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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Good points, but I wouldn't necessarily rank good suburban schools quite that high - the mean SAT at Staples High School in Westport e.g. is 1260, which is like 40 points lower than LaGuardia's and 100 points lower than ElRo's. (most of their matriculation lists are pretty bleak too)

LaGuardia incidentally is an interesting option missing from that list - it's not a pressure cooker, but it's certainly academically equivalent to a good suburban school, and if your kid already has some aptitude in music or singing or acting or dance, pursuing that more seriously in middle school and working with an audition coach could easily get them to LaGuardia level. We know a bunch of kids who went that route and had a marvelous experience.

SHSATs I wouldn't say are all pressure cookers - Stuy certainly is, but Bronx Science less so and Brooklyn Latin/Tech less still. You're not wrong about Gen Ed, but if your kid is a strong writer they might be able to overcome a bad lottery number with a good essay - we know kids who've managed that.[/quote]

You don't look at averages when looking at suburban publics. You look at volume. Really good suburban publics are getting a bunch of kids into top schools. By nature they have to handle whoever walks in the door so there will also be a cohort of much weaker kids. But usually they have good tracking so can accelerate top kids while also supporting less academic kids. Of course, there are some suburban publics which are pressure cookers - some schools I wouldn't send my kid to.

Bronx Sci is definitely more sane than Stuy but still huge, remote and a pressure cooker. Brooklyn Tech is gigantic so not for everyone. Brooklyn Latin was freaky and it has a very odd curriculum - works for some but not others - we were a hard pass (my kid far exceeded the threshold).

Not many essay schools I would consider. And the rubric for that is odd - I wouldn't rest my hopes on it. Though I do agree that it broadens the potential options as there are some that are OK.[/quote]

We went through the process last year and this is spot on.  For a non-spec ed kid the non-SHSAT options were not amazing unless you had fabulous luck with the lottery number (we did not), the kid was artsy (there are a number of performing arts schools besides LaGuardia), or you happened to randomly crack the code for Beacon, Bard, or NEST. As far as I could tell from who got into those essay schools, it wasn't much tied to a kid's writing abilities (plus the essays were written at home, so, yeah). My kid wound up at one of the "big 3" SHSATs and while very happy there, I can tell it's going to be a doozy for college admissions. Anyway, I certainly think private is worth the $ for high school, and maybe for middle school, just to avoid the 8th grade scramble. Elementary, not so much.
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What do you mean by doozy for college admissions[/quote]

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