Purpose of elite schools?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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@NYCMomof3 - Not now, but I grew up in NYC and know all the schools decently well. Again, it depends on your definition of very smart, as I acknowledged. I’m sure we can all agree that whatever one’s definition, Trinity is right near or at the top in the NYC private world, no? (At least among the coed and boys’ schools - I can’t say that I know the girls’ schools all that well.) Who else would you put up there? Maybe Collegiate? Maybe Dalton? Obviously, Horace Mann is also a top place; I was specifically limiting my comment to Manhattan.

Not trying to step on people’s toes unnecessarily here, but as I have often said on here, most private schools are selecting students on many attributes, and intelligence is only one, probably not the primary one once an applicant is past some base level of competence.

22

By inference, Trinity’s ethos could extend to the colleges at which their graduates are most highly represented (Minimum 5 TS matriculants, 2011-2015):

  1. Hamilton
  2. Harvard
  3. Colgate
  4. Columbia
  5. Brown
  6. Yale
  7. Kenyon
  8. Amherst
  9. Dartmouth
  10. Penn
  11. Wesleyan
  12. Bowdoin
  13. Chicago
  14. Pomona
  15. Middlebury
  16. Williams
  17. Duke
  18. Princeton
  19. Emory
  20. Cornell

But do these colleges universally suggest a shallow ethos? Or can the above schools be used to illustrate that at least some Trinity graduates choose their colleges with a sense of independent values (such as through, in particular, Kenyon, Wesleyan and some of the other LACs)?

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We absolutely raised our kid from toddlerhood to believe that “to him whom much has been given, much is expected.” And, we also raised him to believe that his education is all about the life of his mind; the life of his wallet will take care of itself and is a by-product of how he cultivates his mind. Marketable skills and money are not goals in our book. We’ve alway been more concerned about the quality of the tape that plays in his head than any marketable skills. Based on his interests (and we alway told him to follow his passions even if he had to live in a box under the freeway), we always thought that he would live in some old car with a camera on his shoulder, but that he would enjoy seeing life through a lens and that’s all that mattered. Instead, he astounded us in his junior year saying that he felt he needed to serve his country before venturing out on his own. His prep school talked a lot about service and told its students they better not dare consume a quarter of a million dollars of this world’s goods without considering the weight of that consumption. He took that very seriously and will all of his life. Though we never struggled with him being a cinematographer, we struggled mightily with him joining the military. The irony! We and his school taught him service above self, but never considered that he would choose the “wrong” kind of service. The fates are laughing at us, I’m sure.

I’ve also never understood the idea that you need to be rich to value education for its own sake. Can someone please explain this? We believe solely in education for its own sake and raised our son that way. We also told him that his undergraduate education would be our last financial gift to him. We would not support him in his adulthood regardless of any means we have. We have our own lives to provide for and not be a burden on him. I always think that the comment about needing to be rich to pursue education solely for the life of the mind perhaps assumes that there is family money to support a well-educated child who cannot support him/herself? Why would that be the case? Our son has always understood that he can pursue whatever he wants and he should pursue what he loves, but that he is on his own to support himself with it, just like his parents did. If he never makes much money, so what? If he lives in a box under the. freeway but does what he loves, what’s wrong with that? I sure would hate to see him pursue something he doesn’t love just to make money. If his life is hard, why shouldn’t it be? His education will keep him company as he figures it all out.

I have to say that I really like the message from the Trinity head and cringe at all the cynical comments. It’s that cynicism that is turning our bastions of higher education into trade schools and our would-be scholars into money grubbers. For better or worse, our kids are excellent consumers of the messages they hear.

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@ChoatieMom I agree with you and the words of the Trinity Head in theory but in reality its a fraud. These schools betray their mission statements over and over in ways both small and large. What it really comes down to is the individuals who truly walk the walk . Like you obviously. We are the same way with ours. But Trinity, Andover etc etc still let in all the scions of wealth to make the big donations and push the right kids into the right schools because what it all really comes down is money and perpetuating the ruling class. How come nearly every speaker at Exeter tells them that they are the cream of the crop, the next leaders of the universe…what if they were told to be public school teachers because they should walk the walk of non sibi? Most of those crazy hyper competitive kids would roll their eyes and say yeah right!

