<p>Is it necessary to send a kid to a magnet or a prep school, just in case if the kid has the potential ?</p>
<p>I also read somewhere that the magnet/boarding/prep schools in the North East is better ? Is that true ?
If yes, does it mean that if mine wants to apply to Ivy league, he needs to be in one of those good prep schools in the North East ? How would you compare the prep schools in the North East to those in Texas ? I don't have any answers to these questions as I did my bachelors in another country. Pl guide me.</p>
<p>If you live in a particulary bad public school district it can make sense to send kids to a private college preparatory school (can be a day school, not boarding) but if you live in a good public school district, then it can be a waste of money.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>No, it’s certainly not required. Not for anything.</p></li>
<li><p>The best private schools offer a breathtakingly rich academic experience, in terms of critical thinking, sophistication, breadth, and challenge. Not even the very best public schools match them, although a few maybe come close. Whether that rich academic experience is worth the cost and, in the case of boarding schools, the dislocation and separation, is a completely different question. There are some downsides, too, including being maybe a bit cloistered and inbred, a little snobby, and failing to inculcate some real-world survival skills. </p></li>
<li><p>Don’t feel like you have to send your kid to a private school to get into a particular college. It’s not that big a help in getting admitted to highly selective colleges. I don’t know that anyone can say for certain if the average student is helped or hurt, admissions-wise, by going to a prep school. The colleges may take a number of students from great prep schools, but the student quality at those schools is so high that it is ultra-competitive to qualify oneself for the group of students who get admitted to highly selective colleges in disproportionate numbers. There are plenty of students in the middle of their prep school classes who would be a (if not the) tippy-top student at most good public high schools. </p></li>
<li><p>There is nothing magic about New England, but if you are looking for the best (and best-known) boarding schools that’s where they happen to be. Texas also has some excellent private day schools.</p></li>
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<p>If you can afford them, independent schools generally offer smaller class sizes and more individualized attention. They also are relatively safe, most with zero tolerance for fights, etc. They are not a magic ticket into Yale, though they may bring out the best in a talented, motivated student. I would not ship my kid to a boarding school just for some Ivy dream; that is not what these schools are for and I hope that this is not your only goal for your child.</p>
<p>Just for the record, I myself attended an excellent day school in the Mpls/St. Paul area but am sending my kids to public school. I agree that small classes are an advantage, but my kids thrived or are thriving in a public school in a good school district (Boston area) and have no regrets in sending them there.</p>
<p>I would never knock prep schools. I spent 4 years at one and it probably helped me get into Vassar.</p>
<p>Flash forward, and I live in central Utah, where the high school is so lousy only one foreign language is taught, and only for two years. Kids regularly score a 15 on their ACT yet carry a 3.5 GPA. Crazy, right?</p>
<p>My D attended only public schools here. Yet she was waitlisted at UChicago and Williams and accepted at Amherst and Harvard. The local schools didn’t help, but they didn’t hold her back. She made up for it in other ways.</p>
<p>As always, it’s not the situation; it’s what the student makes of it.</p>
<p>Prep school admissions Parent’s forum discusses this topic frequently. To summarize the essentials:
If you have good local options your child will probably have a better shot at the Ivys by staying home, working hard, good ECs and test scores, and being the val.
