Reply to Private HS's in LA

Forum Index » Metropolitan Los Angeles

Reply to "Private HS's in LA"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]NP here.  We live in Pacific Palisades; kids go to Harvard-Westlake (HW), and DH works in downtown LA (DTLA).

It's a bit of a commute to DTLA from the Palisades.  If wanting to live in the Westside, I'd go towards Santa Monica or Brentwood etc.

FYI, HW's Bel Air campus is only through 9th grade, then 10-12 the kids go to a different campus, in the Valley (San Fernando Valley) just off Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Blvd.  The school has a bus system.

On the HW website, if you search "matriculation" you can see the 1 year and 5 year stats of where the graduates are attending college.  I do agree with a PP who says that it is tough to get into the top-top schools, because HW has a pool of very strong kids, but colleges tend to grab the top tier kids from different schools...so in another school many kids would be ranked higher given their classmates.  I do not stand strongly by this statement as it's just what I've gathered so far, because my kids are not in the upper school yet and I haven't focused on it.  However; HW is like a well-oiled machine in the college matriculation process.

I think you asked about clothing; this was my concern as well as my kids came from a school with uniforms, and this is not an issue bc there is a dress code, and also a student dress culture that is pretty tame.

Now this is important:  In California, the UC system (University of California campuses, like UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, Berkely, etc) are mandated to take the top 10% of PUBLIC high school graduates.  That does not mean your kid will get into the one of their choice, but your kid will get in somewhere.  So our local school is Palisades Charter High School (Pali High), and I'm under the impression that it's easier to get into UCLA from Pali High than to get in from HW.  This is because the UC's get their California resident kids from the public pool.  The private HSs tend to feed to private colleges and the public HSs to the publics.

We like Pali High and continue to consider it.  I've heard really good things about the San Marino/La Canada (~ over the "n") public schools.  BTW I love that whole area (my brother used to live in Pasadena and now they live in Altadena)--there are lots of people from JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs) over there so it's a very science-y area, vs. the Westside which has a lot of entertainment influence (so emphasis on looks and conspicuous consumption vs. the pocket protector).  But you can navigate it.
[/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