There are lots of reasons. Some, like @momofboiler1 don’t have a strong public school. Some, like one of my brothers, benefited from the more personal touch (and, tbh, the external push). Some b/c that’s who they want their kids socializing with. Some b/c they believe that it will give their kid a boost to getting into a ‘better’ college. Some b/c their kid the local public school doesn’t offer the same opportunities (in terms of sports / language / physical resources / individual attention / etc). And so on.
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A private school student may think he/she would have been at the top of the class at LPS, but there are many reasons that student may be wrong. The obvious ones, hinted at here, are that the students at LPS are smarter than he/she assumed, and/or the classes are harder than he/she assumed. But there are other reasons as well. From LPS to LPS there are huge variations in how ranking and weighting occurs. At one school it may be impossible to beat the kid with the most APs regardless of having all As, whereas with another algorithm it may be pointless to take all APs because the kid with dual credit tech-type vocational classes is going to beat you because the same DE/PS weighting is used for those, or conversely the kid with all As in regular classes will beat you or tie you because there’s no weighting. Hard to make assumptions about rank at LPS without studying the algorithm.
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Haven’t read the entire thread but I will say this, the purpose of education is not solely the college you attend. LOL. It’s actually about learning how to learn and learning to work hard. Someone who attends a rigorous school where A’s are not given freely will learn to work hard and will likely thrive in the long run.
When a student gets into a prestigious college that doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to be at the top of their graduation class. 90% won’t be. A kid who excels in every space will be fine. A kid who’s used to easy grades and retakes at some point will hit a wall.
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We chose a private school for the rigor and type of education that our son could not receive locally, not for any particular college result. We did not want him to attend any of the AP mills around us as we wanted to avoid teach-to-a-test curriculums. We were way more concerned about the quality of our son’s secondary education than college because we believe that if the high school education is stellar, college will take care of itself.
This question has been discussed recently on the Let’s Talk GPA thread where I gave an example of how colleges evaluate GPAs from disparate high schools.
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It is also always important to remember that “public schools” also include magnets. In Chicagoland, for example, the public magnet schools provide a far better education than the private schools.
IN any case, I agree with @collegemom3717 - choosing a high school because you think that it will increase your kid’s chances to be accepted to an “elite” colleges is a mug’s game. I also agree with @ChoatieMom - if the high school provides a great education, college will take care of itself. I would go further - I think that a good high school education includes helping students find the right college for them. A good high school with great education and great GCs will help a student figure out whether the college where they will be happiest is an “elite” private, a public flagship, a directional, a specialized tech school, a LAC, or maybe a service academy.
I think that the sign of successful highschool vis a vis college admissions is a high school at which students feel that they are going to the college that’s best for them. Not the high schools with a high % of students who were accepted to colleges with < 15% acceptance rate and 70% from the top 20% by income. Rather, the ones at which the kids attending UIUC, Wisconsin, Miami Ohio, or Kansas State also feel that they are going to the best college for them, rather than feeling that they, somehow, “failed”.
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My D23 goes to a public HS with about 950 per class. My D19 went to the same HS.
I always looked at the HS was having around 100-150 high achieving kids per class. This allowed for the school to offer almost any AP class you wanted. There were also honors classes. So my kids went to a HS within a HS. My D19 didn’t want to take AP Eng Lit senior year after taking AP Eng Lang her junior year. We told her well kid you are going to be in gen pop now for senior English. It was a bit of an eye opening experience for her. She generally had classes with the same kids.
Overall it was pretty competitive as there were some pretty smart kids in her class.
One easy way to get a handle on the kids she was hanging out with was to ask her if they were in any of her classes.
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Do public school applicants do better in admissions because they wind up more highly ranked, coming from a less competitive pool? It all depends upon many other factors, but in general, I would say NO; in fact, it’s the opposite. Coming from an excellent public school, they can be the number one student in the class, have national level awards from Scholastic, and many, many high-level activities, and without a hook, they possibly, in fact probably, won’t get into a single Ivy, let alone a tippy-top school.
