Phrases that should never be used on this site (not meant to be comprehensive):
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Did you even read what I wrote?
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What part of ______ do you not understand?
There is a way to get the point across without shade.
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I would be retired, because both boys would be in the NFL. I did suggest that looking at their genetics if they really wanted to pursue that dream, they should practice kicking. They did not, and my 5’4" and 5’8" boys are not going to end up in the NFL.
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Could not agree more! That is why we have one at our “good” MA public high school and one at a BS.
And neither have anything to do with trying to predict a college outcome!
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Oh the “good public school district” myth. I fell for that. My first did brilliantly in public middle school but my second failed so badly at the same school it was shocking. That experience prompted us to look elsewhere for highschool for the first and the thing about BS is that it isn’t comparable to LPS. I don’t mean in terms of education, I mean in terms of lifestyle. Even for a day student.
It’s not about one being better than the other or one having better college outcomes, it’s about where your own kid is going to thrive.
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To be fair, a good public school provides many with a really good option. And for many, it will be the best option because of the services it offers (especially for kids with LD), cost, sports, proximity to home, etc.
For us, it was a terrific option through 4th or 5th, middling through 8th, then not a good fit at all for HS. But had BS not been an option, we’d have still been better off at the LPS than many Americans.
This isn’t an expressway without exits…
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I’ve only read about 1/3 of these posts, but to answer your question, no, you do not need to plan before preschool, unless it’s to save money.
My D attended a college where a number of students come from boarding schools. She was not one of them. She went to a suburban high school and her current coworkers are grads of elite colleges, including HYP and SWAP. She is a goal-oriented young woman who worked hard to make her current situation happen.
Your child is being brought up with many advantages. Raise your child to the best of your ability. Understand though that ultimately, how your child navigates the adult world is up to him or her. The college he or she attends isn’t that important. It’s up to the child to make the most of opportunities that arise. No amount of money and no college will make his or her adult life a guaranteed success.
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I’ve been taking the time to read and synthesize everyone’s feedback. It has been enlightening. And i agree intuitively with a lot of the feedback that has been shared in this thread.
Then this hit: Private Schools Are Indefensible - The Atlantic
And of course, I had to read this: https://polarislist.com/
And now it’s just furthering my concern that it’s all some sort of giant game of class warfare.
I think my success is pure luck and an accident. I went to a decent public school in MA as a white male who didn’t even graduate as the valedictorian and I somehow managed to get into the 3rd hardest school to get into at the time; that doesn’t add up if you look at the kinds of kids that get into the ivies today (and I’m in my 30s I’m not that old). Maybe it was my middle-class family as a first-generation college student?
Part of my duty I feel like as a parent is to give my kids a better life than I had. Well, what happens when you’ve “made it” and you’ve already done well yourself? Where do you go from there?
I don’t expect my kids to go to Harvard or even want them to if that’s not what they want. But I expect (from myself) that if I had certain opportunities that I provide that freedom and flexibility for my kids and then some.
And now I feel like I’ve messed up. The ratings for my public school have gone down a bit in the last year (and these ratings feel like a sham). And now that my kids aren’t first-generation, and the first generation was Ivy league, and these schools are even harder to get into now… it’s like no wonder I’m asking myself “geez I wonder what the feeder schools are into Andover and NG” because I have no idea how to reliably trust which school districts are actually any good and now it just seems like I chose an rich person’s town without having the district cred to back it up anymore.
It’s like I don’t even know myself anymore…my dad was a firefighter and we chose my college because this ivy was actually the cheapest school thanks to generous financial aid. And now I’m trying to rationalize a new Audi A6 a year per child in tuition money for high school because I don’t know how to pick a town because there were no houses in Lexington available when we moved out of the city during a pandemic.
The sad part is that I don’t even think it’s the education. It’s the opportunities that come with these schools. I don’t think I’d be where I am today without the ivy pedigree to get me into that first job at a big, well-known tech company. That opened doors to even more jobs which propelled me further. That’s why the path seems so alluring… if you’re “in” and you take advantage of it, it can improve your quality of life. It has for me. And I think that’s why I stress about this stuff…cause the path that I chose for myself as a kid doesn’t feel like it will work for my own children and I just want them to be happy and not have to stress about this. This is the burden I need to shoulder for them but I don’t know how I’m going to replicate it for my kids.
So yes… I have a toddler and I’m stressed to wits about this because I don’t want to ever think I didn’t try hard enough for my kids and I can’t seem to find the right answer and there seems to be no shortage of ways to end up paying a 2nd home’s worth in education costs.
