Reply to DH is not impressed with college admissions from the private schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't think it's stupid at all.  First, just as there are many public school kids who don't consider Ivys, the same applies to many private school kids.  Second, just as there are some public school kids who might have the grades/scores to be admitted to an Ivy, but don't attend because they cannot afford it, the same applies to many private school kids.  Your points may carry more weight if comparing Bethesda private schools against public school from low-income areas.  But I suspect the public schools we're talking about here are ones in Bethesda/Chevy Chase/Potomac/McLean, so I doubt the "admitted to Ivy but couldn't afford it" story is too common.  And finally, to the extent your points have some merit, I'd consider them where the public school has only a little smaller % than the private school.  But where the private school is sending 3-4 times more students to Ivys on a % basis, your points don't account for the difference.

Also, if you look at factors not-so-easily dismissed by supposed family income -- like National Merit Semifinalist % for example -- you see the same pattern as with Ivy attendance.  The strong private schools will have 3-4 times as many Semifinalists on a % basis.  Surely even if some highly qualified public school students were admitted but chose not to attend Ivy colleges because of finances, those same students tried just as hard on the SAT and PSAT tests.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not knocking public schools; I'm a proud public school grad.  And I'm especially not knocking public schools in the DC area; they're incredibly strong.  But looking at the objective data on student success, it's inaccurate to claim the strong private schools don't have better outcomes.  If you want to argue those better outcomes are partially the result of the strongest students flocking to private schools over public schools, I'd probably agree.  It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison of which situation will bring out the best in any particular kid, and harder still to say by how much.  But again, saying the objective data doesn't favor the strong private schools just seems to be ostrich-like to me.[/quote]

I'm not sure where to start, with your word chocies or with your overall comparison. For example, private schools [i]select[/i]the strongest students - it isn't that the stronger students are "flocking" to the privates as you say. This pretty much negates your point about NMSSFs, because the fact that private schools cream the good test takers (like my high SSAT-scoring kid) indicates less about the private schools' educational successes and more about private schools' ability to...cream the good test takers and, FWIW, the kids who can afford expensive private SAT tutoring.

It sort of drives me nuts when you compare anything on a percent basis--like you're doing again with NMSSFs. This may be out of the realm of your experience/bubble, but I hope you can see  that many public school kids don't even take the PSATs or SATs... because they aren't planning to go to college. So your percent-of-the-population statistics are equally misleading when you look at an entire public school class for Ivies as for NMSSFs.

Yes, I too know Sidwell kids who flat out refused to apply to Ivies because they were sick of the pressure cooker. But a much larger number of public school kids are going to be applying to 2nd-tier SLACs because they can get merit aid. Again, probably outside your experience, but I know public school kids who turned down top Ivies for places that offered full rides.

Most important, you have a very wishful and naive view of HH Income curve at area publics, even at the western MoCo publics you name. At all of these schools, you will find FARMS rates of 5-15%, and FARMS thresholds are very low -- HHI <$25K last time I checked (although feel free to double check, I have to run). This is without going into the percent that is non-English-speaking, and those stats are also readily available for you to check. But the biggest problem is that you ignore the huge bulge of the middle class in the middle of that public school income distribution, the kids from families with HHI under maybe $300. I think we can agree that private school families are mostly (not always, but with a private school kid, I have an idea what that distribution looks like) at the very upper tail of the income distribution in this area. It's simply not true that the HHI distribution at a  school like Churchill is identical to the HHI distribution at most area privates.

In short,  you need to compare apples to apples, the college-bound kids within the public schools, and particularly the college-bound kids at the very top end of the income distribution at these public schools, even at the western MoCo public schools. This is the peer group that is most comparable to private school kids.
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Should add - my kid just started full-pay at a top Ivy, which is a stretch for us but not impossible.... Just saying this to deflect the inevitable charge of sour grapes, and to establish that I have a pretty good idea about how finances affect college choices.[/quote]

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