Reply to Average Student at Big 3 - Where did your kid end up going to college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree.  I was a college debator and visited all the Ivies and many of the small liberal arts colleges like Williams, Amherst, Swathmore, etc and invariably if the someone was from the DC metro area, they were from Bethesda, Chevy Chase, McLean, etc.  Those public high schools send LOTS of kids to elite colleges many more than the private schools around here.  Certainly enough to make an impression on someone from the Midwest who'd never heard of these high schools before.[/quote]

Your math is screwed. They "send many more" because the number of students in public schools in the DC area far outweigh the number in private schools. But when you look at %, er, no, the best public schools in the area do not have better placement at the top ivies than the best private school. Obviously, TJ is a massive exception [/quote]

New poster. I've actually looked at a lot of the college data for local schools, and I don't see even TJ as a massive exception.  It seems to send students to top colleges at about the same rate as the strong local private schools -- better than some, but not as good as other private schools.  We could discuss for several pages the various factors that might explain the college success of different schools.  But from what I've seen, TJ is a very strong school and certainly in the conversation with many strong private schools, but is not materially better in terms of college admissions.  Again though, a lot depends on the specific high school.  The difference between one private school and another can be pretty extreme, just one public school can differ pretty radically from another public school.

IMHO, conversations on DCUM are most productive if people avoid directly comparing schools with "better than" or "worse than" labels.  Ultimately, it's the individual student that wins the academic award or gets admitted to college, not the high school.  The success of the students from each high school is just a very rough proxy for how other students from that school might fare.

Sam2[/quote]

I think the OP meant TJ is a "massive exception" among public schools. That is, its placement rates are much better than most public schools.[/quote]

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