Anonymous wrote:I have a theory about why public school kids who get great results may not want to post them.

At top private high schools, it’s assumed or acceptable to game the system. Parents get private counselors, make up pseudo non-profits, etc. that may or may not help their kids get into a top school, but everyone is playing the same game. Very good to excellent results are expected, so posting those results are affirming of the school, the process, and their wealth. All very acceptable.

At public high schools, even the better/best ones, things are very different. In fact, there’s always a question about how a public school kid could be so good as to get into Harvard. Something must be amiss. So, people start looking for the “rotten” answer. Oh, the kid went to Langley; never would have happened from TJ. Oh, they started a non-profit, but it didn’t really do anything. Oh, they tutored for the SAT and took it multiple times. Oh, they started a dumb student club senior year that nobody attended, but they claimed it as a leadership item. On and on.

The sum is that when public school kids play the same games the private school kids do, they get derision from their public peers. So, why would they want to post and have people write crappy comments or none at all? Better to just let be and move on.

Thoughts? It’s only a hypothesis. Does this resonate with anyone? Is this what’s meant by cringe, or awkwardness.

I think this is the dumbest post I have ever read hear... assuming this is for real. Can't tell without emjoy

Anonymous wrote:I wrote the hypothesis post earlier in the thread. I’ll add a bit more.

Parents who send their kids to top-tier private high schools tend to have prestige jobs and degrees, thus they highly value educational pedigree - and why their kid is at a prestige private high school! They send the message to their kids that academics are very important and that they should work hard to attend the best colleges.

Parents who live in wealthy zip codes and who send their kids to public schools tend to have high-paying jobs that don’t depend on educational pedigree. Examples professions might be IT and sales. By way of the parents, their children believe that while school is important, it’s not most important. Thus, while they are good students, they’re not great ones, and see kids heading to prestige colleges as strivers, try hards, and overly invested in academics.

If that background is true, public kids with great college options may be reluctant to post their results.

I think it’s true. Where I am, low end of umc area, public school, the holy grail is our flagship public. People see it as the best of both worlds: great school but economically sound choice. Private is seen as an achievement but there is an element of thinking it is a waste of money bc we consider ROI more than prestige.

Anonymous wrote:This is bonkers. My public high school senior and her friends are all posting and plenty of them are going to very selective schools. And plenty of their parents are professionals and intellectuals. This is DC. Have you all lost your minds?

+1.

I’m not on social media, and my kid is very private. I told him it was up to him if he sent the info for posting on his school’s decision IG. He chose to do so, which surprised me. I think he’s really proud of the selective school he got into! Fine by me if he wants to share. Lots of single-digit acceptance rates on his FCPS account.

Anonymous wrote:It was born out of Covid and is slowly fading.

At my kid's Public HS, it is the kids themselves posting and it is easily down 50%+ this year vs. last.

I had no idea that some schools are posting this on behalf of their students.

No school is doing this.

This is bonkers. My public high school senior and her friends are all posting and plenty of them are going to very selective schools. And plenty of their parents are professionals and intellectuals. This is DC. Have you all lost your minds?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wrote the hypothesis post earlier in the thread. I’ll add a bit more.

Parents who send their kids to top-tier private high schools tend to have prestige jobs and degrees, thus they highly value educational pedigree - and why their kid is at a prestige private high school! They send the message to their kids that academics are very important and that they should work hard to attend the best colleges.

Parents who live in wealthy zip codes and who send their kids to public schools tend to have high-paying jobs that don’t depend on educational pedigree. Examples professions might be IT and sales. By way of the parents, their children believe that while school is important, it’s not most important. Thus, while they are good students, they’re not great ones, and see kids heading to prestige colleges as strivers, try hards, and overly invested in academics.

If that background is true, public kids with great college options may be reluctant to post their results.

Are you for real? You think lawyers and professors and doctors and plenty of other professionals don't believe in the public school system and value education? What an outrageously snobbish and elitist thing to say.

I mean, the PP also thinks there are basically no "great" students at public schools because, obviously, their parents are all in sales and IT and don't believe you need a good education to succeed in life, so they all slack off and think people who work hard at academics are try hards. Not only does the PP assume that public school families simply do not care about education (as though only people wealthy enough to afford private school value education), they also assume that there is no such thing as an internally motivated kid who works hard and is successful at academics simply because they are very bright and dedicated and passionately love learning.

