<p>My daughter is finishing her freshman year of high school. It has been a disapointing year. She was a very good student in middle school, but became very distracted in high school (did not complete home work, study, etc), and will have a class rank at about the 50th percentile). This is at a competitive public high school. She took a very challenging course load had many extracurriculars. We are serisously considering a private school next year - possibly a boarding school. We believe she will perform better in a smaller environment. We are also hoping that colleges will over look Bs and Cs freshman year, if she does better over the next three years. Lastly, we are hoping that colleges will look more favorably on a student coming from a well regarded private prep school. I am looking for any thoughts on private vs public and overcoming poor freshman year grades. We were hoping for second tier schools such as BC, Oberlin, UVA</p>
<p>“second tier schools such as BC, Oberlin, UVA”</p>
<p>actually BC, Oberlin, and UVA are considered first tier schools…</p>
<p>If you go to the prep school forum on this site, you will get a lot of advice.</p>
<p>Your biggest issue is going to be getting into a good private school for the next school year. While you will find schools with space, they will not be the best regarded schools and the better private schools will take issue with her grades this year.</p>
<p>Private schools come with their own set of issues where college admissions is concerned. I would not at all say that top colleges favor prep school kids. Affluence can be somewhat of an albatross in college admissions these days.</p>
<p>Certainly it may well help your daughter to be in a different environment, but I would try to really get to the bottom of what went wrong this year before choosing the next school.</p>
<p>Ya, getting into a private school or a boarding school that is good is nearly impossible at this time. This should have been done at LEAST 3 months ago (and that would be a late application).</p>
<p>I have had kids in very competitive independent schools. It does not ensure anyone entry to a more selective college and can even backfire. The grading curve at the schools my kids attended was very steep, and though, yes, there are some colleges that know those schools well and would give a slight tip to kids coming from there, a “B” at Select Prep does not an “A” at Public High make. More like a .1 or .2 on the GPA scale is like it.</p>
<p>There were, in fact, kids who did not do as well coming from Select Prep, because of their lower grades. Such schools often do not weight, do not designate classes as AP or honors and getting a high class rank with a preselected group of kids is not easy. Though some schools do give some allowance for this, many, the larger schools, the state schools do not. It is difficult being competitive for things where the gpa is considered important. At my sons’ school a 3.4 was considered very, very good. Public school kids often had a 4.0+ and scholarships and honors often were geared towards that scale. I know one young man who did not get into UVA and some other such schools with a gpa slightly below 3.5 that was specifically cited as a reason for the denial. He did get accepted at BC but did not get into the honors program until sophomore year, again, because of his gpa despite the fact that it was high for this high school. </p>
<p>The reasons so many kids at these select preps get into highly selective colleges are because many are in special categories as legacies, celebrities, development, and because the kids are preselected from the get go. Though there may be some schools that know the college counselors at certain select preps and will give kids from those schools a bit of an advantage, that is not so helpful if your kid isn’t interested in those schools, or if he is among the lower end of those kids looking at those colleges from that high school. </p>
<p>The biggest benefit we got from select preps is that the kids did get a phenomonal education. The schools literally poured the info into their reluctant brains. I have absolutely no doubt that this was the best venue for them in terms of getting advanced learning and readings into them. I think they could have done better grade wise at the public schools or other schools less tough on the grading scales, but they would not have been in some high calibre classes. Both kids who went to select prep ended up with 2nd semester sophomore standing when they started college with their APs (despite few designated AP courses). They also were head and shoulders above most kid in terms of being prepared for college work. They knew how to write a good paper for college, knew how to read and understand difficult materials, and how to put together a good argument. They did not have to learn this as a freshman. My B student freshman got one of the very few "A"s on the papers assigned in a course from a difficult prof, and it was a piece of cake for him. There are few literary terms and concepts he has not covered in high school. His education was thorough.</p>
<p>My daughter switched to private day school after ninth grade for a different reason and her grades had not slipped, but perhaps I can offer you some insight.</p>
<p>Good:
All but one of her teachers was really good.
