<p>Wow, I just came back on after taking a break from the internet for a couple of days, this has turned into an interesting conversation. For my family, the important thing to keep in mind as we look at colleges (well actually my daughter’s doing most of the looking and deciding, I just help) is that one can be absolutely brilliant, have great scores and stats, and still not be accepted at a ‘top’ school. It strikes me that many of these schools have about 1/3 of students from private schools, wheras less than 10% of U.S. K-12 students attend those schools.</p>
<p>I’m not complaining about this, or complaining ‘my child is so brilliant and she can’t get in anywhere’ (she hasn’t even applied, much less been accepted), it’s just an observation. And I’m not saying that you would necessarily get a worse educational experience at a state school, especially in an honors program or smaller school, than at a private school - obviously, it depends on the school and the program.</p>
<p>I’ve taught at both public and private law schools, though, and the one thing that did strike me is the amount of personal attention students at the private schools received compared to students at the state-supported one. The idea of my child having smaller classes and more individual attention is appealing in many ways, especially as she’s spent her K-12 years in relatively large public school settings; on the other hand I don’t want us or her to go into debt for it.</p>
<p>So I guess we’ll see what happens. She has at least two safety schools (academic and financial), both honors programs at state universities, so I think she’ll be fine no matter what happens. I count my blessings whenever I get a case of the ‘I wants’, and remind myself that life is what you make of it, not where you went to school.</p>