These attitudes are not that uncommon among people who live in the private school bubble and have limited experience with people outside it.

Some of you guys seem low-brow and infantile - these hypotheses are out there.

Anonymous wrote:I wrote the hypothesis post earlier in the thread. I’ll add a bit more.

Parents who send their kids to top-tier private high schools tend to have prestige jobs and degrees, thus they highly value educational pedigree - and why their kid is at a prestige private high school! They send the message to their kids that academics are very important and that they should work hard to attend the best colleges.

Parents who live in wealthy zip codes and who send their kids to public schools tend to have high-paying jobs that don’t depend on educational pedigree. Examples professions might be IT and sales. By way of the parents, their children believe that while school is important, it’s not most important. Thus, while they are good students, they’re not great ones, and see kids heading to prestige colleges as strivers, try hards, and overly invested in academics.

If that background is true, public kids with great college options may be reluctant to post their results.

Could be. You also have the fact that at public high schools, there are many students how ARE great students -- they are very invested in academics and work extremely hard for top grades, and have ambitious college plans. But as public school students, they are less likely to have the extra hooks (legacy, donor) that private school students are more likely to have due to family background. Some might, most won't.

So if a student gets into Yale from a public high school, they are likely coming from a cohort of very smart, hard working kids, many of whom will have never had a shot at Yale despite being a smart, hard working student. And the thing that put the Yalie over the top could very well be legacy status or some other hook that to a private school student would seem normal but to a public school community feels unfair. Because, within the context of a public school with families of varying socioeconomic background, it IS unfair -- just working hard and getting good grades and being a standout in one or two extra-curriculars is not enough for admittance to a school like that, unless you have something extra. The one "extra" kids have control over is athletics, but even with that, we all know that money and background go a long way to making a kid a recruited athlete. All the other extras are totally out of their control.

Essentially, the Yale admit at a private is unlikely to know many if any kids who worked hard enough to earn admission to a top school but didn't get one, but the Yale admit at a public is not only likely to know such kids, but those kids are likely to be friends because they are going to have been in the same honors and AP classes and had the same approach to school. Not only that, but they may know people who were admitted to top schools but are choosing in state publics instead, for financial reasons, a decision that can be fraught and disappointing for academically-minded kids. That doesn't happen at privates -- you don't run into kids who are like "well I got into Williams but my parents convinced me to go with UMD because we're a donut hole family and they want to have money to send my younger brother to college too." But that absolutely happens in public.

There is less "inequity" in private because attending the school usually means your background is vaguely "equal" to other families at the school. No such screen exists for public schools and as a result college is a more complicated proposition and you see a really wide range of outcomes, many of them dictated by resources and access in a way that will feel (and actually be) unfair to the students themselves.

Anonymous wrote:I wrote the hypothesis post earlier in the thread. I’ll add a bit more.

Parents who send their kids to top-tier private high schools tend to have prestige jobs and degrees, thus they highly value educational pedigree - and why their kid is at a prestige private high school! They send the message to their kids that academics are very important and that they should work hard to attend the best colleges.

Parents who live in wealthy zip codes and who send their kids to public schools tend to have high-paying jobs that don’t depend on educational pedigree. Examples professions might be IT and sales. By way of the parents, their children believe that while school is important, it’s not most important. Thus, while they are good students, they’re not great ones, and see kids heading to prestige colleges as strivers, try hards, and overly invested in academics.

If that background is true, public kids with great college options may be reluctant to post their results.

Are you for real? You think lawyers and professors and doctors and plenty of other professionals don't believe in the public school system and value education? What an outrageously snobbish and elitist thing to say.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids private has its own IG account where they post where the kids actually enroll. So the ED are there now. The rest will come once the kids pay the deposit and tell the CCO.

The private school IGs look more professional. I mean it is part marketing, right? It benefits them to showcase where their students are going. The school probably manages the account.

In public, some kid is doing it.

Nope--the kids manage and post in private too. The schools have nothing to do with it.

Last year my DD and her friends did not post to the school's instagram at all. They were going to a mix of highly selective and less selective schools. They just didn't want to share there.