Most of us prep parents think it is well worth the cost, hassle, and missing them for the quality of the education they are getting at boarding school. Ivy is not the goal.</p>
<p>3) I disagree a bit with the JHS above, we have not found our Ds boarding school “a little snobby”; 45% of students are traditionally underrepresented minorities and over half receive substantial financial aid. Instead of “failing to include real world skills”, her classmates are often sought out by colleges since they have proved they can survive and thrive without parents over involved in time management, laundry, priority setting - so they adjust very well to independent college environments.</p>
<p>We looked at private high schools for one of our kids. After doing the research, we all determined that his public high school offered more of what he wanted than Choate, or Loomis, or Taft, or Hotchkiss. His interest was music, and our public school music program is one of the best in the state. Hard to top that. </p>
<p>The second kiddo wasn’t interested in looking at private schools at all. So we didn’t.</p>
<p>But, we were also happy with our local school district. And the private schools were either a lengthy drive away, or would have required boarding. Neither of those options worked either for us.</p>
<p>But I will say…they are terrific schools, with much to offer. </p>
<p>If you live in the midwest where I do (middle-income suburbs of Chicago), many would consider it to be the epitome of “snobbiness” to send your kid to boarding school, which could make “fitting in” with local kids a little hard for a student new to the area. I think it’s regional thing.</p>
<p>Most kids go to public schools. But, in addition, at the gradeschool level there are some private dayschool options, including religious affiliated schools, Montessori schools (my son went to Montessori school through sixth grade), a few private day schools, and, in our town, a K-8 school that is marketed as a school with a curriculum designed for “gifted” kids. </p>
<p>At the high school level, there are some private academies in the tonier suburbs north of us and/or closer to the city, but other than that your options boil down to schools affiliated with particular religions and the public schools. There are no real magnet school options in our district at the high school level, either. The one exception to this rule is IMSA (Illinois Math and Science Academy) which is an extremely well-respected (and fairly hard to get into) public boarding school that focuses on a STEM curriculum. </p>
<p>People tend to purchase houses based on the school system’s reputation rather than sending kids away to school. Some of the best schools in Illinois are in our area—Stevenson, Hersey, Prospect. But other schools, like the one my daughter goes to, are struggling to meet federal standards. (That’s what I get for buying our house 25 years ago and staying put.) </p>
<p>Personally, I would not consider sending my child away to a boarding school unless no reasonable options were available locally. Of course, other families may feel differently.</p>
<p>Perhaps this info from the Harvard Crimson’s class of 2017 survey would be of interest to you:
"Forty-one percent of surveyed freshmen are from the Northeast, 15 percent are from the West, 14 percent are from the Midwest, and 8 percent are from the Southwest. Eleven percent said that they are from outside of the United States.</p>
<p>Sixty-one percent of the surveyed freshmen indicated they went to a public high school, and 38 percent said they attended a private one. Less than one percent of the respondents were homeschooled.</p>
<p>According to the survey, students from the Northeast and outside of the United States were disproportionately likely to have attended private school, while freshmen from the Midwest, Southwest, and West disproportionately tended towards a public education before coming to Harvard."</p>
<p>You should go to the web site boarding school review and explore on line any number of BS. Look at the course offerings and EC’s at various schools. Educate yourself on the cost of BS and whether your family might qualify for FA. The whole process should be a joint journey with you and your child. </p>
<p>So the writers for The Crimson either can’t do math, or prefer to ignore the South. </p>
<p>I’m curious about the East Coast vs Texas question. Do you live in either area now? There are wonderful schools, (public, day and boarding) in both locations but nobody can help you if you don’t give more info. What is your current school district and what nearby districts might you be able to move to? How old is your child? </p>
<p>Maybe the Crimson writers didn’t mention the Southeast because students from the Southeast didn’t come from either public or private schools “disproportionately,” unlike the students from other regions.</p>
<p>In terms of academic and extracurricular experiences, prep school is a whole new world on its own. If it is a feasible option (between cost and distance), I don’t see anything wrong with sending your kid to a private school. It’s a great experience and would be character building.</p>
<p>Some of the best schools (Ivies mostly), have always had a substantial portion of their incoming class (like 40%) come from private school because that’s the way college admissions worked (only rich, prep school white boys could go to HYP. I was reading ‘This Side of Paradise’ and Amory was just casually saying that he wanted to go Princeton because everyone in his class was going to Yale or Harvard. If only we could be that picky now). Granted, it’s gotten better, but if a small portion of US high schools are being really represented at top-tier schools, they’ve got be doing something right. </p>