores and still have enough kids to fill the community's needs, whether it's a robotics team, debate or soccer. It's also big enough that socially, one bad apple is unlikely to affect the overall feel. He can be avoided by other kids. And parents are pretty irrelevant to Blair. Privates also need to factor in where their students might get into college later--it's a bad business decision to let in kids who won't have options later, or who will struggle academically to keep up with massive amounts of reading/writing while in HS. And the trend continues in college. A school like CalBerkeley is going to be weeding out quickly based on scores, whereas a place like Swarthmore is going to want to get a sense of what the child's unique contributions would be. And again, in both cases, grades and scores will matter a lot--just looked at through a different lens. I've had 8th grade students get into Blair OR Sidwell, but never had one get into both. Like I said, I'm just offering anecdotal data. Both types of schools offer terrific educations, and I think it's great that there are good options for all kinds of kids, including autistic kids, who can be wonderful additions to a school--there was some ignorance about that here. And all of these motivated/hard-working kids end up in a good college--there are plenty of those.[/quote]

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