About a year ago I looked into this a bit more closely. I examined the published college acceptances brag sheet from one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, along with their published “average” SAT score. I don’t have the data at hand now, and I’m not going back to look for it, so please, “prove it” squad, hold your fire.
I compared the outcomes for the top quarter of our excellent local suburban high school, which offers many APs, with the outcomes for that leading prep school. The top quarter of the public high school are the kids who take all honors and APs, had stellar SAT scores, participated in all sorts of demanding ECs. These are the kids who my kids went through school with. Surprisingly, the average SAT scores for that leading boarding prep school were right about the same as those for that top quarter of the good suburban public school (which is in an economically and racially diverse town, has about 1/3 URM, about 1/3 on free lunch, a large immigrant population, but also has a lot of highly educated professionals and households that place a very high value on education).
So, what were the outcomes? For the prestigious prep school: tons of acceptances to tippy top, top 20, and top LACs. For that seemingly equally qualified top quarter of the good suburban high school? 2 Ivy acceptances (one of whom was URM, the other was a special talent admit, but not a recruited athlete), a few to 2nd tier LACs, the amazing valedictorian to a T30, and a few to T50s.
These kids were the same in achievement in every measure possible, but the prep school kids out-performed them in college acceptances by something like 10 to 1. At the time that I did the research, there was a parent in the prep school thread who claimed that the prep schools kids had some special factor (that didn’t show up in SATs, or AP scores, or any other quantifiable measure), but that the prep school kids were better-educated, somehow, than those kids who were in the all honors, all AP classes in the excellent suburban high school. Yeah, they DID have a special quality - they were applying from pipeline prep schools.
So, IF you have the money, the means, and your kid can get into them, and you know your kid to be a bright, hard-working student, then I would say that their chances at getting into a top college are much, much better if they are applying from a top prep school than from an excellent suburban high school, not to mention the increased odds of making social connections with the uber-wealthy and the leaders of the next generation. I would say that certain highly selective magnet schools have the reputation that could yield similar results; for example, Bronx Science and Stuyvesant. And if the child has excellent credentials plus certain “hooks”, such as being an underrepresented minority, or a recruited athlete, or the child of a wealthy donor, then their mileage might differ. But in general, yes, applying from a highly-respected prep school does lead to better outcomes.
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@parentologist I would agree that the private schools have more kids that get into the elite universities. I think there are some factors that play into this. One more private school kids can go ED. We couldn’t go that route with my D19. Too much of a gamble for the cost of college. We knew D19 would get some serious merit money at places.
Also the elite schools know that if the parents can foot the bill for a HS that costs $18-30K most likely they will be full pay. At the end of the day these elite schools want to get as many full pay or close to full pay kids as they can.
Sad to say but money will always play a role. Nothing worse than being middle class from a solid suburban HS.
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Particularly when it can’t be “proven.” Then or now.
The top prep schools are also loaded with students who come with hooks not likely seen in the LPS - legacy, faculty children, donor children, recruited athletes.
Yes, there are recruited athletes at the LPS, but likely for the more typical sports, while the BS will also have recruits for rowing, fencing, etc.
If we could compare the unhooked data, we we could have a better analysis. But I don’t know if any apples-to-apples data exists in the public domain.
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It likely varies by school. My kids attend a public school in the same area that Lawrenceville, Petty and Hun among other private schools are. This public school sends as many or more kids to Ivys and other elites than they do, so there’s no statistical advantage to standing out there. The average SAT score is 1334, they typically have ~15 NMSF. They don’t rank. They don’t give extra GPA for A+, they only give weighted GPA for AP and a handful of “accel” courses. It’s typical for kids to be in 4-5 AP’s a year. And they definitely don’t let you retake tests. I’m sure there are some public schools that do these things, just as there are private schools that grade easier.
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It’s hard to look at the school brag sheets because mostly it’s where students matriculated, not where they were accepted. Public school students may have followed the $ instead of to the ivies.