Really smart and talented kids don’t need to attend an Ivy in order to do very well in life. Most “average excellent” kids also do very well. The prep school-Ivy pipeline is only really helpful for two types of kids. Smart kids from poor families, who do a lot better if they go through this pathway than if they are accepted to an Ivy after attending a underperforming school (attending a well funded public school also is good), and mediocre wealthy kids, whose own talents require an Ivy stamp to get them taken seriously in their own social circles.
The rest of the kids who attend an Ivy, with strong to super-strong profiles, are going to do no better than they would have done had they attended one of another 50 to 100 colleges out there. They may have a better experience at an Ivy, because wealth does provide a better experience in many cases, but the same kid would end up with the same careers whether they attended Brown or UMD. Attending an Ivy doesn’t help them, and attending a “lower ranked” college doesn’t hinder them.
We lived where we lived because we loved the education, but our kid’s high school doesn’t send that many to Ivies each year, and mostly because there is little interest. You’d be surprised how little interest there is in Ivies in a high school where bragging about your kid’s admissions is frowned upon…
My daughter is attending a pretty good LAC, but had she nor received her scholarship, she would have either attended a “lower ranked” LAC if they provided good merit money, UIUC, or if she got another good offer, somewhere else.
I was sitting with a bunch of faculty members and we were talking about our kid’s college planes and our own backgrounds. This is a flagship Midwestern university (not UIUC this time) and plenty of the professors did their undergraduates at places like U Montana, Iowa, Kean University, Lawrence University (a LAC).
My wife’s postdoc advisor and friend did his undergrad at NYU back when NYU was accepting 50% of its applicants. After having a faculty position at a top CS department he moved to a top position in Google and now he has a top position in Amazon. he never attended an Ivy. My Wife’s first PhD student at UIC did his undergrad at Lafayette College, a PhD at UIC, and is now a top researcher at Google, after first working as one of Facebook’s first research scientists.
I know that in Massachusetts, it is difficult to see this, but for the rest of the country and world, an Ivy degree isn’t a required ticket for a successful life. I promise you that a BA from UMass Amherst will provide your kid with all that they need to do whatever they want to do in the world. Those degrees cost $30,000, so not an Audi, but a Toyota, which functions just as well as an Audi, and is more reliable than an Audi, but is much less of a status symbol than an Audi.
The choice isn’t:
A. An Ivy and a decent living , OR
B. A “lesser university” and grinding poverty.
Or even:
A, Ivy and a happy fulfilling life, OR
B. A “lesser” college and a tedious, boring career,
Ivy grads are not all happy super successful people, with fulfilling careers, happy children who are well behaved and get great grades, a beautiful spouse who loves them, and lots of friends
People who graduate from, OMG, a public university, aren’t all underpaid drones, working at low desks in bad lighting all day, and come home to nasty kids who are failing at school, getting in trouble with the teachers, spouses who are working in equally wretched jobs and who yell that them when they come home, and are surrounded by neighbors who hate them, and nobody wants to spend time with them.
Start your thought process with this assumption: your kids will not attend an Ivy League college.
Now start making plans for their future.
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Since you are reading about education, pick up the book Excellent Sheep. It makes a compelling case for not doing exactly what you are thinking you need to do.
And @MWolf is so right – there are so many paths to happiness and financial success that do not involve an Ivy education. And there are so many ways to an excellent post-secondary education (which may or may not be an Ivy).
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I understand your dilemma based on your personal history. I would say that what your
kid(s) do outside of school is often more important than what they do in school. I personally do not think the stress of a highly rigorous secondary education is worth it, but that is based on my own personal history. A school that allows development of interests outside of school (or if provided in school) gives the best quality of life, I think.
If you shape your child’s life with a focus on Ivy League admission you are most likely setting them up for disappointment. While elite prep schools do send a higher proportion to top schools, just attending one is no guarantee of Ivy League admission. Case in point, I have a close friend whose child attended one of the top private feeder schools to the Ivy League (high on the Polaris list), at this school they are a top student. Still, this student was deferred from their EA Ivy and probably won’t be admitted, despite stellar EC, an impressive personal backstory and top grades/scores (plus their parents are full pay). Of course they will still attend a wonderful school, but it most won’t likely be an Ivy. Think of it this way, if 30% of these kids attend an Ivy League school, 70% will not. A great high school experience should be valued in and of its self. If BS is something your child wants when they are old enough, great but don’t shape their life with that is the prime consideration.
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@gardenstategal just made the exact same recommendation I was going to make! Excellent Sheep (which I think is actually spelled Xcellent sheep, but the artwork on the cover isn’t clear which is the official title). But YES read this!
Also, let me to throw out another perspective.
Let’s just say for a moment that you DO want to send kiddo to Andover/Exeter/or other prep perceived-feeder school.
You still don’t have to figure this out now. From my calculations the due date for applying for you would be January 15th, 2030.
