Anonymous wrote:Also, "HM students have good GPAs because they're smart, suburban public school kids have good GPAs because of grade inflation" is a textbook No True Scotsman argument

The median SAT at our private is about 200 pts higher than our wealthy suburban public.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

Most suburban publics no longer track at elementary and sometimes middle it's an equity thing. Mamdani has already indicated that he plans to do this for the very youngest grades in NYC publics.

My private is entirely run by less about six people on campus and its a K-12. Every town has its own board of education with oversight of all schools within its boundaries. In contrast.the NYC public school employ 2254 people in central administration, that is, people who don't work at any partiuclar school and are just bureaucracy.

My kids have 10 to 12 kids in this classes at private, and never more than 15. Our local suburban school has 20 to 30 kids at a class, my kid's experience was on the higher end in elementary, which was when they attended.

AP classes in public schools are very geared towards the test. My kids spent considerable time in public elementary preparing for the state standardized tests. These tests were given at every grade level in the spring.

Nearly all suburban publics standardize their curriculum throughout the district so every class is reading the same books, and even doing the same worksheets, etc. . . again, I know this because my kids attended a suburban public and this is something that the teachers complained about a lot. The private my kids attend allows the teachers to develop their own curriculum each year as a grade level each year at the elemtary and middle school level, with some differences between classes.

Anonymous wrote:This thread seems so backwards. Learn about your child. Pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses. Then place them in the best educational environment you can that works well for them and your family. Starting in grade school and continuing all the way through higher education. I don't really think you can reverse engineer a student into a very very competitive higher education environment very easily. I don't even think it's wise if it were possible.

Having been through it at hypsm, there are are lots of rockstar private and public school students. And there are also public and private school students that have their struggles. It is a lot to do with the individual regardless of where they went to high school.

Completely agree.

Anonymous wrote:Also, "HM students have good GPAs because they're smart, suburban public school kids have good GPAs because of grade inflation" is a textbook No True Scotsman argument

HM students are smart though. Don't act like the curriculum and demands are the same.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After thinking through and reading everyone's posts the conclusion I reach is that a student who has the goods to get into HYP from a TT will also do so from a good public. However the value of the TT is insurance for if the student is not one of those select few because it's really not possible to tell until the start of high school how truly academically gifted / capable a student is. The insurance is a multiples higher odds of admission into T10s through T25s compared to the even best publics. Is this broadly accurate?

Eh not exactly. Many get counseled out of the TTs, either they did not want to engage with material at a high level, they got burnt out being around very accomplished peers, or they were not up to snuff from the get go. If you have the drive to get through a TT and get into a T10-T25 college, you have the drive to have a 4.3 at a strong public through grade grubbing and get into a good college.

At most "strong suburban" publics, maybe top 5 percent of the class has a shot at a T25, they rarely get kids into all 8 Ivies and Stanford in a given year.

Yea but that top 5% just isn't that impressive.

How would you know? They likely all have SAT scores above 1500 and 4.0s as grade inflation is rampant in public schools. Your kid may not necessarily stick out and will probably be competing against some kids with more interesting life stories.

Also worth noting that living in the suburbs may itself be a detriment to your kid's college resume, particularly if they're not a star athlete - lot fewer opportunities to do interesting stuff in Westport than the Upper West Side.

Huh? They take a train to the city if they're motivated and do stuff there. And then they take a train home like thousands and thousands of people have done forever. Plenty of these "unimpressive" suburban high school students end up at hypsm. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Palo Alto and other nice suburbs sending a ton of kids to Ivies exist across the country. This is about NYC suburbs, and they do not send that many kids to Ivies given the wealth and resources of the region.

This thread seems so backwards. Learn about your child. Pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses. Then place them in the best educational environment you can that works well for them and your family. Starting in grade school and continuing all the way through higher education. I don't really think you can reverse engineer a student into a very very competitive higher education environment very easily. I don't even think it's wise if it were possible.

Having been through it at hypsm, there are are lots of rockstar private and public school students. And there are also public and private school students that have their struggles. It is a lot to do with the individual regardless of where they went to high school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

HM students have sky high SATs, the fact the mode is an A- speaks to grade deflation, they would have a 4.infinity at a decent suburban public.

ESL does not add to a classroom

You have to be horribly ignorant to think even 4T privates charging over 65,000 a year have 18 students in a classroom as the norm

If you can afford it without sacrifices, go to private school.

FWIW, 18 was the class size at Fieldston during my kid's brief tenure there.