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@DeepBlue86 I don’t think anybody has anything critical to say about Trinity or Allman’s leadership. I at least am just tweaking him for high-minded sermonizing that, to my mind, strains credulity. His abstract rhetoric (ethos! community!) sounds less like speaking truth to power than a string of syrupy bromides or, as I suggested above (too) cynically, a kind of how-to primer in ‘how we must talk about ourselves now’ to maintain a powerful position. To me, the letter (pretends to) call for a revolution without seriously proposing to accomplish it. Allman (not me) sees a lot of major problems with Trinity – rampant individualism, instrumental use of the education, etc. – but his way forward is an obstacle course of abstract nouns, not a new and difficult charge for his clientele.

Was it an accident that you began your defense by recalling that Trinity’s “students are children of wealthy/influential residents of one of the wealthiest, most influential cities in the world, and those parents are very results-oriented customers, who pay for performance”?

If Allman wanted to speak real truth, he’d start by quoting you and pledging never to do the slightest thing to jeopardize the wealth-influence-results-privilege equation. To the extent that the “ethos” mission serves the purpose of reinforcing that equation, why sure, he might try to fit it in.

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I saw this when it came out and appreciate that someone in his position came out and said this. It wasn’t clear to me who exactly was the target audience, but there are a lot of people imho who might benefit from thinking about this.

So much of the high school experience, and not just at Trinity, has become about “how do I get ahead?” I can see how being HOS for an institution in which many of the students, and perhaps even more of their parents, view it largely as a means to the next credential could become weary of it.

After the release of ED results, I have heard more than one parent in the leafy suburb where I work talk about how at last, their kids don’t have to worry about their grades anymore and can take their foot off the gas pedal. So yes, the writers of the checks are seeing high school (and again, I am not referring to Trinity) as “credentialing” experiences. And the kids who got into fabulous colleges ED are now wondering if they could have “done better” had they set their sights on Stanford rather than a “lesser Ivy”. So to ask, “what are you going to do with all of this?” rather than “whatever the hierarchy, how do I get to the top?” seems to be a worthwhile query.

Most schools would love to see their alums improving the world rather than figuring out how to exact more than their share from it. Especially if the alums are going to say that the seeds for their behavior were planted early in life.

27

Allman’s all-in pay increased at least $125,000 to well over $1.1MM from 2014-2016. He has both qualified and non-qualified pension plans. Trinity also spent upwards of $45MM to renovate its buildings over that period. He knows on which side his bread is buttered.

Someone above asked if people would prefer a place like Stuyvesant, which takes its kids on the basis of a single test, or a place like Trinity. Well, quite obviously it depends on who you are. If you are a very poor, but very smart student, you wish there were more places like Stuyvesant. And that’s because the likelihood of your getting into a place like Trinity is low, and you are smart enough to realize that that is by design. No one is going to pay $50,000+ per year to have his kid outclassed regularly by the riffraff. The only thing that has really changed in this regard in at least a hundred years is the dollar figure.

I agree with @ChoatieMom and @Center in that the proper place to teach values is at home. I guess I am hopelessly old fashioned, but I would rather not be lectured on morality from someone who earns more than $1MM per year from a tax exempt organization. Is it too much to just ask schools to focus on academics?

28

“But Trinity, Andover etc etc still let in all the scions of wealth to make the big donations and push the right kids into the right schools because what it all really comes down is money and perpetuating the ruling class. How come nearly every speaker at Exeter tells them that they are the cream of the crop, the next leaders of the universe…what if they were told to be public school teachers because they should walk the walk of non sibi? Most of those crazy hyper competitive kids would roll their eyes and say yeah right!”

