Anonymous wrote:If you’re a well resourced UMC white family with no hooks, your kid will do better on a per capita basis coming out of a DC public/charter school than one of the brand-name DC privates. At the privates, your kid is “competing” for college slots with kids whose families are legit very wealthy or connected.

Your kid has a better shot coming out of JR or Walls all things equal.

That said, the network your child develops at an elite private school may serve them better in their career.

Demonstrably untrue. Year after year the Wilson JR and Basis & Walls parents / parents-to-be post this on DCUM. And year after year, the official matriculation lists and now IG/youtube compilations prove that it’s bullshit. Yes, even when comparing apples::apples. Say a white, non-legacy, non-crew kid living in a SFH near Murch or Mt Pleasant or the Hill whose parents are a lawyer and a policy analyst with graduate degrees.

We chose private over public and I don't think you're stupid or silly. We may head back to public at some point but our zoned DCPS wasn't working for elementary and we didn't get lucky in the lottery. We love private but it's not a perfect school either. Part of why we went private early was to lock up a private HS spot, not because we thought private elementary and middle school were so much better. We are continuing to lottery every year trying to get into an elementary that's good with a good middle and HS feed. Who knows, at some point we may move for middle and high school. If you can afford private, then the data says your kids are going to be fine anyway in terms of measurable life outcomes.

We are seriously considering private school. We don’t care about getting into an Ivy. I went to a state school and did more than fine.

We want:

smaller class sizes
good mentors
higher expectations, standards, and accountability
more rigor
Less behavior issues disruptive to learning
better communication
and last but not least, better and higher performing cohort of kids


We realize not all private schools have all of the above but a number do. You just need to do your research.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my opinion, the best option for little kids is public unless there’s an obvious reason it’s unsuitable for your family (religion, bullying, kid isn’t learning or is miserable, special needs) that a specific private would support better. For older kids, I think it’s important for the decision to be child driven. If they want to go to a private school or have access to something only available at private, it could make sense to apply there. But I wouldn’t put my kids in private for some nebulous feeling that private is always better for every child than public.

I disagree (kindly). The privates that OP mentions are top notch. It’s like a filet mignon vs McDonald’s hamburger. I put my kids in private while they were developing as a student and could benefit from a small community where everyone shared similar educational values and we knew all the families, etc. The school made learning fun!

I do agree that older kids need to make the choice. By the time the kid is in middle school they have established for themselves what kind of student they are and want to be. They are self-directed. I have 4 kids. Of my older kids one chose private HS, one chose selective public. Both had solid reasons for their choices, so I supported them.

I’m the PP and I still disagree with you (kindly). I went to a top private for high school and it was great for me and I’m really grateful to my parents for letting me apply. But I had several friends there for whom it was a terrible fit, exacerbating mental health challenges and giving them problems it’s taken a good part of their adult lives to get over. Most of them had been at private school since before they were old enough to have an opinion on the matter. Obviously public might have been bad too (for the same or different reasons) but “top notch” private schools are inevitably pressure cookers, which isn’t right for every kind of kid. I think it’s important to be sure your child has the kind of personality to suit a rigorous academic environment before you send them to one.

I went to public schools all the way through grad school at University of Maryland.

I now work in a public interest profession. My coworkers at the same level as me graduated from Princeton, Harvard, prestigious state schools like Chapel Hill and University of Michigan, less prestigious state schools like Towson in Maryland, a small Christian college I've never heard of, a couple of different HBCUs. One didn't finish college at all.

They're all great colleagues, all good at our mission-driven work. You really can't tell the Ivy league grads from the person who didn't finish.

Do the Ivy grads have more/better career options than working at our org? Possibly, probably. Would the non-college grad get into a top tier law school, if they suddenly wanted a career change? Obviously no.

But my point is that where you go to school doesn't determine your competence, intelligence or capacity to do something meaningful (that yes, also pays just fine).

Your premise is wrong.

