Park Ridge has super easy access to O'Hare and a nice little downtown.

Anonymous wrote:Cabrini-Greene.

Love this!

I used to live in Lake Forest. It is beautiful and lots of nice houses but it is very country club suburban (to use the words of another poster). I'd prefer Evanston or Oak Park as more urban suburban places. Oak Park would definitely be my pick. Much more historic and lovely but not snooty.

My parents still live in Arlington Heights and I would move back to that suburb if we ever moved back to the Chicago area. The schools are good, the park district is great -- lots of activities, swimming pools, etc, the library has been ranked the best in the state, and people are down to earth. The downtown area around the train station has lots of restaurants. Lots of smaller, older homes near the downtown area have been razed and lovely large (but not McMansions) have been built on the lots.

Check out Glenview. North suburb, though not right on the shore - more for your money than Wilmette, Winnetka etc. The Catholic school there is OLPH - largest in the Chicago archdiocese - has a huge complex with an indoor pool.

Town has 2 train stops. The park district there has everything - indoor hockey, indoor tennis, 2 public pools, paddle tennis and lots of programming.

Glenbrook South is a really good school. Catholic High Schools nearby are Loyola Academy and Regina (all-girls)

There is downtown Glenview as well as the Glen Town Center that is in the newer section of town.

Good luck.

Also, I know most people think about college for the Alumni connections, but don't count out the crazy high school pride New Trier grads have and how that helps with the job search in their 20s.

I have never once found an New Trier connection to be useful for a job search. I haven't lived in the Chicago area in my adult life, so perhaps that is why, but I think most people by the time they are in their 20s have put high school behind them. The main exception to this is kids who went to boarding school like Exeter.

Another New Trier alum here.

I would 100% raise a family in one of the New Trier suburbs. One of the major pluses is the geography, it is flat with sidewalks everywhere, which means kids can be so independent because you can get to any of your friends' houses easily on foot or by bike, and the towns are small enough that there's usually adult nearby who knows your kid and will look out for them. There's also a great little downtown area in most of the towns (not Kenilworth). Winnetka is a great community and yes of course there are kids who grow up with the pressure to get into whatever Ivy their parents went to, there's also a lot of normal families who don't put that kind of pressure.

I think the upside of a New Trier is you can be a less-than-motivated student and you can't help but come out of there with a fantastic education.

Also, I know most people think about college for the Alumni connections, but don't count out the crazy high school pride New Trier grads have and how that helps with the job search in their 20s.

I'm surprised at a lot of the comments about New Trier here. I grew up in Wilmette and went to New Trier, and I get all the benefits and drawbacks of going to a school like that, but honestly the competitiveness, affluenza, preparation for the future, etc. are similar complaints and praises of other high performing suburban high schools in large metro areas. Bethesda, McLean, and North Arlington are honestly pretty similar. It's the sort of school that appeals to the sort of people who think that school districts with a great schools score of 10 are the only acceptable options. The academics are strong, especially the advanced offerings (APs/electives). There's a lot of pressure to succeed and get into great colleges (a nutty amount of pressure). Kids study a lot and load up on extracurriculars because the community has a really intense emphasis on education and success. It's easy to be a small fish in a big pond. Kids are affluent (with all the entitlement and lack of perspective that comes with that) and it isn't very diverse with regard to race or socioeconomic status. The towns that feed into NT are largely pretty nice places to live (Wilmette, Winnetka, Kennilworth, Northfield, Glencoe, and a bit of Glenview)--low crime, pretty housing stock, near the lake.

Some people will say "I was so prepared for life from going to new trier! In comparison Harvard was soooo easy!" Ok, maybe. I dunno, I went to a SLAC, and there are plenty of kids who come from schools with rigorous educations whether it is schools like New Trier (in Scarsdale NY, Palo Alto CA, Bethesda, MD, etc.), top tier magnet schools, or private schools. Actually selective colleges are overrepresented with kids who have educations from competitive places, so I don't know how much of a "leg up" you have. Others didn't have rigorous educations in high school, but make up for it with drive.

I would probably rather live in Evanston if I were to move back to Chicago because it has a little more of an urban feel and is more diverse. The schools are also good there, but the scores are lower because there is more socioeconomic and racial diversity. Some of the westerns suburbs are nice too, but I like having access to the lake.

Clarendonian here with good friends in Evanston -- they definitely seem similar.

Native Chicagoan here. I would never send my children to New Trier.

Northbrook or Glenview, each one of the Glenbrooks has academic programs that rival New Trier, but a little less afluenza and less crowded, so not as much of a pressure cooker.

High School on the North Shore may suck sometimes, but college and post-college life has been a BREEZE thanks to my wonderful education.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe Cabrini Green...??

This has been raised as a possibility already.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe Cabrini Green...??

This has been raised as a possibility already.

Maybe Cabrini Green...??

Anonymous wrote:Winnetka, Wilmette, Evanston, Kenilworth, Lake Forest on the north shore. Barrington if you want to be a ways out (always reminds me of Great Falls)
Oak Park and Hinsdale west of the city.

+ 1 Lake Forest is one of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen. Lovely. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote that is way the most glamourous place he had ever seen.