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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s very difficult to differentiate yourself with grade inflation and the sheer number of students.[/quote]

Most of those students aren't getting 1500 SAT's and a stack of good AP scores, though. From what I've seen, each of these schools has a cohort of a couple dozen smart kids whose names show up on every list of winners of blah blah prize or academic honor or whatever, and most of those kids end up doing very well college-wise; as long as your kid is smart enough to be part of that group they're in pretty good shape.[/quote]

The point by is a lot of students at those schools do get those scores and a much higher proportion fail to get into a top college than their counterparts at TT high schools. It is more unpredictable an outcome from the publics. [/quote]

I don't think that's true, though - the top kids seem to pretty much all do OK. Or if they don't, it's usually because there's some other problem or even simply that the family doesn't want to spend the money or the kid wants to stay closer to home or whatever.

Also, even if I accepted your proposition that every single kid in the top 25% at a TT high school gets into a top college, in terms of choosing a school for your kid, it's very hard to know whether your kid is going to end up in that top 25% - you may feel like they're very smart but not necessarily at that level of granularity, and it takes more than just smarts anyway. (and of course TT admissions itself is notoriously a crapshoot, so another key question here is 'is it worth going through years of effort to try to get my kid into a TT when it probably won't work or should I just make life easier on our family by putting them in a nice suburban school')[/quote]

They do “OK” as you said, not great. If your kid is actually gifted and bright, you tend to know that by 5, certainly by 13 when they’d apply to HS. Their best bet to reach their academic and career potential is a TT. Those are circles you just don’t crack by being a run of the mill Rye HS grad in big 4 accounting. [/quote]

I just don't think that's true - the vast majority of the people in those circles did not in fact attend one of 7 specific NYC private schools or half a dozen boarding schools or a handful of peer institutions in other parts of the country. We're far from a true meritocracy, but we're not so bad at that as to uniquely elevate people who win one specific sequence of lottery tickets over everyone else.

And again, this is all about unconnected kids - I'm not disputing the idea that if you are a rich connected kid your best bet is to enroll at a TT where you'll be surrounded by other rich connected kids and that system will do its best to find you an appropriately lofty niche within it. I do question whether a smart kid who's not particularly wealthy or connected is going to do better duking it out to be in the top 25% at a TT school versus being near the top of their class in a good public.[/quote]

There are tons of financially successful people, more than the Ivies graduate.  When I say those circles, I mean nice clubs, philanthropy boards, school involvement, people with pedigree and real elegance.  You can sell a plumbing supply business for 50mm and buy a waterfront house in Fairfield County, but that is not what is being discussed here.  An unconnected, unhooked kid will have to duke it out anywhere to get into a top college.  There is no easy path.  It is better to do it with rich peers who can help him out later on than to live in the boonies up in Bedford with people whose parents own 1mm houses.[/quote]

But again, why would you expect to be embraced by those rich peers? Yes I saw the earlier comment about boys who've known each other since kindergarten, but I think a lot of this discussion is about 9th grade.[/quote]

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