Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges just look at GPA. There is no effort to "put that into context" like you have been lead to believe. Learned that the hard way when DD started applying and the person who informed us was the college counselor at her big three. There are too many applications now and grades are so inflated that it can really be a disadvantage of coming from a private school. Still wouldn't have deterred us, as my DD is forever grateful for that experience. You really need to focus on grades the most. Sports are pointless unless you are collegiate level. Scores are very important, but edged out by grades.

. This is
Not true. I served on the admissions committee for a top 20 university and we knew exactly what each schools grade scale was. A kid with a 3.4 from a top private in NYC or Washington DC was viewed very differently from a kid with the same grade point from most publics. Some larger schools have an algorithm for each known high school that automatically adjusts gpa. Grades are very important but relative.

So how what do you do about kids who are not from a "known" high school.

This is why board scores still matter -- with all their flaws, it's an effort to get an apples-to-apples comparisons, unlike GPAs (of course, arguably with test prep so prevalent among the more affluent applicants it's not apples to apples, but it's something). It's also why applicant essays and teacher recommendations matter.

NP. I recall reading some long piece about this sort of arms race between college admissions and high schools. I think it might have been in Jaques Steinberg's (?) book or perhaps somewhere else. Colleges want a simple apples-to-apples metric to measure students, but each high school is different and wants to game the system. Colleges liked looking at class rank, but many high school magnet programs and private high schools considered that unfair because of their advanced academic programs, so many of them eliminated class rank. Colleges try to look at SATs, but don't like that students can game the SAT with prep classes, or that wealthy students do better. Colleges try to look at GPA, but many schools inflate or deflate grades, so it makes comparison hard. So the colleges have to compare lots of different factors and weight them all. It means each college has a slightly different formula.

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious to know why so many people think that there is grade deflation at privates. I have always heard the opposite, that grade inflation in private school is rampant. This is basically because private school parents won't stand for less than B's. It makes sense. I can certainly see how a lot of families might decide that it's not worth paying $40,000 a year if their kid is only making C's. I would guess that private schools know this and try very hard to keep this from happening.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges just look at GPA. There is no effort to "put that into context" like you have been lead to believe. Learned that the hard way when DD started applying and the person who informed us was the college counselor at her big three. There are too many applications now and grades are so inflated that it can really be a disadvantage of coming from a private school. Still wouldn't have deterred us, as my DD is forever grateful for that experience. You really need to focus on grades the most. Sports are pointless unless you are collegiate level. Scores are very important, but edged out by grades.

. This is
Not true. I served on the admissions committee for a top 20 university and we knew exactly what each schools grade scale was. A kid with a 3.4 from a top private in NYC or Washington DC was viewed very differently from a kid with the same grade point from most publics. Some larger schools have an algorithm for each known high school that automatically adjusts gpa. Grades are very important but relative.

So how what do you do about kids who are not from a "known" high school.

This is why board scores still matter -- with all their flaws, it's an effort to get an apples-to-apples comparisons, unlike GPAs (of course, arguably with test prep so prevalent among the more affluent applicants it's not apples to apples, but it's something). It's also why applicant essays and teacher recommendations matter.

Anonymous wrote:Op just wanted to start an argument

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the PP - economic factors are huge. I have had kids go through both public and private. I had one kid go from the MOCO Highly Gifted Program/Magnet MS to a Big 3 private. And I hate to tell all my fellow private school parents, but the top public school kids in the magnet programs can academically and intellectually blow the socks off of 90% of the private school kids even in the Big 3 (lets not even talk about the "lifers" who got in in Kindergarten but would certainly not make the cut in 9th).

The very top public school kids are not in private because of economic factors. In my kid's public school magnet classes there were kids with Mensa level IQ's whose parents could NEVER afford private.

So, to bring it back to the point of the post, if you are comparing top kids at privates who don't have 4.0 or the so-called grade inflation of the publics, I think the truth is in the test scores. Also the colleges know there is a difference in the way the privates vs publics grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges just look at GPA. There is no effort to "put that into context" like you have been lead to believe. Learned that the hard way when DD started applying and the person who informed us was the college counselor at her big three. There are too many applications now and grades are so inflated that it can really be a disadvantage of coming from a private school. Still wouldn't have deterred us, as my DD is forever grateful for that experience. You really need to focus on grades the most. Sports are pointless unless you are collegiate level. Scores are very important, but edged out by grades.

