Reply to Bethesda Magazine - List of College Acceptances

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'd argue that 461 isn't really the right denominator for Whitman.  That includes special ed kids (with significant disabilities), international students who are in the ESOL program, and plenty of ordinary students who are aiming for MD schools below UMD.  The only selection process for Whitman is living in bounds.

But whatever - you keep paying $35k a year for private school and tell yourself it's the road to ivy covered wonderland.  See you in Ann Arbor for a football game![/quote]
Careful ... you're starting to sound defensive.

Whitman profiles are useful here -- [url=http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/whitmanhs/about/School%20Profile%202012(2).pdf]here[/url]  and [url=http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/04427.pdf]here[/url]  The student body is not nearly as hard-up as you suggest.  You know in the middle of Bethesda, right?  97% of Whitman students attend college (89% at 4-year colleges).  Over 70% white, and I'd bet most are pretty high SES in light of the price of real estate in that neighborhood.  (I know I can't afford to live there!)  Parent group is "80% college graduates, mainly professional and managerial."  Hardly any ESOL or FARMS students, or dropouts, or suspended students.  95+% graduation rate, and 95% attendance rate.  It's pretty much a kick-ass school.

I didn't post the Ivy college data to pick a fight with you or any other public school supporter.  I'm a happy graduate of public schools.  There are all sorts of great reasons to choose public schools over privates, just as there are some things private schools do better.  I just wanted to bring some real numbers to the discussion.

If you want to argue that you can't afford private school, or that you think the ROI for private school versus Whitman is not enough to justify the cost, you'll get no counter-argument from me.  That's your choice.  [/quote]

But your Ivy data is immaterial because, for whatever reason, fewer public school kids than private school kids apply to Ivies. You can see this in the magazine table. It's unfair to slam Whitman for low Harvard admits, when only 25/500 Whitman kids even applied to Harvard. What we need is acceptance ratios (admits/applications), which we have for the public schools but not for the private schools.

We can argue endlessly about how many kids we *think* apply from private schools to Ivies. And why we *think* fewer kids apply to Harvard from Whitman than from STA. And whether we *think* the acceptance ratios are higher or lower at private schools, if only we could compare the two relevant figures, which are the number of applicants and the number of acceptances. But we really don't know the answers to any of these questions.[/quote]

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