<p>In some cases, it’s true. A handful of these high schools offer courses that are taught at the pace, depth and breadth of college level courses. In most cases, the curricula surpass that of the Collegeboard’s prescribed AP curriculum.</p>
<p>And you should not purport to know what the purpose of all private schools is… you are perpetuating old stereotypes.</p>
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<p>An SAT prep course or a private tutor. Given how important that stupid exam is in college admissions, even the poorest families are willing to dish out the money so that their children will have a shot at the big leagues.</p>
<p>my kids - top 30 on the list - boarding school offers lots of financial aid. So if you are smart and willing to go boarding …look up the largest endowment schools and apply. Going to a top private school does not mean you will be anymore successful in life but the facilities and support structure can be amazing. I hear though if 2 applicants are identical, Stanford prefers the public school kid because they may have needed to work harder to get all of the ECs etc.</p>
<p>I’m a public school student in an area where publics trump privates (other than individual focus and all that jazz), but I have friends from other states attending awesome privates. Those kids are certainly not stuck up, and while not attending schools on the list, are still getting some top-notch educations. If every student at every private school was a snob, there’d be a whole lot of obnoxious people out there. Not to mention that a lot of the best privates offer good financial aid. And <em>gasp</em> having money doesn’t actually automatically make one a snob. It’s possible to get an awesome education at a school you have to pay for and still be down-to-earth.</p>
<p>“Prestigious” private schools provide the same sort of connections to the next level of education that “prestigious” universities do. Sure, the top kids at private school and the top kids at public school are equally smart.. This is true of universities as well: it’s not like the kids at Harvard are necessarily smarter than the kids at UVa. What’s different is the connections. My school’s on that list, and we send 15 kids to Yale a year, with about 20-25 getting in. Our class size is 130 kids. We aren’t smarter. We’re just more ingrained. Our admissions guys know their admissions guys.</p>
<p>The thing is, those schools listed are pretty much all outstanding academic institutions. The same can’t be said for every single public school kid on CC’s school. A lot of kids love to hate on private school and how you don’t get more for your money, but that is not always true. My school’s AP Calc BC class doesn’t follow the AP curriculum and is about 5x harder than the exam. 2 kids in the past 4 years have gotten 4s. Everyone else got 5s. APUSH is one term, and again barely teaches to the curriculum. Same thing, except 3 kids got 4s. We don’t have AP English classes; you take electives your Junior and Senior year, with a required writing semester. All classes are considered AP level. They encourage you to take the exams, because everybody does ridiculously well on them. Lots of kids take both at the end of their junior year and get 5s on both or a 5 and a 4, depending which way they sway.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that extra little bit of whatever you get at my school is worth the tuition, but you don’t pay for nothing. So don’t insult the private school kids. Just like everyone else, they do the best they can given their circumstances. They may have more generous circumstances, but that isn’t their fault.</p>