I find this not only overly cynical but also inaccurate, at least in the case of Andover and other top boarding schools. I don’t know enough about Trinity and its students to have an opinion. The hyper competition is bred by parents not the schools.

29

There’s an awful lot of speculation about which New York school has the “smartest” kids. It’s certainly true that the number of high-end college matriculations isn’t a great yardstick, because of the number of connected kids at top private schools. There is one much more objective measure one can use, though, which is the number of National Merit Semifinalists last year, helpfully listed in this article by school: https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2017/09/13/nationalmerit2018.html

This is based on performance on the PSAT, which purports to “focus on the skills and knowledge at the heart of education”. Anyone can prep for this using inexpensive materials or online resources, so it seems to me to be a reasonable and consistent measure. New York City schools accounted for 457 National Merit Semifinalists, and the top 10 schools by numbers (accounting for about 70% of the total) were as follows:

Stuyvesant: 165
Hunter: 53
Bronx Science: 32
Brooklyn Tech: 18
Regis: 16
Horace Mann: 15
Dalton: 15
Trinity: 15
Brearley: 12
Collegiate: 11

Although the magnet schools appear to dominate, the thing to bear in mind is that the senior class at Stuy has over 800 kids, Hunter has about 200, Bronx Science has around 750 and Brooklyn Tech has something like 1,300. The big coed privates - Regis, Dalton, Horace Mann and Trinity - all have around 120-130, while Brearley and Collegiate (generally acknowledged to be academically the top girls and boys schools, respectively) have about 60 each. So, in fact, the school with the highest percentage of National Merit Semifinalists in its senior class is Hunter, with Stuy, Brearley and Collegiate bunched closely behind, the other big privates and Regis following and the rear brought up by Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. Glib statements to the effect that private school kids are just wealthy dumbasses should take this into account.

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@center , I disagree. You’re making a huge assumption about kids in these schools. Yes most of them are from wealthy families but I’ve known brilliant kids who have gone to private school here in NYC that are both extremely wealthy and dirt poor. Many of these privates do a great job for lower income families…because the horrible NYC DOE will most likely fail them.

Born and raised here in the city (I personally went to catholic and public school)…I know kids in the G&Ts and the independent privates. They both have smart kids…some even brilliant. I also know brilliant kids in what snobs call lower tier schools. It’s not all about Trinity to many of us in Manhattan, it’s about fit. When it comes down to matriculation, these schools (so called top tier, lower tier, and G&Ts) are sending their graduates to the same damn universities. It’s like that old saying…what do you call the person who finishes last in his med school class…you call them doctor. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have kids coming from Trinity, LREI, Brearley, Trevor, etc ( a mix of so called tiers).

What I don’t like are the blanket statements made, the groupings, the assumptions about kids who attend private schools and the schools themselves. You’re assuming NYC private schools are all talk…that is not the case. Some do a lot of lip service but many don’t.

I’ve been a part of a great school community as a parent for well over a decade. We do walk the walk and I’m proud of what our community has been able to accomplish. Everything he spoke about in his letter on what he wants Trinity to become, many of these schools have been for a long while. Not all schools are the same. Their tuitions may be similar, the percentage of wealth may be equal, they all have very smart children but not all talk smack. There are schools here that put their money where their mouth is. I’ve volunteered and worked with many great privates throughout the years and it’s been enlightening.

I couldn’t care if a school is considered top tier. I’m old enough to know that it’s about fit, it’s about community and it’s about school’s actions.

Say what you want about a particular school you have experience with but please don’t make blanket statements.

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@DeepBlue86 - Regis has 26 NMSF in Class of 2017 (latest data available), I think Trinity has approximately the same. Regis is not coed BTW, so it does not seem like you are as familiar as you think you are. Horace Mann and Trinity are both larger than Regis as well.

