Don't do this, because the comparison is stupid, as PP well knows. Many kids from area publics aren't planning to go to college, or they are in that middle position between qualifying for FA (about $50k household income) and being able to pay the full $60k/year at an Ivy (none of which give merit aid). So many public school kids are not even considering Ivies, instead they are looking at state schools or 2nd-tier privates that will give them lots of merit aid. This might be a useful comparison if we could compare private school exmissions to the public school kids who can afford at least $30k/year (what the private school kids are already paying) in tuition, but we don't have that data.

Anonymous wrote:We just toured several private schools with $30,000 tuitions and DH is unwilling to pay for it. He is unimpressed with the college admissions at the private schools. DH and I both attended ivy league schools from public schools. Both our high schools in New England had many more ivy league acceptances than the privates we recently toured.

Do the kids around here not apply to the ivy leagues as much? I am genuinely curious.

Students from my high school class all applied to most all ivy league schools so we had a strong mix of acceptances to Penn, Browne and Cornell. HYP is a stretch for most students but the lesser ivy league schools were not all that hard to get into. I went to a small high school and we still had 20 kids go to ivy league schools. If you added the schools like Amherst, Wellesley and similar, it was more like the top 50.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you have a question?

Do you see a difference in college admissions from the private schools compared to any decent public in MD/VA?

I am trying to convince my DH to go for private school. DH actually attended a very average high school but the honors students (~25) all got into ivy leagues or similar. He was looking at the admissions from some of the privates around here and the number of acceptances to top colleges was worse than his very average high school.

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would a valid way to construct a comparison be to take the top 25% of each school, and compare just their results?

For example: Top 25% of Whitman (~100 students) vs. top 25% of STA (~20 students). Rank the college destinations of each group, and compare how they look. If the schools are truly equal, then the college quality for those two groups should be about the same. The same could be said for SAT scores.

Not sure if data is available for all this. Just wondering if that construct might allow for a "fair" comparison.

I think this might work. I assume you mean top 25% by GPAs. You'd probably need SES data for both groups, too, because family finances drive a lot of college decisions. FWIW, I'm the person arguing with the "let's compare percents across schools" poster, and I'm an economist and statistician. I tend to go a little nuts when I see sloppy thinking - but I think you might be on the right track here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's stupid at all. First, just as there are many public school kids who don't consider Ivys, the same applies to many private school kids. Second, just as there are some public school kids who might have the grades/scores to be admitted to an Ivy, but don't attend because they cannot afford it, the same applies to many private school kids. Your points may carry more weight if comparing Bethesda private schools against public school from low-income areas. But I suspect the public schools we're talking about here are ones in Bethesda/Chevy Chase/Potomac/McLean, so I doubt the "admitted to Ivy but couldn't afford it" story is too common. And finally, to the extent your points have some merit, I'd consider them where the public school has only a little smaller % than the private school. But where the private school is sending 3-4 times more students to Ivys on a % basis, your points don't account for the difference.

Also, if you look at factors not-so-easily dismissed by supposed family income -- like National Merit Semifinalist % for example -- you see the same pattern as with Ivy attendance. The strong private schools will have 3-4 times as many Semifinalists on a % basis. Surely even if some highly qualified public school students were admitted but chose not to attend Ivy colleges because of finances, those same students tried just as hard on the SAT and PSAT tests.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking public schools; I'm a proud public school grad. And I'm especially not knocking public schools in the DC area; they're incredibly strong. But looking at the objective data on student success, it's inaccurate to claim the strong private schools don't have better outcomes. If you want to argue those better outcomes are partially the result of the strongest students flocking to private schools over public schools, I'd probably agree. It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison of which situation will bring out the best in any particular kid, and harder still to say by how much. But again, saying the objective data doesn't favor the strong private schools just seems to be ostrich-like to me.

I'm not sure where to start, with your word chocies or with your overall comparison. For example, private schools selectthe strongest students - it isn't that the stronger students are "flocking" to the privates as you say. This pretty much negates your point about NMSSFs, because the fact that private schools cream the good test takers (like my high SSAT-scoring kid) indicates less about the private schools' educational successes and more about private schools' ability to...cream the good test takers and, FWIW, the kids who can afford expensive private SAT tutoring.

It sort of drives me nuts when you compare anything on a percent basis--like you're doing again with NMSSFs. This may be out of the realm of your experience/bubble, but I hope you can see that many public school kids don't even take the PSATs or SATs... because they aren't planning to go to college. So your percent-of-the-population statistics are equally misleading when you look at an entire public school class for Ivies as for NMSSFs.

Yes, I too know Sidwell kids who flat out refused to apply to Ivies because they were sick of the pressure cooker. But a much larger number of public school kids are going to be applying to 2nd-tier SLACs because they can get merit aid. Again, probably outside your experience, but I know public school kids who turned down top Ivies for places that offered full rides.

Most important, you have a very wishful and naive view of HH Income curve at area publics, even at the western MoCo publics you name. At all of these schools, you will find FARMS rates of 5-15%, and FARMS thresholds are very low -- HHI <$25K last time I checked (although feel free to double check, I have to run). This is without going into the percent that is non-English-speaking, and those stats are also readily available for you to check. But the biggest problem is that you ignore the huge bulge of the middle class in the middle of that public school income distribution, the kids from families with HHI under maybe $300. I think we can agree that private school families are mostly (not always, but with a private school kid, I have an idea what that distribution looks like) at the very upper tail of the income distribution in this area. It's simply not true that the HHI distribution at a school like Churchill is identical to the HHI distribution at most area privates.