The best report on where people were going was in the senior - printed only - newspaper. And that still didn't have everyone as the kids have to opt in. It showed seven going to Ivy schools, know at least one more who wasn't listed. One going to U of Chicago but we knew of two more who weren't listed.

I wrote the hypothesis post earlier in the thread. I’ll add a bit more.

Parents who send their kids to top-tier private high schools tend to have prestige jobs and degrees, thus they highly value educational pedigree - and why their kid is at a prestige private high school! They send the message to their kids that academics are very important and that they should work hard to attend the best colleges.

Parents who live in wealthy zip codes and who send their kids to public schools tend to have high-paying jobs that don’t depend on educational pedigree. Examples professions might be IT and sales. By way of the parents, their children believe that while school is important, it’s not most important. Thus, while they are good students, they’re not great ones, and see kids heading to prestige colleges as strivers, try hards, and overly invested in academics.

If that background is true, public kids with great college options may be reluctant to post their results.

Anonymous wrote:I have a theory about why public school kids who get great results may not want to post them.

At top private high schools, it’s assumed or acceptable to game the system. Parents get private counselors, make up pseudo non-profits, etc. that may or may not help their kids get into a top school, but everyone is playing the same game. Very good to excellent results are expected, so posting those results are affirming of the school, the process, and their wealth. All very acceptable.

At public high schools, even the better/best ones, things are very different. In fact, there’s always a question about how a public school kid could be so good as to get into Harvard. Something must be amiss. So, people start looking for the “rotten” answer. Oh, the kid went to Langley; never would have happened from TJ. Oh, they started a non-profit, but it didn’t really do anything. Oh, they tutored for the SAT and took it multiple times. Oh, they started a dumb student club senior year that nobody attended, but they claimed it as a leadership item. On and on.

The sum is that when public school kids play the same games the private school kids do, they get derision from their public peers. So, why would they want to post and have people write crappy comments or none at all? Better to just let be and move on.

Thoughts? It’s only a hypothesis. Does this resonate with anyone? Is this what’s meant by cringe, or awkwardness.

+1. Absolutely agree. I am guessing parents (mostly moms) are nicer about it and less cut throat in private than public?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid does not want to post, even though she got into the school of her choice. She mainly said that she doesn't want people to know her business (although her friends already do). On the McLean site, only about 20% may have posted. Many kids who got into and committed to bragworthy schools have not posted for various reasons. At the same time, you will also see people posting who are going to NOVA.

2 years ago, we were considering Potomac from McLean public schools. I remember thinking the public schools (Langley and McLean High) had better outcomes than Potomac. This year, Potomac seems like they had an excellent year and both McLean and Langley have mostly not so great schools posted on the instagram. My kids are still young and I only get secondhand information about these schools and college. No one really talks about this in real life.

Exactly - in real life, people act like they do not care, even though they definitely do.

A few years ago, someone had posted all the admits from McLean and Langley via excel but then it got pulled. I remember it being very impressive.

Wow - how would they get all that information?! I'm sure not everyone would want to share - unless they somehow stole it from the counselors.

Guessing that is why fewer people share. That, and have you seen the hater threads? Some parents are not well, are easily triggered, and will hate on just about any kid, sometimes repeatedly, sadly. I don't blame the kids for keeping in their small circle. Good on them, I say!

I have a theory about why public school kids who get great results may not want to post them.

At top private high schools, it’s assumed or acceptable to game the system. Parents get private counselors, make up pseudo non-profits, etc. that may or may not help their kids get into a top school, but everyone is playing the same game. Very good to excellent results are expected, so posting those results are affirming of the school, the process, and their wealth. All very acceptable.

At public high schools, even the better/best ones, things are very different. In fact, there’s always a question about how a public school kid could be so good as to get into Harvard. Something must be amiss. So, people start looking for the “rotten” answer. Oh, the kid went to Langley; never would have happened from TJ. Oh, they started a non-profit, but it didn’t really do anything. Oh, they tutored for the SAT and took it multiple times. Oh, they started a dumb student club senior year that nobody attended, but they claimed it as a leadership item. On and on.

The sum is that when public school kids play the same games the private school kids do, they get derision from their public peers. So, why would they want to post and have people write crappy comments or none at all? Better to just let be and move on.

Thoughts? It’s only a hypothesis. Does this resonate with anyone? Is this what’s meant by cringe, or awkwardness.