<p>It’s not just a matter of public vs. private. It still comes down to socio-economics. There are public schools that are at least as good as privates. But you either have to have enough money to live in the district for those schools, which is out of reach for the average person, or you have to have had the background to prepare you to test in to the most elite public high schools, which only have slots for a tiny % of students.</p>
<p>Bottom line, go where you can afford. Private schools are expensive and probably not worth taking out large loans for. I went to a public university years ago and did fine. My daughter is going to a private univerisity (UPenn) and is doing fine. I think Penn is a much harder school than the public university I atteneded.</p>
<p>There is alot of discussion over AP grades and how a higher score means that the student has learned more. However, this argument is faulty. A three versus a five does on one exam does not mean that student is more prepared for college but that they learned the specific information that was on the test that day. </p>
<p>I disagree. The grading curves on the AP tests are extremely lenient. Presumably this is to account for some differences in curriculum between schools. I don’t think it’s at all like the SAT–where a miscalculation in pacing or missing just a few more or less questions is going to make a noticeable difference in score.</p>
<p>I do think some schools are definitely more likely to get kids accepted to Ivys than others. I don’t know the reason–it could be that some schools don’t encourage the kids to aim that high. My DS went to public HS. Before his graduation year it had been at least 8 years since any graduates got into an Ivy. His year, 4 did. What was the difference? Did the colleges start looking outside their usual recruiting areas? Was this the first time in ages that students from DS’s HS applied? Who knows. I do know that people assumed that he was a graduate of a different HS when they found out where he was attending college (even had a professor at his college ask if he was from said school when he found out where we lived). </p>
<p>So where is the disconnect? Is it the counselors not encouraging the kids to apply? Is it a lack of interest in applying on the part of the student? Is it due to stereotyping of the students who get into certain schools? Is it the focus of recruiting from the colleges? It could be a combination. </p>
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<p>AP tests have 5 possible scores. Each section of the SAT has 61 possible scores. With a much finer grained scoring scale, one correct versus incorrect multiple choice answer has a much greater chance of changing the final score on an SAT section.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus, yes but that is not the main issue. The curve on the AP test is incredibly generous. For instance, to get a 5 on the BC calculus exam, you only need to answer 65% of the exam correctly. Try that on the SAT. You’ll score about 580, hardly a top score.</p>
<p>(I got this scoring info from the site <a href=“AP Calculus BC Test Score Calculator - AP Pass”>http://appass.com/calculators/calculusbc</a> and haven’t tried to verify they have the right scoring info.) </p>
<p>And, if a student didn’t know more than 35% of the material that was on the AP test that day, I don’t think that’s a matter of bad luck in specific information that was tested that day. It’s a matter of not knowing the course material.</p>
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<p>Of course, the SAT does have significantly easier questions than that AP test. Actually, that kind of curve is more reflective of many actual college tests, since many college instructors fill the tests with harder problems but then curve generously.</p>
<p>I am mostly responding to this assertion “A three versus a five does on one exam does not mean that student is more prepared for college but that they learned the specific information that was on the test that day.”</p>
<p>The AP syllabus is pretty well defined, to the point where my daughter used some of the exact same texts used in my high school decades ago in a different state. There are also released test questions. So I don’t think there’s any great mystery about what the kids are getting tested on, and I think the difference between a 3 and a 5 is meaningful. Obviously there are also skills one would hope the kids develop that won’t be measured by these tests.</p>
<p>I’d be delighted if the college board would make the SAT harder and stop making distinctions between students that are meaningless.</p>
<p>AP courses have workshops for teachers, hence the schools that do not have the money to send the teachers, thei students are at a disadvantage. The college board has been revamping exams, so if you are the first year to take one of these reformatted exams you are at a disadvantage. Also students who are at schools who throw alot of money at teaching to these tests (AP, SAT, ACT) or who have parents who pay for the tutors, books, and courses have scores they may otherwise wouldn’t. So who is more prepared for college the kid with the stellar ACT/SAT scores with no test prep or the kid with all the stellar scores with all the test prep due to advantages in life? On another note an AP exam can be taken only once whereas the other tests can be taken multiple times. Since many AP exams now have a writing component if you are weak on the specific question that is on your exam your score is going to be deflated. Its the luck of the draw on these exams and income plays into the results which skew the results. </p>
