Friends recently switched their middle schooler daughter from a charter school (with an attached, brand new high school) to one of the most highly selective private schools in NYC (with an attached, very well established high school).
The strategy was to go to the HS with the best reputation that their daughter could get into for the peer group and the prestige. Their daughter was the top student in her MS and to them that was a red flag that she needed to be someplace else.
I’m sure the private v public and selective v non-selective HS has been discussed endlessly (I’m new to the forum) but I wanted to get some external confirmation that our (highly likely) decision to keep our kids in a charter school (which has a lottery admission) is a fine strategy too.
I think this but maybe I’m being naive. For a competitive big city like NYC does the rat race really begin before 9th grade?
The competition begins in preschool. If you aren’t in the right preschool, you won’t get accepted to,the top day school. And if you don’t get accepted into the top day school, you will not get acceoted to the best high school. And if you don’t get accepted to a top HS, you won’t have a shot,at an elite college.
And if you don’t go to an elite college, you will never be able to be a supreme court justice, work at GS, or McKinsey, or any top firm in NYC
You don’t have to participate in the game, but thumper isn’t kidding that competition to get into the “right” preschool programs in New York is really fierce. And it starts before birth. The people who get wrapped up in that are all trying to send their kids to Daulton or Brearley, or similar ultra-selective private schools. But people planning to send their kids to public school engage in lots of planning to have their kids go to high-quality elementary schools, and there’s a huge premium on getting into competitive examination high schools, which means you want to be in a middle school that does a good job preparing kids for that.
If your child will be happy with a SUNY, or an LAC outside the top 20 or so (and you can afford it without merit scholarships), and he or she doesn’t need to run with the biggest, fastest dogs in the pack to feel motivated, then you don’t have to worry about those things anywhere near as much, at least as far as future college is concerned.
So it is the rare NY senior outside of the top privates + Stuy/Bronx Science/Brooklyn Tech who gets into a major research university? Because while I get that the top schools have higher exmission %s at top schools, I didn’t think that by keeping my kids in an excellent (but no, not selective) K-12 school I was seriously damaging his chances.
Absolutely not, because colleges like diversity. One year I had a group of seniors at a school that was being phased out and those students got acceptances to Amherst, Vassar, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Hopkins, Columbia and Barnard.
Low income smart NYC kids do have multiple entry points to get in to selective schools through the HEOP, Posse, Questbridge and the various STEP programs.
In addition outside of the big 3 there are many selective small public high school; Beacon, Bard, Lab, ELRO, Millenium, Baruch and Columbia Secondary. Screened programs in midsize/large high schools: Midwood, Forest Hills and Cardoza, along with CUNY campus high schools; Townsend Harris, Brooklyn College, Hunter, York where students are still getting in to the elite schools (my D turned down Stuyvesant to stay at her school, which was a 6-12 school, where every year students get accepted to the Ivies and selective LACs).
Sybbie’s relevant knowledge and experience far eclipses mine, which is all second-hand and consists mainly of watching the behavior of friends who are affluent, ambitious, anxious parents. For my edification, as well as others’, it would be great if sybbie clarified some of the ambiguities in her post:
Obviously, there are more than three selective public schools in New York. Outside of programs like Questbridge serving exceptional low-income kids, does a smart, non-URM kid at a non-selective high school have a meaningful chance of acceptance at schools like “Amherst, Vassar, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Hopkins, Columbia and Barnard”?
I can’t tell you about the schools you listed, but there are and always have been plenty of them at Cornell. Of course, Cornell and New York state have a sort of special relationship. But Cornell is a peer school to the ones you’ve listed, except for Columbia, which is much more selective than any of the others.
Considering the fact that the NYC has the largest public school system in the country, why would anyone think that students attending selective colleges are only coming from 3 high school in the city where there are more than 400 high schools in NYC?
Considering SUNY is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges (including 3 land grant schools at Cornell where NYS residents get in-state tuition), and community colleges in the United States and CUNY is the largest Urban university system in the country, love it or hate it, many people in this economy feel that they have a wide array of choices.
Of course, because most of the more selective screened programs; many of the elective screened programs (especially in manhattan where the priority is students that currently live and attend school in district 2): Baruch, Millenium, ELRO, or schools where the priority is current 8th graders; Columbia Secondary, and Lab consists of students who are not low income and are not -URMs. In addition all of the boroughs, with the exception of Manhattan have zoned high school, making it very easy for a non-URM that lives in a predominately non-URM neighborhood, to attend the zoned hs, where the majority of the students are non-URMs.
