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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of the kids who go to a Sidwell, STA or NCA - the real - highly competitive academic schools may do better staying in public schools. Those are kids who are smart enough to excel in an above average environment but will fall below the top 5 percent in a the more more competitive academic environment. These are kids who score 2100 or above on SATs - have a B+ average but would had a 4.0 -4.5 in public school[/quote]

Not so fast, it absolutely depends on the public school. You assume public schools offer an "average environment" and that a kid who gets Bs in a top private would get A's in a public school. This is not necessarily the case if the public school is Whitman, Wooton, Blair, BCC, Richard Montgomery or others. It might be hard to believe, but there are plenty of smart, hard-working kids at these schools who don't happen to have parents who can plunk down $40K/yr. Sure, public schools have to take kids of all intellectual abilities and tge discipline problems, but at the top of these and other schools is a solid core of smart, motivated kids. Where the difference may be is in the fewer legacy, political appointee, and really wealthy kids your DC would be competing against in a public school.

I've actually heard the opposite, FWIW. That private school is better for kids who wouldn't stand out in public, because of the individual attention and the vastly superior college counseling.[/quote]

I may have been a little flip  but I'm really thinking about the top academic private schools where the environment is highly competitive.  I purposefully didn't refer to GDS - while it's a high caliber academic institution, it does not have the high level of competition that exists at Sidwell, NCS and STA.  I say all of this as a parent of kids at some of these schools and as a graduate of one of these schools.  GDS for instance is well known to have the best college counseling in the area - that school makes a huge effort to get smart but underperforming kids in to good colleges.  I don't mean to make sweeping generalizations that disparage public schools. I just think that there is a very large group of kids at private schools would have a stronger academic record even at Whitman or its peers. For instance, private schools don't give 4.5's for an A in an honors course.  The highest GPA you can get is a 4.0. [/quote]

I'm the poster you're responding to, and I actually agree with you - there are plenty of smart kids at top DC schools who would do just as well at top area public schools, in terms of GPA and SAT scores within the graduating class distribution, at least. I'm not sure they'd get into as good colleges from public schools, because there's the lousy public school guidance counseling, but that's a different issue. My kids have been in public and private and I have seen super-smart and pretty average kids in both places. I was just responding to the idea that a so-so kid at a top school could transfer to Whitman and suddenly be at the top of the class - I think there'd be way too much competition from super-smart Whitman kids for that to happen.

FWIW, publics don't give 5.0 for an honors class. You only get a 5.0 for A in an AP class. More important, colleges look at unweighted GPA not weighted GPA, so the bump-up for AP classes doesn't help much.[/quote]

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