The overwhelming majority of admissions to selective colleges is from public school. These is easily searchable online.

Chill, pops.

If you’re a well resourced UMC white family with no hooks, your kid will do better on a per capita basis coming out of a DC public/charter school than one of the brand-name DC privates. At the privates, your kid is “competing” for college slots with kids whose families are legit very wealthy or connected.

Your kid has a better shot coming out of JR or Walls all things equal.

That said, the network your child develops at an elite private school may serve them better in their career.

It's really public, public magnet, and privates. A true public magnet blows away most privates IMO. Privates don't seem to participate in a lot of the academic competitions either.

Anonymous wrote:My parents have begged us to let them pay for private school--it literally would not cost us a dime. We chose public. I have kids in 8th and 6th grade. If at some point, the public schools do not make sense for us anymore, we will reconsider. But for now we are mostly happy with our FCPS schools.

I should add, we could afford it on our own, though not easily. Also, as someone else mentioned above, there are plenty of kids in my kids' schools who could easily afford private. They chose (and continue to choose) public.

My parents have begged us to let them pay for private school--it literally would not cost us a dime. We chose public. I have kids in 8th and 6th grade. If at some point, the public schools do not make sense for us anymore, we will reconsider. But for now we are mostly happy with our FCPS schools.

Anonymous wrote:You seem to be assuming that, if money were no object, everyone would choose private. But that’s not true. My family—which like yours could have afforded private with a little pain—never considered it. We believe in public schools and wanted that experience for our kids. Our kids go to JR with plenty of kids wealthier than we are, so clearly we aren’t alone in not valuing private school or seeing it as inherently better.

+1. We could afford private but we choose public. I was a B/C student in public high school and went to a good college but not Ivy. I was also a pretty mediocre student in college because I didn’t care much for academia. However, I am a very persistent and driven person when I know what I want, and am in the top 1% of my field now. My DH in top of his field too and didn’t need to go to college to be successful at what he does, so we are of the mindset that school doesn’t give you the leg up if you don’t have innate talent (my DH) or drive (me).

I don't see why you'd have "attend an Ivy for undergrad" as your main goal for your kid's K through 12 education (and I say that as someone who did attend an Ivy for undergrad).

I'm not at all sure the cost of Ivy League schools is remotely justified anymore; it probably wasn't justified when I went, but that was 30 years of tuition inflation ago. One of my kids is too young to have any idea what they want to do when they get older, but the other one is interested in becoming an elementary school teacher, and I definitely don't see the point in paying $90,000 a year or whatever Ivy tuition will be four years from now just so they can also go to graduate education school.

My spouse and I both went to public school from K through 12, so I don't really know what we'd be missing by sending our kids to private, but I do know what they'd be getting if they go to the Ivy League, and it's plainly not worth making that the only thing I care about between now and then.

You seem to be assuming that, if money were no object, everyone would choose private. But that’s not true. My family—which like yours could have afforded private with a little pain—never considered it. We believe in public schools and wanted that experience for our kids. Our kids go to JR with plenty of kids wealthier than we are, so clearly we aren’t alone in not valuing private school or seeing it as inherently better.

Anonymous wrote:

1SWMom wrote:IMO Prestigious private school are almost always better academically and for college admittance, the trade off/dangers are economic and racial disparity, but that's life.

Respectfully I disagree. If your kid wants Ivy, let’s use Harvard as an example, and there are 3 solid Harvard legacy kids at that private school - then your kid basically has no chance. If your kid went to public and was at the top of the class, chances are there would be no Harvard legacy kids, so your kid’s chance is better. Now, if you want to look at it wholistically - does my kid have a better chance of getting into any college - then yes, you are correct, more kids go to college from private school. You need to think about it for a SPECIFIC kid, not just an average kid, because an average kid doesn’t really exist, and if they did average kid doesn’t go to Harvard.

+1. If the goal is Ivy attendance, then you should send your kid to Dunbar.