My kids went to a rather plain vanilla public suburban HS in Westchester (i.e. not Scarsdale, Briarcliff, Armonk, etc.). They are both in extremely selective colleges. Other kids from the school (not a ton, but the top couple from every class) go to similarly selective colleges. These are middle to upper middle class, non-URMs. Why would NYC schools be any different? That seems hard to understand.
“Much2learn. I completely agree with PG on her comments. Just letting the OP know that for some, the competition begins long before HS.”
Yes. Well, if you are targeting the top 10 schools, it started for us with unsolicited feedback from a number of people that DD’s abilities were unusually high for her age. Then we investigated with experts who confirmed that opinion. Then we began to support her in developing her abilities.
If the student has the ability, and you want to target top 10 schools, I think it is very helpful to have guidance from someone knowledgeable when establishing the students 9th grade schedule, at the latest. That is when you can begin to make mistakes that can reduce your chances.
I would love to know what the thought process is there, as well.
My D2 went to a NYC public high school which is very diverse, high poverty and with some serious problems in the neighborhood, although she was in a very selective program, and I can say that many of the top kids in the top programs in ordinary public schools do very well in college admission, including Ivies, other top universities and name-brand LACs. It was presented to me as colleges seeing a school profile with high poverty and low average scores and contrasting it with some graduates who have very high scores and grades and interesting ECs in a place they aren’t necessarily expected. I think this is more common than many people think because more NYC teachers and counselors are not only very well educated and experienced, but they have connections and really care about the kids. Not all, of course, but a lot more than common “wisdom” suggests.
In NYC the rat race begins in pre-K. If we were living there we’d probably be looking at the exam schools and the privates.
Instead we live in the suburbs (and no not Scarsdale, some place quite a bit less crazy.) We ended up being happy with how things turned out. They both got into very selective colleges. Our kids got a very good education and were well prepared for college and we only went moderately nuts during the whole college application process. Neither of my kid were particularly overscheduled.
I actually think it makes less difference than people think where they attend high school. I’ve seen very similar kids sometimes in the same family one at a private one at a public ending up with almost identical college acceptances.
I think JHS is trying to prove he’s above it all by misspelling Dalton.
IMO, if your kid is not URM, first generation immigrant, and/or an athlete, you ARE better off sending your kid to one of NYC’s selective public school programs. I would put at least 20 NYC public high schools in that category. Most of the ones I would include are on Sybbie’s list.
I think reality is that an individual child’s odds of getting into a top school from a high school outside the top 20 depend upon things like URM status, first generation college status, recruited athlete, unusually strong musical or other special talent, etc. IMO, a middle class, non-immigrant white or Asian kid from a school outside this group doesn’t have great odds of getting into one of the very top colleges without some additional hook.
While I’m not a regular reader of the NY Post, I think this article is helpful. http://nypost.com/2013/09/15/top-50-public-schools-in-nyc/ (Hunter’s not on the list because it isn’t run by the Board of Ed I’m not sure all charters are on it either.) I don’t think you should pay much attention to the ranking; I think the numbers to focus on are: graduation rate, per cent college ready, median SAT. (Yes, I know all 3 have limitations, but I think lookng at all 3 gives you a good idea of what the school is like.) My own “top 20” isn’t precisely the same as the Post’s.
There’s always UMich, the UC’s, NYU, (and UW-Madison and UIUC).
On a serious note, however, with the way that things are trending, in a decade, UMich & NYU will have an admit rate close to what some elite privates now have, UW-Madison will have an admit rate close to what UMich now has, Stern’s admit rate will be close to what Wharton’s is now, and the acceptance rate to UIUC CS will be in the single digits.
Granted, trends don’t always only go one way. China’s economy could collapse.
Op,
Your strategy would depend on how drooly you want to get over HYPSetc.
Your strategy might be fine for your kid and many parents do it.
Your friend’s strategy might be fine for their kid and many parents do it.
If a kid was outperforming all the other kids in the school, why not move them to a harder school?
If a kid was not outperforming all the other kids in the school, and was happy at their current school, why not leave them at their current school?
