Reply to West Potomac college acceptances

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "West Potomac college acceptances"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly, isn't this whole thread a little backwards? The problem with most NoVa schools isn't that the school isn't good enough to prepare people for elite schools -- they all are. The problem is that a lot of these colleges don't want to take thousands of kids from this area, so it's tougher to get in.

I actually know someone who is thinking of moving to another state in part because it'll be easier to get into a better college. I know -- that's counterproductive, because they'll likely get a lesser high school education -- but the fear behind it isn't totally irrational.

If your school only produces a couple of Ivy Leaguers each year and the rest of the school is struggling, you may actually be the lucky one.

Or you could just get a grip and realize that everything's going to be shaken up in the 12 years your kid has left before college, and it's better to focus on having a positive experience than making irrational life choices based on pretty much nothing.[/quote]

Very true.  I grew up in a small, rural state where the schools were not anywhere near as high powered as around here.  The best trailed the "bad" schools in this area by every metric.  Yet I knew plenty of kids who got into Harvard, etc.  Not that they were growing on trees, but you knew plenty of kids who went to them.  (I went to a college that is competitive to get into but at least a strata below the Ivy/MIT/Stanford.)  When you apply to Harvard, you aren't competing with kids around the world.  You're competing with kids in your region.

It also isn't clear that a more competitive program in one school helps the changes of students in that school materially.  Competitive colleges *say* (we can debate how true) that they look at what a kid does with what he or she has available.  Thus, in theory, if a school dropped AP/IB it would not make it harder for a kid to get into Harvard, even if the school down the street offers a full schedule of AP/IB courses.  No, I don't believe it's that simple.  But I do think that the AP/IB proliferation in this area doesn't necessarily help students get into elite schools.  It probably *does* help them once they get there.[/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