Reply to High school recommendations from our k-8 school and how should I feel about?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think you have to begin with the end in mind. You sound like you would not be happy to spend another 300k and be sitting in a colleges counseling office hearing suggestions like Lehigh or Holy Cross. (perfectly good schools!)

I have two kids at HYP right now. So I get it. I acknowledge I wanted my kids to go to the kind of college that wasn't on the table for me.

We could sorta kinda afford private K-8, which sounded like a financial slog so we did pubic k-5 and public middle and then private HS. (Also had SHS spots, which would have also been fine).

Think about what kind of college you'd be happy with. You might say, maybe something cool like Pitzer or Wes. If so, go to public. BC? Go to Loyola. You will have better luck getting into Cornell from a strong public. At Middlebury, getting a great GPA and applying ED would be the more important than public or private. Or learn to play Rugby at Xavier and go to Cal or Michigan and maybe Brown. Want to go to UVA, buy a nice house in Rye and get him a tutor to keep his grades up.

A top HS in NY can totally help you, but all privates can hurt you too. Top or not. They're all full of "institutional priorities": legacies, donors, and very strong FGLI kids who came in via Prep for Prep etc and can thrive in PWI - colleges love them. All these legacy/donor kids get leadership positions - not because of nepotism (disagree with the podcast), but because they were born with the confidence and swagger my kids didn't have at 14.

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Different poster - thanks for sharing. I am interested in going a similar route with my kids - public for younger years and apply to private for HS.  How was the transition from public to private for your kids? Pros/cons of this path? TYSM[/quote]

They were both behind in math - which I think was more about Covid than curriculum. Publics were remote when privates went hybrid. For quite a while. Studying for the SHSAT helped fill in some blanks. But they got great grades in HS. I think it helped that they had done so little homework in middle school. they were the opposite of burned out.

Also, socially, I felt public middle school was a little behind private. In a good way. Again, this was during Covid so it didn't really impact my kids and their private peers, but I saw it in other grades. [/quote]

This board always talks about how the HYP kids from private are all legacies donors institutional priorities. Was it easy for your kids to find a niche and stand out at your private to gain acceptance? I assume they got in unconnected?[/quote]

They were unconnected, although I think TT NYC privates kids are all connected in a way. Colleges know these school. But yes, you're bumping up against very very connected kids. And your competition are your classmates to some extent. If you're not the uber connected, probably better to zig where they zag.

My kids had great grades - which took a lot of work but no tutors - and leadership within the school, which wasn't easy but wasn't hard. They also gravitated to their niche pretty easily - you're either a debate kid or a theater kid or a math kid. I wouldn't try to make a kid something they're not.  Being a boy in humanities helps. Paid real work helps. I listened to a lot of podcasts tbh. I think I sort of understood what was going to help an unconnected kid at a private school. Narrow academic interest, rigor, "grit" (a summer job at shake shack stands out in the pile from these schools), and a national award in .. debate or math or whatever to "certify" the stats. And an essay that pulls all that together. 
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Interested in the podcasts you've mentioned.[/quote]

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