We looked at a lot of private high schools and the class sizes seemed to be around 17-20ish. Even at the small schools I didn't see any super small classes. I don't think class size, within reason, is that much of an issue if you're dealing with well behaved high school kids. More of an issue for younger kids or in environments where you may have disruptors. Very small class sizes are nice but I'm not sure how well they prepare kids for college. One of the things I thought about when deciding on a HS was whether going from a very small K-8 to a very small high school would make the transition to college more challenging for my kid. Perhaps it's better to learn how to navigate a larger environment when your kid still has support at home. I've heard people making this argument when sending kids to SHS vs private.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After thinking through and reading everyone's posts the conclusion I reach is that a student who has the goods to get into HYP from a TT will also do so from a good public. However the value of the TT is insurance for if the student is not one of those select few because it's really not possible to tell until the start of high school how truly academically gifted / capable a student is. The insurance is a multiples higher odds of admission into T10s through T25s compared to the even best publics. Is this broadly accurate?

Eh not exactly. Many get counseled out of the TTs, either they did not want to engage with material at a high level, they got burnt out being around very accomplished peers, or they were not up to snuff from the get go. If you have the drive to get through a TT and get into a T10-T25 college, you have the drive to have a 4.3 at a strong public through grade grubbing and get into a good college.

At most "strong suburban" publics, maybe top 5 percent of the class has a shot at a T25, they rarely get kids into all 8 Ivies and Stanford in a given year.

Yea but that top 5% just isn't that impressive.

How would you know? They likely all have SAT scores above 1500 and 4.0s as grade inflation is rampant in public schools. Your kid may not necessarily stick out and will probably be competing against some kids with more interesting life stories.

Also worth noting that living in the suburbs may itself be a detriment to your kid's college resume, particularly if they're not a star athlete - lot fewer opportunities to do interesting stuff in Westport than the Upper West Side.

Huh? They take a train to the city if they're motivated and do stuff there. And then they take a train home like thousands and thousands of people have done forever. Plenty of these "unimpressive" suburban high school students end up at hypsm. I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Also, "HM students have good GPAs because they're smart, suburban public school kids have good GPAs because of grade inflation" is a textbook No True Scotsman argument

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

HM students have sky high SATs, the fact the mode is an A- speaks to grade deflation, they would have a 4.infinity at a decent suburban public.

ESL does not add to a classroom

You have to be horribly ignorant to think even 4T privates charging over 65,000 a year have 18 students in a classroom as the norm

If you can afford it without sacrifices, go to private school.

FWIW, 18 was the class size at Fieldston during my kid's brief tenure there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

you seem to be all over the place.

the suburbs have average class size of 22 - if so that is a huge reason to move out of NYC public - if NYC public stays at 30 (which it was in our kids middle school). so i would push back on that point.

the overall college matriculation of the upper middle class private school kid is better than the average upper middle class suburban kid. (keeping wealth constant)

classes are more interesting at private. publics have alot more AP classes which is essentially teaching to the test.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

HM students have sky high SATs, the fact the mode is an A- speaks to grade deflation, they would have a 4.infinity at a decent suburban public.

ESL does not add to a classroom

You have to be horribly ignorant to think even 4T privates charging over 65,000 a year have 18 students in a classroom as the norm

If you can afford it without sacrifices, go to private school.

Anonymous wrote:There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Hoo boy.

"Rote curriculum": no, the broad pedagogy is the same at both places, nobody's having you spend half of your time memorizing crap anymore.

"Teaching to the test": not really, though we did find that when we moved to NYC the teachers spent a lot more time teaching writing in general because that's a major component of the NY state exam. (but all year, and not specifically directed to state exam questions)

"Larger class sizes": suburbs barely have any gap with privates now - like 18 versus 22 - and the city is in the process of matching suburbs.

"Eliminated tracking/gifted programs": public schools do lots of tracking, if anything this more of a problem in private schools.

"Bureaucracy": seriously? how many associate deans of blahdeblah does your private school have?

"populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources": yeah, heaven forbid our kids are exposed to any of those people.

"worse overall college matriculation": sure, because the private schools have most of the rich kids.

"grade inflation": the modal GPA at Horace Mann is an A-.

There will be smart classmates and good teachers at both. Downsides to public will be rote curriculum (current philosophy is to ensure consistency through control), teaching to the standardized test, larger class sizes, many of eliminated tracking/gifted programs at elementary and middle school levels, bureaucracy, populations like ESL and special needs which take up a lot of resources, worse overall college matriculation, grade inflation which makes it diffiuclt to stand out. Downsides to private are cost, more legacy/donor families, less economic diversity, usually no tracking at lower school level.

Anonymous wrote:Life is too short to live in suburbs if you don’t have to.

I say the opposite. To each his own. Don't yuck my yum.