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Agreed In South Florida our top Private High schools tuition is just under $40000 a year StackPath
Tuition at American Heritage Schools, Broward Campus
Parents paying this, many from K-12, or more likely to be able to afford Top 20 schools that offer little to no merit aid. While Middle to upper middle class kids go to University of Florida or FSU or chase merit.
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Can’t be proven though I suspect some of it has to do with the connections that college counselors at private schools have versus counselors at public schools.
My kids attended a very good public school within a few miles of the private school I attended. While the public school has a good number of Ivy and other elite acceptances every year, the private school I attended clearly has more acceptances at elite schools.
Does it help that the two college counselors at the private school were previously admissions officers at two local colleges - an Ivy and an elite LAC? I suspect they “know the game” and have connections with college admissions folks that the public school counselors do not have.
That may help some kids from “elite” prep schools to stand out among similar top candidates. however, I suspect that this would only be seen for one or two “elite” colleges per boarding school.
Mostly, however, the high rate of admissions from some boarding schools are the result of the factors that @skieurope stated.
What people here are forgetting is that these same “elite” boarding schools are using identical admission methods as “elite” private colleges. That includes the same hooks - athletes, legacies, and donors.
“Elite” boarding schools admit students who are prodigies in rich-kid sports, whose parents are wealthy and influential, legacies, and kids of donors. Many of these athletic “prodigies” are generally good enough in those sports to be recruited by “elite” colleges, the legacies for the boarding school are, invariably, also legacies for a couple of “elite” private colleges, and families don’t generally lose their wealth and influence over four years.
On the other hand, even high schools which serve the wealthiest communities do not have such a proportion of kids with the “best” hooks for “elite” colleges. Families who live in these communities who have those hooks will also send their kids to “elite” boarding schools.
Bottom line - “elite” boarding schools have high admission rates to “elite” colleges because they have performed the first stage of “holistic” admissions when they admitting their own students. This means admitting the highest performing hooked kids (which also includes high performing URM kids).
The vast majority of kids who are accepted to “elite” colleges from “elite” boarding schools (and other private prep schools), would have been admitted no matter which high school they attended.
While there are many reasons to attend a good boarding school, it will usually not increase the chances of a kid to be accepted to an “elite” college. If they have good GCs, though, it could help a student be accepted to the right college for them.
On the other hand, magnet schools, especially magnet schools which serve low income communities, do increase the admission chances for their students.
I think that kids from low income families with awful high schools would beg to disagree… The idea that “nothing is worse” than attending a public flagship is ridiculous.
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Double post to share this link, which I think is relevant to the discussion:
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Love this so much!
Middle class from a solid suburban HS doesn’t automatically (or even usually, to be honest) get into my state’s flagship public.
There are lots of reasons why parents send their kids to private schools. A lot of private schools are religious and parents want their kids to have a religious education. Some people live in areas with public schools that have a lot of problems. Some people like the “philosophy” of a certain private school. There are many reasons. My BIL came from a large Irish-American working class family. He went to a private Catholic school, simply because it was Catholic and the family was Catholic. Another friend of mine went to an all-girls Catholic school because that’s where her strict Argentine parents wanted her to go. Sometimes parents choose private schools for cultural and religious reasons.
One big missing factor in the comparison is that many of the “prep schools” you are referring to have very low admit rates to get in. So those prep school kids have already been through a vetting process similar to college acceptance.
The second cut for them is college acceptance. A public school has kids at all levels. The prep school has kids who have already met the criteria set by the school ( which is similar to college acceptance). Many of the factors mentioned upthread are also applicable.
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@MWolf When I said nothing is worse than being middle class from suburban HS was for getting into Elite Universities. Trust me I know other parts of life there are worse things. I have taught my daughters about the privilege they have compared to others. But they don’t have the privilege of going ED anywhere and not worrying about the price tag.
We all know the Elites want a hook or at least a story for the kids they accept. And we have all learned that game.
Low Income kids can stand out with great test scores or just having the hook of being low income. I know that because I was one of those kids a long time ago.
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