You misused "laconic".

My advice to stellar students: At the least attend schools that allow you to extend your wings and fly. Avoid schools wanting you to decelerate and slow down solely for the convenience of their teachers or allowing other children to catch up.

Stellar students are indeed better than the schools (public or private). $35,000/year is expensive window dressing for stellar students.

NCS or the others.

All of these schools cherry pick the best students. As such the students are much better than the schools. The teachers are a tad laconic when it comes to reaching out to parents and/or pursuing students that have problems because they hang the "we have more applicants than we could ever admit" mantra over your heads. I challenge any one of the private school administrators to do a little analysis and show me how much better their students perform when normed for college educated parents and income. Is NCS getting better or worse? Who cares? And who knows? If they or any other private school practices the "Devil take the hindmost" approach they'll always get better. If your kid is a great student that will be reflected; if your DC isn't they'll get gone but don't look for too much help from the private schools because there's always another applicant.

I am only talking about performance on the AP exams. I am not talking about "AP courses" and the like. I do not care about the courses. Anyone can sign up with a high school to take these AP exams, middle school students, homeschoolers and folk in regular courses. Those at the magnets and TJ have better performance by these metrics than the top area privates regardless of whether they take courses labelled AP or not. In fact, I know many who self-study (no formal courses) including middle school students. If you do not like the PSAT, SAT, AP exam metric we could examine other (e.g., Intel and Siemen's awards, USAMO, AIME, AMC, PISA, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science Olympiads. Are there any other metrics you would prefer to use? Or are your metrics non exam oriented and focus on college matriculation rates, legacy and bank accouunt?

Certainly APs are more thoughtful and comprehensive tests, however, they have some problems as well. The content covered for some APs is so outdated and rigid (for instance biology, is finally being updated, but had stressed topics that have not actually been relevant to biology since the 1950s! As a scientist I was pretty horrified to see some of the practice tests) that many local independent schools refuse to even call classes "AP" and feel their own class content is more relevant and challenging, and leave the kids to study on their own for APs in most subjects if they wish to take them. This works well for English, where the kids can write on just about anything they have read and most kids at these schools seem to get 5s if they take the English AP whether or not they were even in a class called "AP", however more of a challenge in more fact-based classes. But still the kids in my experience that took them did well since simply being a good writer on the APs goes a long way. Sidwell doesn't call any classes AP except does have a BC vs an AB calculus set of classes. GDS has some APs but lots of other classes that are not called AP but many kids still take the exam (for instance European history). These schools can "afford" to get rid of the AP moniker and curriculum if they choose because the colleges clearly understand that the kids are well-prepared for college, they know the classes at the schools are rigorous, or at least which are rigorous even if not called AP, compared to large general high schools. However, would suspect if Blair and TJ suddenly dropped APs, the colleges wouldn't care either, they similarly know the curriculum at these schools is very rigorous. But right now suspect that kids in the independent schools take quite a few less official AP classes and somewhat fewer exams, because just not emphasized as a very important metric.
Anyway, both top independent and the magnet publics in this area provide great educations and college preparation, but as Jeff said comparing things like SAT scores may be somewhat skewed by the processes of getting into these schools in the first place being so different in terms of timing and what is being evaluated.

When comparing the NMSF numbers for TJ or Blair to the top independent schools, also worth remembering that TJ and Blair use testing as the single biggest factor to determine admission from 8th grade, every kid in those schools was specifically selected for doing well on multiple choice tests just two years before they then take the PSATs. Sidwell, GDS, Cathedral schools admit kids as early as PK for Sidwell/GDS, 4rth grade for Cathedral schools, and while SSAT and IQ testing is used, not as the only factor, and early performance on these tests may not predict later performance on PSATs or SATs. Also huge sibling preference at these schools, not to mention all the other preferences people worry about. For the kids that enter Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools for high school where they have been tested more recently and those test results matter a lot for getting in, suspect the percentage of NMSF much higher than the overall school population that includes "lifers." Taking multiple choice tests really well is a great skill to have, but really doesn't reflect all the skills one needs to succeed in college or life. Writing, speaking, interacting with peers constructively may not be measured as well by PSATs (no writing at all) or SATs (writing component just silly, kids who are the best writers sometimes don't do as well, being at all creative or interesting is NOT rewarded, need to be completely formulaic).

My recent college admissions experiences with my kids at two of the "big 4" independent schools would indicate that a large percentage of students are NMSFs or commended, SAT scores in general don't differentiate much in terms of who gets in where, especially when kids that didn't do great on the PSATs so were not NMSFs do tutoring or test prep course and many improve scores a lot by the time of the SATs, the vast majority of kids are admitted to schools that are highly selective and sought after, the majority to their first choice, and they seem well-prepared and well-matched for the schools when they get there.

Comparing results between these schools for one given year is very misleading, the classes are small, so about a 5 or even 10 year time period would likely be required to see any real "trends". But no matter what, college admissions to the HYPS group is WAY WAY more competitive than in the 1970s-1990s, but there are far more great schools that have motivated and highly skilled students than there were in the 1970s, schools that used to be for skiing druggies now have mean SATs of 2200 or above and great graduate school and professional school admissions records.

You have interesting views. What about comparing performance on AP exams (number of APs taken and number with scores of 4 and 5)? The response on AP exams here require more exposition, critical thinking and proofs than multiple choice and fill in the blanks. You'd be surprised at the results. These kids may do more than color in bubbles.