Small class sizes.
Individual attention: lots of writing drafts, teachers always available during free periods and after school.
Good college advising as far as preparing (not so much on applications, but we didn’t feel as though she needed a lot of help)
Nice opportunities for international exchange programs (school based rather than tourist based)</p>
<p>Bad:
Socially, it was a disaster (all girls), no academic nerd group
We are public school people
The commute was ridiculous
Some kids had been together since pre-school</p>
<p>If we had to do it over again, she would have gone to the local Catholic high school in ninth grade. We figured out for our daughter that it was the teachers that made the difference rather than the other students. </p>
<p>With the economy, there may be spots available that wouldn’t have existed four years ago at this time of year. Good luck. It’s a big decision.</p>
<p>Are there 2 people using this username???</p>
<p>I looked at the posting history finding 2 posts from a student who was asking about plaigerism in 9th grade.</p>
<p>Is this a mother-daughter combo? Or is something else going on?</p>
<p>This can be such a complicated decision, depending on family culture (the boarding part), kid’s ability and IQ, motivation, maturity, and the specific schools you’re dealing with.(i.e. public school system in your town). We’ve been through it with our son, hope we’ve made the right choice, and now its our daughter’s turn. Good luck with whatever you decide and be thankful that you do have choices.</p>
<p>Private vs public depends on a kid preferences. Coming from public to private might not be good, but I do not have this type of experience. S refused to go to private, stayed in public. D has been in tiny private (her 8th grade had only 4 kids), so we have decided that public would be too much of a shocker for her and have sent her to smallest private available in a area with 33 kids in her class. Two kids in her HS went to different schools for 1 year, one went to public, another to much larger private. They could not stand it, suffer for whole year and came back to our school. They were missing teachers’ attention and close relationships which is a norm at our small private school. Social interactions are very different at different schools and will affect overall HS experience. Our small private school has always placed 100% of graduates into 4 years colleges with the few top kids usually going to Ivy’s or other very selective programs.</p>
<p>There is more focus on academics with day schools, magnet schools, charter schools, and the top preps from what we can tell from watching the experiences of friends. The few that went off went to the schools one of their parents attended and these were the more more “name” schools. The kids that leave the public schools are self selecting so the spectrum of kids narrows when you remove a kid from a public school. That same group of kids, however, did not necessarily get a “bump” in their college applications compared to those of us who kept our kids in our strong public. All the “stuff and distraction” that happens with teens, happens much the same in the preps, so it would be important to figure out what kept your daughter from having a successful freshman year before deciding that a new school away from home will remedy the situation.</p>
<p>I strongly believe that size of school is very important to match a kid personality and will affect academic performance.</p>
<p>I noticed that too, goaliedad, when I checked the other two posts! Something doesn’t make sense here!</p>
<p>"If we had to do it over again, she would have gone to the local Catholic high school in ninth grade. "</p>
<p>Be careful. We made that decision and would not do it again. However, D will stay there as a Senior for continuity. :(</p>
<p>Things we learned too late: The grading system is harsh (and does impact acceptances in to better colleges), the sports program is a joke, budget cuts impact everything, and the teachers are not that great. Tolerance for diversity is a joke, and those with lots of siblings who attended the school get favored. Even though you pay tuition, they are constantly pressuring you to donate more money!</p>
<p>1sokkermo–Our son is finishing his first year at the local Catholic and it would have probably been a better fit for our daughter in our case. But as has been posted, it is a very personal choice. I am certain that most of the parents at my daughter’s school do not have the same feelings I do.</p>
<p>On the other hand, older brother went to a pretty good prep school and it was a great fit for him. ;)</p>
<p>How does your daughter feel about switching to a private school? If she doesn’t want to, it may not make much difference in her performance. She could fail to do her homework there as well.</p>
<p>At my son’s private day prep school … if you don’t do the homework, you are referred for Saturday study hall. It’s a major incentive to keep up with the homework! Most kids don’t get assigned to Saturday study hall more than once or twice.</p>