Anonymous wrote:I'm with you, OP. I came here as an immigrant and ended up in a good HS in NYC. No, not Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech. Just a good solid HS. I still ended up in Columbia. And here's a funny part: DH comes from an affluent family in Boston. Went to a posh private school. Didn't get accepted to a single Ivy. He still ended up OK at Carnegie Mellon. So go figure.

Immigrant status helps in admissions, absolutely.

How our generation recalls getting into college as high school seniors has as much relevance to the college application situation today as your parents' mortgage has to current home prices. It's completely different.

OP,

Why do you prefer private to public?

I'm with you, OP. I came here as an immigrant and ended up in a good HS in NYC. No, not Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech. Just a good solid HS. I still ended up in Columbia. And here's a funny part: DH comes from an affluent family in Boston. Went to a posh private school. Didn't get accepted to a single Ivy. He still ended up OK at Carnegie Mellon. So go figure.

Then you should send them to public. What's the question?

maybe you should look at Anacostia High School; i hear they have great college counselors!

Anonymous wrote:
http://www.justupthepike.com/2013/06/de-facto-segregation-threatens.html

FWIW, this chart got me curious, so I quickly Zillow'ed the home values from my private school child's class. Results ...

Median home price for Whitman district: ~$992k
($~870k in 2012 + Redfin shows a 14-15% increase in sale prices for 2013 over 2012 -- yippee!)

Median home price for my child's private school class: $1.09m

Difference: $98k (10%)

10% difference is a little less than the difference between Whitman and BCC home values.

Cornell alum. By the time my kids are old enough to apply to college the acceptance rate for Ivies may be 0.003%. No matter. It is less important to gain acceptance to an Ivy than it is to do well in college. We chose our private school because we believe it will better prepare our children to hit the ground running freshman year, choose a major that they will enjoy and excel in, and ultimately have fulfilling careers. That is, if traditional college is even a prerequisite for success in their careers. The educational delivery model is changing before our eyes.

Perhaps I'm being an asshat. But I don't feel woe-is-me the poor family making 250K who doesn't qualify for need based aid. I'm sure that someone who is making under 100K and needs to come up with 30K somehow feels it just as much as as the 250K family who has to pay in full.

Also I don't mean to say that I approve of college being this expensive, or that it's right. But it is what it is, and it's challenging for everyone involved. Even if you are poor enough to get full financial aid, you would have to be an exceptional person to be in a situation where you were competitive for a top private school, and have overcome significant hardships--and sometimes just finding a way to pay for the application fee is hard enough. For the middle class, they have the opportunities to be well prepared, but sacrifice has to be made to make it financially feasible. Sometimes that's with loans, sometimes it's with savings, sometimes it's not fully maxing out the 401K for a few years, but somehow people make it work if they want it to.

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Whitman parent here. You people have way too much time on your hands and obviously don't know much about the school. Listen, be comfortable with the school choices you've made but don't tear down the school my kid attends in the process.

Calm down rich lady. They have to use Whitman as and example because all the other MoCo schools would fail miserably.

Perhaps I'm being an asshat. But I don't feel woe-is-me the poor family making 250K who doesn't qualify for need based aid. I'm sure that someone who is making under 100K and needs to come up with 30K somehow feels it just as much as as the 250K family who has to pay in full.

Anonymous wrote:

Marie Antoinette! Is that you telling the kids who can't afford Brown to take out massive loans, or their parents should mortgage their retirements with PLUS loans, or maybe the kid should just take the easy route and get full FA at Harvard?

The $15,000 your friend took out in loans ten years comes out to $4,500 per year, barely a drop in today's $60,000 per year tuition.

Yeesh. You people.

First of all, he graduated in 2007, so it's not like this was ages ago. And second of all all, tuition is not 60K at Harvard and other privates, it's closer to 40K (I am getting this from the Harvard website). It's tuition plus room and board where you are getting the 60K number. Depending on where you go to school (obviously not somewhere like Columbia), you can save some from living off campus--I know many people who did. Third of all, I'm saying he took out about 5,000 a year, and patching this together with savings and paying out of their salary, they made it work. Maybe the choices you are making won't make it work, I dunnoo. But it's not an all or nothing game.

You sound like a real asshat. A callous asshat. Marie Antoinette, indeed.

PS. My DC pays full freight at Columbia.