Reply to what do you say to neighbors about why you are choosing private vs the local public?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "what do you say to neighbors about why you are choosing private vs the local public?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't find current stats, but when I attended Harvard some years back, fully 2/3 of the student body came from public high schools. And of the five of us who went to Harvard from my "big three" DC private, at least four were legacies. (The fifth might have been, too -- I just don't know.) [/quote]
When I read comments like these, I always wonder how many of the public school students admitted to top colleges are legacies too.  [/quote]
It doesn't seem likely that Harvard would fill 2/3 of the student body with legacy public school kids. Last I heard, Harvard accepts maybe 1/3 of legacy applicants but together these constitute about 10-12% of any incoming class. Surely many of those kids (private as well as public) got in on their own smarts. [/quote]
I'm sure many of them did get in on their own smarts -- I agree with you that it's easy (and foolish) to dismiss legacy applicants in general.  Many people have an image of some idiot scion who can barely graduate high school, but nevertheless gets into Yale.  But I'm betting most legacy applicants come from smart genes, have stable home lives, get good educations, face high parental expectations, have lots of advantages, etc.  As a result, they're very smart and well qualified.

My slightly different point is that we can't praise the public school students admitted to Harvard, and simply dismiss all the private school kids attending Ivy colleges as "legacy admits," without acknowledging that public school applicants are just as likely to be legacy applicants (perhaps even more likely in light of the ratios).[/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