<p>Sac, this has been one of the dreariest Octobers I can remember in the Northeast. We usually have brilliantly sunny, crisp cool days which show off the changing leaves brilliantly. It's been cold, cloudy, and rainy way too much this fall. Don't know if this is consolation, but chances are, his other falls here will be better.</p>
<p>(Does he have a Lit Hum midterm? My S is stressing bigtime over his.)</p>
<p>I'll tell him about the unusualness of this Fall, Garland. I think he's mostly had a lot of trouble figuring it out. It's been unusually rainy here, too.</p>
<p>Sac, </p>
<p>Sorry for the late response. I've been swamped with midterms. You're right, Evanston, IL (Northwestern) and Ithaca, NY (Cornell) both have dreary, bleak weather during the winter. There was practically a blizzard when I visited Ithaca during senior year of high school. The students there didn't really seem to be excited about attending the institution either, they seemed somewhat depressed by the workload, the weather, and their fellow student body. One of the students I spoke to even said that Cornell was his last choice because he wasn't admitted to Swarthmore, Yale, Amherst, Columbia, Princeton, and Vassar. As for Northwester, I just did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that it just wasn't worth it. Although Evanston is a beautiful suburb and I love everything about it. Yeah, I figured your son must've gone into the private sector for secondary school because the public schools that my outreach group works with really seem to be struggling. Then again, I have a biased view because we only work with the students on the cusp and not on the AP/honors track. I'm guessing that the Berkeley faculty send their children to private schools in disproportionate numbers because they're probably aware of the situation in the Berkeley Unified School District with respect to adequate classroom funding.</p>
<p>Columbia was rated the safest Ivy Legue school last year.... just some food for thought... And some more food for thought, Columbia owns the more land in Manhattan than any other organization...</p>
<p>I didn't know that, Carrera, but it doesn't surprise me. I can't imagine what Columbia's real estate would be worth to developers. Interestingly, I think they originally owned the land that Rock Center was built on, but sold or leased it for that development. Other than Central Park, it's hard to think of a spot as empty and as separated from the hustle & bustle of Manhattan as the quad area between Low & Butler Libraries.</p>
<p>PrivateJoker06 -- Actually, lots of Berkeley faculty send their kids to Berkeley High. It was a wrenching decision for us to send our second kid to private school and it had nothing to do with where he'd get into college.</p>
<p>Back to Columbia -- I agree with Roger Dooley. The campus feels tucked away, a haven. My son loves the campus.</p>
<p>Sac, </p>
<p>I'm surprised that Berkeley faculty would actually trust Berkeley High School to educate their children. I'd figure that educators at the best public university in the nation would also want to send their children to one of America's best colleges and thus, would choose a private high school to achieve that end. But, to each his own of course. Personally, I'd want my children to attend one of the preparatory high schools in the northeast like Exeter, Andover, Choate-Rosemary Hall, Deerfield, or Hotchkiss. I think that what high school you attend is directly correlated to what college you attend because Ivy League admissions officers have stated that they have certain "feeder schools." I'm sure that the Stanford admissions commitee probably looks at applicants from Bellarmine Prep (San Jose, CA) or Harvard-Westlake (Thousand Oaks, CA) the same way. I know proximity to the college is a factor here, but just look at the representation of Dalton High School (elite private school in New York) at Columbia+Barnard.</p>