. This is
Not true. I served on the admissions committee for a top 20 university and we knew exactly what each schools grade scale was. A kid with a 3.4 from a top private in NYC or Washington DC was viewed very differently from a kid with the same grade point from most publics. Some larger schools have an algorithm for each known high school that automatically adjusts gpa. Grades are very important but relative.

So how what do you do about kids who are not from a "known" high school.

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the PP - economic factors are huge. I have had kids go through both public and private. I had one kid go from the MOCO Highly Gifted Program/Magnet MS to a Big 3 private. And I hate to tell all my fellow private school parents, but the top public school kids in the magnet programs can academically and intellectually blow the socks off of 90% of the private school kids even in the Big 3 (lets not even talk about the "lifers" who got in in Kindergarten but would certainly not make the cut in 9th).

The very top public school kids are not in private because of economic factors. In my kid's public school magnet classes there were kids with Mensa level IQ's whose parents could NEVER afford private.

So, to bring it back to the point of the post, if you are comparing top kids at privates who don't have 4.0 or the so-called grade inflation of the publics, I think the truth is in the test scores. Also the colleges know there is a difference in the way the privates vs publics grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only need to look as far as the outcomes. NCS does not inflate grades. Some girls are at the top of the class and the range goes down from there. However, their 2016 college list they posted leads me to believe that even the girls at the bottom of the class are going to top universities.

Is there a school in the world where this is not a true statement?

Wow, thanks for pointing that out. You are so smart. I think the point is that girls at the bottom of the class at NCS are still going to top universities - whereas kids at the B range in public schools are not. But I think you already knew that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges just look at GPA. There is no effort to "put that into context" like you have been lead to believe. Learned that the hard way when DD started applying and the person who informed us was the college counselor at her big three. There are too many applications now and grades are so inflated that it can really be a disadvantage of coming from a private school. Still wouldn't have deterred us, as my DD is forever grateful for that experience. You really need to focus on grades the most. Sports are pointless unless you are collegiate level. Scores are very important, but edged out by grades.

. This is
Not true. I served on the admissions committee for a top 20 university and we knew exactly what each schools grade scale was. A kid with a 3.4 from a top private in NYC or Washington DC was viewed very differently from a kid with the same grade point from most publics. Some larger schools have an algorithm for each known high school that automatically adjusts gpa. Grades are very important but relative.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, DCUM is my secret addiction these days (it's better than Ben and Jerry's!).

You're not making an apples to apples comparison. The average student at an academically strong DC private (with a typical A-/B+ gpa, not B/B+) is not a straight A student at most local public high schools. They're average because they perform at a level typical of most of their classmates. In a public school, they would be average among the subset of students who take a challenging AP/IP curriculum (typically weighted to well over 4.0 gpas) and end up at better state schools (UVA, Michigan) and good SLACs (Wesleyan, Colby).

Where the privates do well is among academically strong students, especially those interested in the humanities and social sciences. The A student at strong private will have written literally hundreds of pages more than their public school counterparts and be engaged in far deeper, small group discussions than what's usually possible at a very good public school with 2-4x as many students per class. There are teachers at private school who can write very personalized, detailed recs and say things like "the best writer/thinker in my class since [famous author/intellectual]" that make a difference. The advanced academic electives at StA/NCS/SFS/GDS/Maret/Potomac are a lot like college seminars on purpose. As a result, the strong students arrive on college campuses steeped in contemporary academic debates which are very difficult for high school students to navigate on their own. Some of it is just arty intellectual posing, but most of it is knowing a lot more than what's on the AP exams.

Then you need to add in the extra level of privilege the private school students possess. Almost all of the top students at my DC's school are legacy at elite schools. They're not super wealthy development cases, but their parents have PBK keys and multiple elite degrees. These are children born on the academic version of 3rd base. My DC's friends from families of modest means have parents who are academics and teachers and public servants and nonprofit types with lots of cultural and intellectual capital. They are adept at "intellectual achievement," so the odds are their children would "win the (college) game" no matter where they went to high school.