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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I bet the public school applicants will continue to trend down, especially at the elite, $55k schools.

[b]The word is increasingly out that college admissions for a smart but unhooked kid are better from DCPS than they are for the same kid at Sidwell, NCS, etc. [/b] [b]Plus you have to work your a$$ off through all of high school at these privates. [/b] I had kids come from DCPS and this is definitely what people are talking about and coming to realize in mass.  These are close communities, neighborhoods and communities--word travels.

STJ is sort of it's own animal--it will always get a bunch of families who are skittish about Jackson Reed and figure that paying under $23k for the guarantee of order in the classroom is worth it.  Interestingly, some of these kids end up transferring out to JR later in high school. [/quote]

LOL, so you really think a college is going to have preference for a public school kid who coasted through HS vs a private school kid who "works his a$$ off through all of high school."  Colleges know that kids coming out of schools like Sidwell are significantly more prepared for the rigors of college.  Sorry, but your your statement is not very convincing at all.[/quote]

Actually, yes. A lot of private school parents are delusional about how the modern world of college admissions works. Elite colleges don't want to be filled with $55k/year prep school kids. They view your child's STA/NCS/Sidwell education as a marker of "privilege" (read: bad). They would much rather admit the low-income, child of a single mother J-R student than 3.9 GPA Sidwell kid.

Anyone who has gone through this process knows that you will get much better results being in the top 5% of the J-R graduating class than in the top 50% of an elite private school. This is largely because universities cap the number of students they admit per high school, and the elite privates are filled with legacies, VIPs, donor children, etc. There's no way a regular kids is competing with that, no matter how good their grades are.[/quote]

Things slow at your government job today?  I know it is hard to accept that all of us rich private school families have a leg up on your kids. Why do you think people pay $50K a year?  It is a major advantage especially when zoned for schools like JR. [/quote]

You pay $50k/year for the status and to brag to others about your child's education. People pay $50k/year for private school for the same reason they pay so much for cars, clothing, jewelry, and other luxury items.

Has your kid actually gone through the college admissions process yet? Many, many families from these schools will tell you outright that the high school pedigree did not help their children land a spot at an elite university. Just looking at NCS's matriculation, and only 2 girls got into Harvard, Yale, and Princeton each in the past 4 years, and I'm willing to bet they were URM, athlete, legacy, or well-connected.  There are way more girls matriculating at Syracuse, Tulane, and Boston College.

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I also know a Sidwell alum who went on to graduate from Boston College (gasp), and then Harvard Law. She’s now a partner in Big Law (one of the top 10 firms based on PPP). I bet her Sidwell education helped a lot—even though you only initially saw her heading to BC. That private school education/foundation continues to pay dividends decades later. [/quote]

This is my understanding as well. Not sold on whether private school is worth it for my kids since our budget isn't unlimited. But my impression is that the solid preparation will pay off no matter where they go to undergrad. Heck -- [b]the private school education may be MORE important if they don't go to a top-20 or whatever school.[/b] [/quote]

This has become our thinking.  We'll likely not be able to choose where our kid goes to college but we could control the education he is getting in high school.  He went from public to STA for high school and has grown in leaps and bounds in his ability to read, write, think, reason, interact with adults, etc.  Wherever he ends up for college we don't regret these 4 years.  They've been a finishing school of sorts (really, a starting and finishing school).  He told us the other day "you know mom, I never really learned anything before high school."   Granted, he was a public school Covid kid through half of middle school but I found this to be striking.  
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I’ll give the kid a pass as he’s still apparently learning critical thinking.  But the fact that you would repeat the statement here makes me wonder some things.  Clearly he learned many things before HS or he would not have been prepared for HS.  And even if we took the statement with a degree of nuance to mean he didn’t think the learning  very challenging, that’s still more a function  relating to stage of learning and thus necessary depth.  One hopes you explained that.[/quote]

I won't give you a pass because you claim to be an adult. You're either a douche or really dense. It's clear what the kid meant. You have a chip on your shoulder and it isn't a good look. I hope. Someone explains that to you in real life. [/quote]

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