Anonymous wrote:When comparing the NMSF numbers for TJ or Blair to the top independent schools, also worth remembering that TJ and Blair use testing as the single biggest factor to determine admission from 8th grade, every kid in those schools was specifically selected for doing well on multiple choice tests just two years before they then take the PSATs. Sidwell, GDS, Cathedral schools admit kids as early as PK for Sidwell/GDS, 4rth grade for Cathedral schools, and while SSAT and IQ testing is used, not as the only factor, and early performance on these tests may not predict later performance on PSATs or SATs. Also huge sibling preference at these schools, not to mention all the other preferences people worry about. For the kids that enter Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools for high school where they have been tested more recently and those test results matter a lot for getting in, suspect the percentage of NMSF much higher than the overall school population that includes "lifers."

I totally agree with these points.

Trying to compare PSAT or even SAT scores between a K-12 school and a 9-12 school is very problematic, especially when the 9-12 school admits largely on the basis of SAT-like tests. It's sort of like telling two high school coaches that they will face off in a to-the-death soccer match, and letting each coach pick her team's players. But one coach gets to pick all her players at tryouts held just one year before the final match. The other coach must pick half her players several years earlier, when they are only 4-8 years old, and just hope they can be molded into top athletes over the next 8-10 years of training. That's not to take anything away from a school like Blair -- it clearly has incredibly smart students. It just makes an apples-to-apples comparison very hard. By comparison, it's a decent point of comparison between two schools with fairly similar profiles, such as StA compared to NCS.

A very interesting analysis would be to look at lists of "lifers" from several schools, and see what percentage of the lifers end up being NMSFs. Is the lifer percentage higher, lower, or about the same as the all-student percentage? If anyone can post links to lists of lifers, or will just PM me some lists, I'd be willing to do the math for comparison.

Sam2

When comparing the NMSF numbers for TJ or Blair to the top independent schools, also worth remembering that TJ and Blair use testing as the single biggest factor to determine admission from 8th grade, every kid in those schools was specifically selected for doing well on multiple choice tests just two years before they then take the PSATs. Sidwell, GDS, Cathedral schools admit kids as early as PK for Sidwell/GDS, 4rth grade for Cathedral schools, and while SSAT and IQ testing is used, not as the only factor, and early performance on these tests may not predict later performance on PSATs or SATs. Also huge sibling preference at these schools, not to mention all the other preferences people worry about. For the kids that enter Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools for high school where they have been tested more recently and those test results matter a lot for getting in, suspect the percentage of NMSF much higher than the overall school population that includes "lifers." Taking multiple choice tests really well is a great skill to have, but really doesn't reflect all the skills one needs to succeed in college or life. Writing, speaking, interacting with peers constructively may not be measured as well by PSATs (no writing at all) or SATs (writing component just silly, kids who are the best writers sometimes don't do as well, being at all creative or interesting is NOT rewarded, need to be completely formulaic).

My recent college admissions experiences with my kids at two of the "big 4" independent schools would indicate that a large percentage of students are NMSFs or commended, SAT scores in general don't differentiate much in terms of who gets in where, especially when kids that didn't do great on the PSATs so were not NMSFs do tutoring or test prep course and many improve scores a lot by the time of the SATs, the vast majority of kids are admitted to schools that are highly selective and sought after, the majority to their first choice, and they seem well-prepared and well-matched for the schools when they get there.

Comparing results between these schools for one given year is very misleading, the classes are small, so about a 5 or even 10 year time period would likely be required to see any real "trends". But no matter what, college admissions to the HYPS group is WAY WAY more competitive than in the 1970s-1990s, but there are far more great schools that have motivated and highly skilled students than there were in the 1970s, schools that used to be for skiing druggies now have mean SATs of 2200 or above and great graduate school and professional school admissions records.

Here's (hopefully) a link to NMSF information over a number of years. Looks like over that time period Sidwell was tops at 15%, with STA also at about 15%, and NCS in 3d at 11%. (Also has the totals for Blair Magnet and TJ.)

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AnukIDABt_JKdDdZYXlQbnFUQ0VfMHRpTFp1SUIxS2c&hl=en_US

Anonymous wrote:Do you have the data that a 1/5 of the class at STA and NCS are NMSF (or is this the phenomenon of a unseasonably fine year as with Ivy League admissions)? You may be challenged? Though this is a low bar as you can routinely double that proportion for the public school magnet high schools in the area (e.g., TJHS and Blair Magnet).

If you re-read the prior post it referenced NMSF for STA only, not NCS. Google a query like "St. Albans School National Merit Semifinalists 2012" and you should come up with the school's announcement. For more schools over a longer period of time, in the FAQ sticky about private school admissions there's a spread sheet about NMSF and SAT totals. From memory, Sidwell was the top and STA and NCS were up there.

TJ's percentage is significantly higher (about 33% this year, 156 out of approximately 480). If you live in Fairfax County and your kid is math/science oriented, that's a great fit. For DC/MD or VA non FC people, or for kids who are humanities focused, that's not an option of course.

Do you have the data that a 1/5 of the class at STA and NCS are NMSF (or is this the phenomenon of a unseasonably fine year as with Ivy League admissions)? You may be challenged? Though this is a low bar as you can routinely double that proportion for the public school magnet high schools in the area (e.g., TJHS and Blair Magnet).

Anonymous wrote:Who funds the cathedral (episcopal) schools?

They fund themselves. All three of the Cathedral Schools (STA, NCS, Beauvoir) have their own endowments and do their own separate fundraising.

Who funds the cathedral (episcopal) schools?

The Diocese of Washington does not fund the Cathedral schools. As for its hairstyles, not much edgy there.