Reply to Fewer Public School Applicants for 9th

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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]

More fan fiction.

If you think that elite colleges want to fill their classes with poor, high achieving students, then you don’t understand that college is a business. These colleges would also cease to be “elite.”

Despite what you’ve heard, there’s nothing new under the sun. These colleges will continue to favor the wealthy and well-connected for admissions purposes. If you don’t believe me, check the percentages of top public vs. top private students heading to top 20 colleges. [/quote]

This isn't "fan fiction." It's the reality of modern college admissions. Most admissions officers are very progressive, and applicants are being advised to hide all indicators of economic or social privilege.

I'm also not making this up out of nowhere. Here's an article by one of the most successful college admissions consultants saying that he advises wealthy parents to not enroll in prep school because of the intense competition: https://nypost.com/2023/11/16/lifestyle/kids-ditching-prep-schools-for-public-to-get-into-the-ivy-league/

[/quote]

What people (admissions officers) say and what they actually do are two different things. Compare public and private school admissions to these highly selective colleges. Private school students continue/will continue to be significantly over represented. Facts are facts. [/quote]

Again, like I said before, the admissions results are largely due to the types of children these prep schools admit. When around half the kids are a legacy to a T10 school, when you recruit high-scoring URMs, when you have top athletes, it should not be shocking that you have great college results. The lions' share of elite college admissions goes to URM, legacy, and athletes. If you aren't in one of those groups, you are *not* benefitted from going to a prep school. If anything, your individual chances are hurt because you are competing with other students in those groups vying for the same spot.

Public schools make it easier to get into an elite college, because the competition is far more lax. If Harvard is taking 5 kids maximum from any school, it's a lot easier to be the shining star at Jackson-Reed than it is at Sidwell or STA.

Of course everyone gets into a "good" college. But the truth is that a lot of Big 3 kids end up at Tulane or Wisconsin, when they would've ended up at Penn or Columbia had they gone to a public school with easier competition, assuming they maintain the same SAT scores. [/quote]

Not true by a long shot! The magnets are so much more competitive than the privates. The kids have great grades, extras, test scores, etc. Pretty sure if you take the kids from say the Blair Magnet program they'd be the top kids at a top private. The opposite is probably not so certain. A lot of kids are at private schools because they need more individual attention. Nothing wrong with that. But don't act like the Big 3 is filled with 95% superstars.[/quote]
I grew up here and switched part way through 9th from one of these top high schools to a k-12 that’s often mentioned on here. I ended up at a top liberal arts school and reconnected w/ 2 former classmates from the public school who had been at the top of their class. The difference in college was that these kids were ill prepared for the writing, group collaborations and presentations in college. They had glided by public school with straight As in classes where there was a lot of memorization and testing. I had really had to work my tail off at the k-12 bc I was bit used to all of the presentations, public speaking, writing assignments dissected down to the word, etc. Yes we ended up at the same school, but I was over prepared while they struggled. One needed an extra year to graduate [/quote]

A whole extra year of tuition? So his family still came out financially ahead of yours by a lot.

I was one of these over prepared prep school kids, and I too felt I was blowing everyone out of the water when I got to college. And then, a few months into college, when they all had the same high-level opportunities I had been lucky to have… they all caught up, and then some. [/quote]

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