Yikes, even good college essays correlate with household income.
I know students would be pretty happy with EO applications!
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Some people might prefer the college admission system that is used overseas: a national standardized exam. You are assigned a college (or choose from a small list of schools) based on how well you did on the exam. Complete transparency without any gimmicks.
Strong high schools, public and private, are self-selecting for high achievers. These students will do well no matter which high school they attend.*
How many times do we have to say this: Colleges admit students, NOT high schools. Elite high schools do not “get students in” to colleges. They take already attractive students and prepare them well for the colleges they eventually choose to attend. If you think those $$$$ are buying matriculation results, you may be headed for disappointment. And, if private $$$$ don’t provide a significant academic preparation and experience difference from what your student can consume at your local public, why spend it? You choose a high school so your student can become the best version of themselves in all aspects. Both public and private can deliver that.
If we on this forum can’t dispel the matriculation myth, the prep schools are happy to do it. I had to chuckle at the not-so-subliminal message sent before the opening session of college Info weekend during our son’s application round. While people were finding seats before the program started, a “Where did they go to College?” trivia game was silently looping on the huge auditorium screen–all famous names and faces, not one well-known or highly-sought-after college. The message that day from the college counseling office was that there are MANY wonderful schools that will prepare a student well for life beyond academia, and they had invited speakers from several of those lesser-known schools to explain how and why. As a policy, Choate requires each student to apply to their state U, not just to ensure matriculation choices but because they know that state universities can often provide a great education at a great value and should not be overlooked or disregarded by students or parents just because they may not be seen as elite. The school worked had to correct college myopia.
*During an info session when I was applying to HBS, the rep told the group that applying to HBS is like applying to a bank for a loan. The more you can prove to the bank you don’t really need the loan, the higher your chances of getting it. HBS doesn’t “create” captains of industry, it just finds them and brings them together.
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I am not arguing with you, and I have a kid who also attends an exclusive private school. I’m just relaying that not everyone thinks the way you or we do. For families with high net worth, the decision is easier to make. For other families who are less affluent, the matriculation rate is very important to them because justifying the cost of tuition is a huge impediment. For those families, spending $200K on a private HS school could mean there is $200K less to spend on college. Unless they already have a kid enrolled at the school, they can’t appreciate the educational opportunities that private schools can provide. And if the public school system already has a good reputation, the choice is even harder. Not everyone follows College Confidential and is well-informed.
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I think the easiest explanation for this is…gene pool. Same reason why some neighborhoods- as the cost of homes increase- have suddently better school systems with the same teachers and administrators in place. Higher income often correlates with higher education, which means that the richer the applicant the much better chance that applicant has had opportunities.
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That is why I edited my post to say that the prep schools themselves will help remove those rosy glasses, but the conversation needs to happen way before college info weekend. There have been a few sad threads here where a parent with Ivy lust didn’t fully understand the strength of the pools their excellent student was competing in and what the actual odds of admission to the narrow list of acceptable-to-them colleges were. One ROI-focused poster was considering pulling the child from BS rather than expanding the list of colleges even though the student loved their school and was doing well.
Unfortunately, if matriculation lists are used in ignorance, buyer’s remorse can come at a very steep price.
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There are a lot of grey areas in this decision. You are highlighting affluent families attracted to private schools solely because of their reputation and had unreasonable expectations, and I am in complete agreement. I am approaching the discussion from a slightly different angle, the non-affluent families who are debating whether to send their kids to private school.
Unfortunately, as the cost of education keeps going up, ROI will increasingly become a more important factor to them. A potential education cost of $700K+ for high school and college is a lot of money for most families to spend on 1 child. They want to be able to see a “tangible” benefit at the end of the road. Yes, some private schools provide a phenomenal education- better than their public school peers. There are also a lot of private schools where they don’t. Of course, as you stated earlier, most of the benefit is dependent on the kid. But as the price keeps going up, more families will simply decide that the education at their public school is just good enough, which in many cases is absolutely correct. That would be a huge blow to many private schools who could experience decreasing applications resulting in decreasing selectivity and decreasing enrollment.
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For us, it was all about what would happen in those four years.
Diverse and multicultural friends. Learning how to live in community. Academics that emphasized thinking and engaging with others. Ability to do both sports and music. An emphasis on figuring out who you were and wanted to be in the world. Service learning. This was the preparation for college we wanted our kid to have. We wanted high school to provide preparation for life. Sure, college would be the next step in life.
Some schools define their mission purely along academic lines. Ours did not. And it delivered!
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The study did not find that good college essays correlate with income. It instead found that keywords related to essay content correlated with income. For example, it found that essays with keywords related to travel + China were associated with high income. It didn’t evaluate whether those essays about traveling to China were good or not, just that an admin officer could theoretically try to predict income based on essay topic.