<p>" Its the luck of the draw on these exams" So then how do you explain the fact that the AP scores are pretty consistent from year to year at our school? If luck is making students score a 3 or a 5, you’d expect the year they ask about something the class didn’t cover well for scores to go way down. That doesn’t happen. I think the AP scores do provide a real measure of the quality of the AP program at a high school. </p>
<p>“and income plays into the results which skew the results.” Academic performance in general is correlated with income. I don’t see any reason to believe that AP tests are anything special in that respect. </p>
<p>But for $20, or for free if you make the effort to go to a library or borrow from a friend, you can get the same AP test prep books that my daughter used–when she used one at all. I guess you think she must have been extraordinarily lucky to score 5 on every AP test she took. Nothing at all to do with all the many, many hours of hard work she put in combined with her natural aptitude. Certainly nothing to do with parents paying for tutors–there weren’t any–I purchased maybe three of those $20 test prep books, borrowed one or two others, and she didn’t bother with prep books for some of the exams. </p>
<p>“The college board has been revamping exams, so if you are the first year to take one of these reformatted exams you are at a disadvantage.” A disadvantage compared to who? All the kids are taking the new exam that year. And the college board curves the exams so the scores won’t be much different than in previous years. Sounds to me like someone is just looking for excuses.</p>
<p>Again, thanks for laugh MiamiDap. Pretty much all if your posts provide me with a good chuckle. </p>
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<p>Also, even a score of 5 doesn’t necessarily mean the student has covered the material in the same breadth and depth of the equivalent course at some respectable/elite colleges. There’s a YMMV depending on the teacher quality and most importantly, the individual student him/herself. Folks with 5s have flunked or came to the academic brink in courses for which they were supposedly well-prepared for. </p>
<p>My younger son took the World History AP the first year it was taught at our school. He didn’t have much respect for the teacher by the end of the year. Amusingly the teacher apparently went around the class predicting people’s scores. The kids he thought would score high by and large did not, while my son (who I think he thought was going to get a 2, got a 5). That may have been because the DBQ that year was something completely out of left field. My son didn’t let it bother him and came up with enough guesses about what to say that he did fine.</p>
<p>My son thought he deserved an A in APUSH. He was not a history kid, but got a 5 on the test. His take was that it wouldn’t convince the teacher he had erred, so he took the SAT II and got a 780. He made sure to mention it to the teacher :)</p>
<p>Private isn’t easier. I go to one and its challenging (i only take college prep courses now but I am planning on doing an honrs next year</p>
<p>I think the amount of competition at public schools can be staggering, depending on the school you go to. I go to a very highly esteemed public school, and around 40 kids go to Berkeley each year, 30-ish go to Ivys + Stanford + MIT, 20 to UCLA, etc. And this is in a class of 530. I know a lot of kids who are incredibly, incredibly smart and talented (we have dancers, singers, writers… everybody has something they’re really good at).</p>
<p>However, top colleges can’t accept many students from each school. At publics, the top 15% is much larger than at privates…</p>
<p>Also, just saying, I’m pretty sure my school’s courses are as hard as courses from some very, very expensive private schools in the area. We’re just public (although, to be honest, a lot of the families of kids who go to my school could afford private school if they wanted to).</p>
<p>Depending on the public school you go to, you do have it harder. But it just depends.</p>
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<p>Best would be to try the old final exams for the college’s course that may be skipped with AP credit in order to see how well the student knows the material from the college’s point of view. Neither wasting a course repeating what one knows well nor jumping into a more advanced course that one is not prepared for is desirable, so it is best to use as much information as necessary to make the proper placement decision.</p>
<p>Could there be an unknowing bias against the Private school kid?</p>
<p>There are probably some 150-200 highly demanding high schools, private and public, where there is academic selection for entry and/or stringent grading policy. I’m sure the very top universities and colleges are well aware of them and consider that reality when evaluating ranking or GPA. </p>
<p>I’m sure Caltech, MIT and Columbia know that a 40%-percentile ranked student from Thomas Jefferson High, for instance, is on a very different context (all bright kids from Fairfax co.) than a student at a comprehensive high school. </p>