Reply to Parents of DCPS HS graduates - were your kids prepared for college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My very smart kid went to Walls and then to a selective SLAC and was NOT prepared at all. he didn't know how to organize his time and had bad study habits, and didn't really know how to write papers.  It took him at least one semester to figure it out and it was very challenging. He ended up doing very well and has a great job now (2 years out) so it all worked out in the end but DCPS certainly didn't teach him the skills he needed to succeed[/quote]

I mean...he must have been prepared somewhat.  You don't go from struggling in the first semester to doing very well overall with no preparation.  I don't know if the W schools can claim they prepare a student better for a selective SLAC...and I have no doubt your kid would have been better prepared if they went to Sidwell.  The real question though is would it have made sense for you to pay $200k for Sidwell just to not struggle for one semester?  I don't have an answer.[/quote]
To answer your question, no, paying for Sidwell wasn't an option, and private schools, while excellent academically, come with their own host of issues. And ultimately it all comes out in the wash. [b]I think kids who are poorly prepared by their high schools have to struggle a little more and work a little harder (if they want to succeed) the first couple of years of college, [/b]learning the skills others learn in HS. Also, asa college professor I can tell you that kids are generally less prepared now than they were 10-15 years ago and that's across the board. The amount of spoon-feeding we need to do ( we call is diplomatically "scaffolding") is staggering[/quote]

This works out ok for most but there is very little room (or no) room for error for freshman grades for kids who want to go into medicine or probably competitive law schools or competitive finance jobs.  I'm not familiar with the law or finance worlds but I do work closely in medical school admissions and many (most) pre-med students' dreams are broken by the first semester of freshman year.  The reality is that probably 5% of kids who enter college being pre-med end up going to med school and much of this is not by choice but because of grades and there is no leeway for a poor first semester.  
I recognize that this is not is not a post about medical school admissions but I wanted to point out that there are career choices that are not as forgiving about a kid needing to struggle for a semester or two in college. [/quote]

This is a good point. DCPS kids are underrepresented in careers such as medicine and Wall Street[/quote]

So how in the world would you know this.....................[/quote]

I know this because I’m in one of these fields. I hardly ever come across new employees coming from DCPS. Plenty of local private school kids. You can also search on linked in for career professionals from JR or Walls, etc so you can network with alumni from your high school. If your kid tries that once they are in college, it can be frustrating because they will hardly find any DCPS graduates in these particular fields. This is partly where the private school advantage kicks in. Because powerful alumni can help recent graduates get internships, etc. 
[/quote]

This view may be dated. For example, it’s now impossible to get an NIH summer internship through connections. Individual labs aren’t allowed to bring in a friend’s kid or any other specific person. And everyone who applied from one of the big 3 private schools was shut out this year. Meanwhile, the information about the biomed track at JR notes that they place kids there - not sure if this actually happens or not, but have heard at least of them sending kids to Georgetown for internships.[/quote]

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