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Any family who can even consider a $700K price tag for education cannot be considered ‘non-affluent.’
Affluent or not, no one should select a private high school thinking the high school will deliver any particular college result when it is the colleges who decide whom to admit. High schools do not control college admissions.
Define “tangible.” At the end of the road, the benefit is a well-educated person regardless of the name on the diploma. An excellent education can be had at a broad range of high schools and colleges at many price points. Thankfully, no one needs to spend anything close to $700K to be well-educated in this country.
Most students at most universities come from public schools, so I think opting for public school will continue to be the best choice for most and will not hurt anyone’s college options. If we had had a good public option, we would have kept our son home, no question.
Private school is a luxury good subject to supply and demand, like anything else. In the case of the uber elites, like the New England boarding schools, there seems to be no end to affluent families willing to pay for this type of education; applications have been increasing even through uncertainty. As long as endowments do well and the rich are price insensitive, these schools will continue to be well-funded and continue to be able to provide financial aid to the less affluent families whose desirable students make great contributions to their communities.
I think future declining enrollment will be more a function of a shrinking school-age population than cost of attendance.
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I agree with all of this, though would add that certain “elite” level private schools have historically helped with admissions. Forget the hooked kids, where halls are named after them and parents sit on boards. But for the student who has very solid stats and a “name” behind him or her, historically that has helped that “second tier” grouping, if you will. When our S21 was going through the early stages of the process (before Covid was REALLY a thing), GC was using schools like Emory, Tufts, Colgate, et al as likely destinations for him if he didn’t hit on any of his top choices. She came armed with stats and back up for similar kids over the years, had very good relationships with AOs, and was quite confident he would end up happy.
While that almost certainly has changed, I suspect that for AOs it helps to see a name of a school where they are very confident in the rigor and type of student they will likely receive. Of course, here in the NE, there are so many public schools that are comparable. But I guess my point is that, while possibly negligible, it does exist that known private schools have in the past provided a bump.
I could not possibly agree more that the benefit of private school, and the value to a student or their family, should not in any way be measured against the likely matriculation of said student.
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All true, but …
Public schools have so many problems right now, financial just being one of them. That trend seems to be getting worse. Which means more families are in the market.
Elite high schools are offering massive financial aid and shifting their admissions to include broader swaths of students. Which means more of those families will find a financially affordable private option. That speaks to the supply side being sustainable, but also more uninitiated consumers in the marketplace. It makes it all the harder for a school to message what their value is over a public education.
I agree, population trends are going to determine the sustainability of the bs marketplace. Just not at the elite schools with huge endowments. Same as what will happen in the college market.
Those non-tippy top expensive smaller colleges are figuring out how to survive - ergo the admissions maneuverings we are seeing now. I imagine something similar happening in non-tippy top expensive high schools. College matriculation is the easy sell. The more esoteric “character development” and “independence” and “exposure to diversity” is tougher to pitch. So if college matriculation is a mirage, the non-tippy top privates are in for a world of hurt.
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I’m in DC and so many of the day schools are so expensive that boarding school tuition looks quite reasonable. This area also has many barriers to commutes or to expanding current popular schools that boarding school popularity is increasing. Some public schools are good but I’m saddled with a mediocre one.
A few other cities have this same pricy day school market.
For anyone who knows HW, the college profile seems like there is tremendous grade inflation (https://www.hw.com/Portals/28/Harvard-WestlakeSchoolProfile2020-21v2.pdf?ver=2020-10-01-101325-867) yet the parent handbook lists unweighted GPAs (https://students.hw.com/Portals/44/completehandbook2023.pdf). Can anyone comment on this who has more information? I would think a student with a 3.6 - 3.79999 is at the bottom of the class at HW?
From speaking to a close friend with a child at HW, there is grade deflation in the most rigorous classes. For example, in a class of 60+ kids in AP English, only 2 A’s are doled out. The 3.6-3.799 UW (w/ a very rigorous load) can easily be a 1570 scoring student, with perhaps 1 or 2 Bs - the profile of our friend’s child. The child is nowhere near the bottom of the class and applying ED to Chicago.
Take a look at the School Profile; it indicates otherwise: https://www.hw.com/Portals/28/Harvard-WestlakeSchoolProfile2020-21v2.pdf?ver=2020-10-01-101325-867
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I only have experience from what my friend’s child has been privy to. So, can’t speak to what is publicly available.
Additionally, I don’t know if a particular teacher only doles out 2 A’s. There might be other teachers as well teaching the same class who are more generous.
Apologies, I just looked at this profile you listed. My friend’s child graduates this year so it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Apparently, the school changed all their classes to reflect unweighted GPAs this past year. My friend’s child has an unweighted GPA in the 3.6-3.79 bucket, not sure what the GPA would have been had the classes been weighted.
This make sense! Thank you!
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