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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My DCs public school typically has 25-30 going to Ivy League schools and many many more going to top colleges. My public school DC is applying to much more competitive colleges than I did as a big 3 grad. The counseling is pretty hands off compared to private schools yet the kids still do extremely well in admissions. [/quote]
Urban myth. Not even top preps have that many.[/quote]
NP here. Actually, not urban myth. Public schools have larger classes, so it stands to reason that more kids go to top colleges. Columbia alone accepted 12 from DC's MoCo public this year, although maybe half will matriculate there. I don't know if my kid is at the same MoCo public as PP's, or how kids at other MoCo publics are doing.[/quote]
Many students from MoCo public schools do really well in college admissions.

[u]High School -- # going to Ivy League colleges in 2013[/u]
Winston Churchill -- 16 
Richard Montgomery -- 14 
Walter Johnson -- 8 
Wootton (2012) -- 9[/quote]

These schools are all excellent schools, but it's important to bear in mind that they are all roughly 4x the size of the largest coed independent schools and close to 5X the size of the single-sex independents.  This means that the numbers of students going to Ivies (which PP is using as a somewhat inaccurate and incomplete proxy of selectivity) are not in the same proportion as the the numbers going from the independent schools.  For example, in recent years Sidwell, with a graduating class size of approximately 125  has had 15-20 students going to Ivies.  Compare this outcome to the numbers cited by PP above for graduating classes of 500 from Churchill, 490 from RM (including approx 140 in the IB program), 520 from WJ, and 575 from Wooton.      [/quote]

I'm the PP who posted about Columbia above. I basically agree with you about the percent that go to ivies being smaller in publics. I do think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between acceptances and matriculation. Without going into personal details, I know 6-7 cases from DC's class this year where kids turned down ivies because the kids got merit or better FA money elsewhere (the ivies don't offer merit money). These are just the kids I know of. Many other kids don't even apply to ivies because they think (maybe incorrectly) they can't afford it and won't get aid. After all, these aren't families who are already accustomed to paying $35K+ per year for school. It's a different population. My only purpose in entering this thread was to respond to some PP's notion above that public school students aren't as motivated or something, not to start an ivy matriculation war.[/quote]

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