Reply to College Acceptances for Washington Latin High School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't speak to the quality of education at Latin, but the list of acceptances looks similar to what I saw in my graduating class at Yorktown 20 years ago. In my HS class, there were a few (like maybe 3) kids who went to ivies or Stanford, and a lot who went to UVA or William and Mary, but most other college bound kids went to the schools listed above. So I don't see this listing of schools as unimpressive, [b]especially since DC has no decent in state options.[/b][/quote]

I think this point cannot be made enough times. The top state schools offer little to no aid to out-of-state students, no matter what their color, level of income, or achievements. Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, UNC, UVA, Texas, Florida, etc., have plenty of low-income students in their own states; they look to OOS students to pay full freight.

Also recall that first generation college students often don't want to go that far from home (or family), so they have additional concerns driving their decision-making relative to other students.

Also recall that this is a very small class in an urban open-enrollment high school. As noted above, there are plenty of lower-income students at Latin, but remember that SAT scores are highly correlated with family income. So there might be only a handful of students who have the test scores to even make it through the first round of consideration at the elite schools. (Sure, elite schools practice affirmative action, but if you think non-athlete minorities are admitted without good SAT scores, you are dead wrong. They might not have stellar SAT scores; but they definitely have good ones.) Few of these students will be legacies or elite athletes, so they won't have those hooks.

The reality is that children of well-off, highly educated parents are likely to do comparatively well in the college game whether they go to Latin or Walls or Sidwell. The children of lower-income, less-educated parents are likely to get a big boost by going to Sidwell. Unfortunately, they aren't likely to get there. The same, BTW, is true of college. Children of well-off, highly educated parents are likely to do comparatively well in life whether they go to Denison or Hampshire or Harvard. The children of lower-income, less-educated parents are likely to get a big boost in life by going to Harvard. And again, they aren't likely to get there. Remember this when you are wringing your hands about your children's future. Perspective, please.[/quote]

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