In short, you need to compare apples to apples, the college-bound kids within the public schools, and particularly the college-bound kids at the very top end of the income distribution at these public schools, even at the western MoCo public schools. This is the peer group that is most comparable to private school kids.

Anonymous wrote:Would a valid way to construct a comparison be to take the top 25% of each school, and compare just their results?

For example: Top 25% of Whitman (~100 students) vs. top 25% of STA (~20 students). Rank the college destinations of each group, and compare how they look. If the schools are truly equal, then the college quality for those two groups should be about the same. The same could be said for SAT scores.

Not sure if data is available for all this. Just wondering if that construct might allow for a "fair" comparison.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's stupid at all. First, just as there are many public school kids who don't consider Ivys, the same applies to many private school kids. Second, just as there are some public school kids who might have the grades/scores to be admitted to an Ivy, but don't attend because they cannot afford it, the same applies to many private school kids. Your points may carry more weight if comparing Bethesda private schools against public school from low-income areas. But I suspect the public schools we're talking about here are ones in Bethesda/Chevy Chase/Potomac/McLean, so I doubt the "admitted to Ivy but couldn't afford it" story is too common. And finally, to the extent your points have some merit, I'd consider them where the public school has only a little smaller % than the private school. But where the private school is sending 3-4 times more students to Ivys on a % basis, your points don't account for the difference.

Also, if you look at factors not-so-easily dismissed by supposed family income -- like National Merit Semifinalist % for example -- you see the same pattern as with Ivy attendance. The strong private schools will have 3-4 times as many Semifinalists on a % basis. Surely even if some highly qualified public school students were admitted but chose not to attend Ivy colleges because of finances, those same students tried just as hard on the SAT and PSAT tests.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking public schools; I'm a proud public school grad. And I'm especially not knocking public schools in the DC area; they're incredibly strong. But looking at the objective data on student success, it's inaccurate to claim the strong private schools don't have better outcomes. If you want to argue those better outcomes are partially the result of the strongest students flocking to private schools over public schools, I'd probably agree. It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison of which situation will bring out the best in any particular kid, and harder still to say by how much. But again, saying the objective data doesn't favor the strong private schools just seems to be ostrich-like to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH actually attended a very average high school but the honors students (~25) all got into ivy leagues or similar. He was looking at the admissions from some of the privates around here and the number of acceptances to top colleges was worse than his very average high school.

Tell your DH to compare the % of students going to Ivy colleges from local private schools versus local public school. He'll soon discover the difference.

That's just stupid. Public schools have to take kids. If you look at the top 50 entering Whitman or Churchill in 9th grade, the outcome at 12th grade will be about the same as the top 50 entering a private.

Proof?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH actually attended a very average high school but the honors students (~25) all got into ivy leagues or similar. He was looking at the admissions from some of the privates around here and the number of acceptances to top colleges was worse than his very average high school.

Tell your DH to compare the % of students going to Ivy colleges from local private schools versus local public school. He'll soon discover the difference.

Don't do this, because the comparison is stupid, as PP well knows. Many kids from area publics aren't planning to go to college, or they are in that middle position between qualifying for FA (about $50k household income) and being able to pay the full $60k/year at an Ivy (none of which give merit aid). So many public school kids are not even considering Ivies, instead they are looking at state schools or 2nd-tier privates that will give them lots of merit aid. This might be a useful comparison if we could compare private school exmissions to the public school kids who can afford at least $30k/year (what the private school kids are already paying) in tuition, but we don't have that data.

For the PPs with tons of classmates going to Ivies, times have really changed since our day. Most Ivies take fewer than 10% of applicants, and they take an even smaller percent of unhooked kids.

Send your kid to private school for the small class sizes, and for better art, music, science, social studies and PE in elementary school. As for Ivies, some here think that private schools do a better job motivating the middle-of-the-road kid and then championing him with the college admissions teams in their Rolodexes, but there's no hard evidence to say one way or another.

Actually, HHIs under $60k will qualify for significant FA at HYP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH actually attended a very average high school but the honors students (~25) all got into ivy leagues or similar. He was looking at the admissions from some of the privates around here and the number of acceptances to top colleges was worse than his very average high school.

Tell your DH to compare the % of students going to Ivy colleges from local private schools versus local public school. He'll soon discover the difference.

Don't do this, because the comparison is stupid, as PP well knows. Many kids from area publics aren't planning to go to college, or they are in that middle position between qualifying for FA (about $50k household income) and being able to pay the full $60k/year at an Ivy (none of which give merit aid). So many public school kids are not even considering Ivies, instead they are looking at state schools or 2nd-tier privates that will give them lots of merit aid. This might be a useful comparison if we could compare private school exmissions to the public school kids who can afford at least $30k/year (what the private school kids are already paying) in tuition, but we don't have that data.

For the PPs with tons of classmates going to Ivies, times have really changed since our day. Most Ivies take fewer than 10% of applicants, and they take an even smaller percent of unhooked kids.

Send your kid to private school for the small class sizes, and for better art, music, science, social studies and PE in elementary school. As for Ivies, some here think that private schools do a better job motivating the middle-of-the-road kid and then championing him with the college admissions teams in their Rolodexes, but there's no hard evidence to say one way or another.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH actually attended a very average high school but the honors students (~25) all got into ivy leagues or similar. He was looking at the admissions from some of the privates around here and the number of acceptances to top colleges was worse than his very average high school.

Tell your DH to compare the % of students going to Ivy colleges from local private schools versus local public school. He'll soon discover the difference.

That's just stupid. Public schools have to take kids. If you look at the top 50 entering Whitman or Churchill in 9th grade, the outcome at 12th grade will be about the same as the top 50 entering a private.