If it helps, my daughter decided to apply to Andover in November of 2018, and she submitted her application on January 12th, 2019. And she was admitted. For not one tiny second before November did we ever give any thought to positioning her for admissions at all, college, high school, anything. She was just her normal self, pursuing life as she saw fit. We all just lived the life in front of us that fed our souls, matched our value system, and we let the results be what they may. My job is to polish my stones that we throw into the pond, and let the pond take those rings where they may, trusting that our truest, best stones will result in rings that do magical things. Trying to master the pond feels like an exercise in frustration, and it takes us away from focussing on our part: the stone.
As a postscript: DD2 decided over Christmas to leave Andover. She had great grades, but didn’t feel like 4+ hours of daily homework gave her space to do all the other things that she wants to try in high school. I sit here now 0% concerned that she has thrown away anything in the way of opportunities by honoring her soul. (This was a thoughtful, careful decision, not a knee-jerk reaction to being coaxed out of her comfort zone.). I’d go further to say: the very fact that wasn’t willing to trade her own sense of wellness for the sake of an imagined dream experience, or a label that she could own for the rest of her life, makes me MORE comfortable in her ability to say no to the wrong things for her later in life which I think will make her more successful in whatever matters to her. (What we can say no to matters, I believe).
Again, I love Excellent Sheep.
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I sympathize with the worry you have as a parent who wants their child to be positioned for the best possible chance for success in an increasingly difficult world. The advice you are getting is great.
Think about what you want most for your child - how you define success. It sounds like you define it like most of us - we want our kids to be happy above all else. What will make your toddler happy as an adult is impossible to know with specificity. The general concepts are fairly universal, though: People who love them for who they are, meaningful work however they define it, health, community, and financial stability.
Boarding schools and Ivy League educations are neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things.
You can’t possibly know whether or if your particular child’s chances for happiness will be improved by those things for a long while.
What is necessary for a parent of a toddler to help her on her way to future adult happiness? Love her. Learn along with her who she is and what she likes doing. Give her opportunities to try new things, fail, dust herself off and keep going, with you cheering her on. Keep lines of communication open. Give her clear boundaries, encourage her to advocate for herself. Surround her with good people and role models. Teach her to be generous. None of these things cost much, if anything at all.
Just focus on those things for the next 8 years. That will keep you and your daughter plenty challenged! At the point where you are considering middle schools, see where she is. At that point you will have a better sense of who she is what she needs. It may not be prep school and elite college - for most people it isn’t. Before then, it is all about spending time with your kids building a strong foundation for future decisions and happiness.
Finally, I read those articles, too. I see and experience what they describe in the prep school world, but they reflect only part of picture. Please don’t let them influence how you analyze what is in your child’s best interest. That is cart before the horse. The world is going to be very different 10 years from now.
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I am going to answer this question in a different way, too.
Let’s suppose, for a moment, that you DO need to “start planning before preschool” in order to go to an Ivy League, or similar, or even to be an amazing financial success.
The question I would then be asking, if I had a toddler is: would that result be worth that decade and a half of “planning.”
As a mom of 4 teenagers, and a middle-aged woman married to a middle-aged man, I would shout a resounding NO.
It would not be a tradeoff I would make, EVEN IF it were required for that desired outcome.
(And of course it is not a tradeoff that is required at all, despite the folks who will willingly make that tradeoff anyway in an effort to feel like they have more control than they actually do of the pond.)
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You do seem to be stressed about something which you have limited control.
You cannot get your kids to do well in school, attend an Ivy and get a good job. Yes, you can provide opportunities but things will gapown along the way.
I have three IVy degrees ( including a Masters), my spouse has an undergrad degree from a very good college. Guess who is more successful by your definition? Yep, my spouse.
Relax and enjoy your little one(s). It goes so fast. And most kids are loved independent of where they attend school.
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I read an article recently in The Atlantic that said that, even among known feeder schools to the Ivy+, a student at a top boarding (Exeter, Deerfield, etc) is 7X more likely to get in than one at Stuyvesant! So, if you really want to improve your kid’s chances at the Ivy+, you’d get them into one of these boarding schools.
It does come with a trade-off though – you wouldn’t be there to watch them go through their teenage years. You’d see some, what they choose to share with you. But you wouldn’t be there for the quiet (but loud) parts. D18, a junior at an Ivy+, had a teenage-hood full of drama which at times involved the police in addition to all the stereotypical mean girl and boyfriend stuff. They weren’t always easy but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. To me, that’s what being a mom is all about.
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The OP has stated that Ivies aren’t the concern:
You are missing the forest for the trees.
Many replies to the OP mention the Ivy angle. It doesn’t appear to be the concern.
Feel free to substitute Ivies for T20’s. No one asks such a question unless one is concerned about the quality of one’s child’s future college.
Edit: I did say Ivy+, no? Such a weird exchange…
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