I like the measure of NMSF myself as a rough proxy for intelligence, as the correlation between SAT (and presumably PSAT) is quite high with IQ (at around r = 0.80 approx.). However, as a proxy for average intelligence, it is not so great. If you assume normality of the distribution of student intelligence, you can approximate the mean. This is (roughly) appropriate in threshold admissions systems - that is, schools that admit solely or at least primarily on a test (Regis would fall into this category, and of course so do the test-in specialized schools like Bronx Sci, Stuy and Brooklyn Tech). The privates are not like this at all, of course. When you are looking at most of them, they let in a number of very smart kids, and of course a number of not so smart (largely through connections). They must deemphasize standardized tests, of course, because when Valerie Jarrett or Leon Panetta calls and it’s time for Malia or Chelsea to slide into their annointed places, of course you don’t want to have to make an exception to the score cutoff.

Average is one thing for a school. What about the outliers at the top? How do we proxy for that? Well, it’s tough. I prefer looking at math competition results, mostly because my child is a very active and somewhat successful participant (though not at the “genius” level). You can look at scores for AMC10, AMC12 and USAMO qualification. I know these kids very well (my child will appear in a number of those lists), and the top scores from places like Trinity and Horace Mann would not be impressive for even middle schoolers.

The other proxy one can look at is course availability. One thing about kids past the 145+ IQ level is that they are insatiably curious, and they have the horsepower to move quickly through whatever piques their curiosity. I took account of course availability when I said that Trinity is likely the only place to have a decent size group of these kinds of kids. Even so, my child - again who is not at the genius level in competition by any means but who in the 7th grade would have already outscored anyone at Trinity in the last 2 years (I haven’t checked any further back), and that’s Trinity kids through 12th grade - would have already exhausted the regular Trinity mathematics curriculum by 8th grade.

So, I was not being “glib” - I actually do have some understanding of what I am saying :slight_smile: Do you have any other rough proxies for figuring out how “smart” schools are? (You could look at Intel results as well, but they are biased towards larger schools for sure.)

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@SatchelSF Trinity is still known to be tops, followed by Horace Mann, Riverdale. But this is a list by those who care about name, prestige, bragging rights. All of the private high schools in Manhattan (let’s include Brooklyn too) send their kids to the same universities as as Trinity, HM and Riverdale. I can say that in my daughter’s 8th grade graduating class, the kids all went on to different HSs in the city. They sent two kids to Trinity, Stuyvesant, HM, Riverdale, St Ann’s, Packer, Brearley, Chapin, Friends, etc. (including some boarding schools). These kids went to all different private and public high school schools and they all just got into their First choice university via ED Last month. I guess my point is that one doesn’t have attend what people feel are the best private HS in order to get into top universities.

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@ChoatieMom “I’ve also never understood the idea that you need to be rich to value education for its own sake. Can someone please explain this? We believe solely in education for its own sake and raised our son that way.”

You don’t need to be rich to value education for its own sake, but if you are not rich it is more critical to have a plan about where you are headed and how you get there. Most families can’t afford a $250k for an unmarketable college degree that ends with the kid moving back into their basement with no job and no plan.

For example, if a rich kid wants to major in classic Latin, that may be a much better choice than if a low income, first generation student is making that decision.

jmho

P.S. As member of an average public school family whose kids are doing reasonably well in college, I am really enjoying the insight into the private school parents perspective. Please keep posting!

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Certain posters on this and similar threads like to bring up math aptitude and IQ as a definition of intelligence. There are many types of intelligence that aren’t captured by IQ tests nor performance in math competitions, nor do those things equate to success in its many forms as an adult. I’ve never heard one top boarding school (and I assume it applies to NYC privates as well) claim they are looking for applicants with the highest IQs. They don’t define desirability/aptitude so narrowly (thankfully). I really don’t see how talk of IQs and AMC scores relates to the topic of the Trinity head’s letter.

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MODERATOR’S NOTE:

Nor do I. Or which private NYC school has the “best” matriculation results. Or if Trinity is better than Stuyvesant. Please stick to the topic or I will end up closing the thread.

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@doschicos and @skieurope It seemed to be that the reference to IQs and other scores is because they are hard facts that with which to validate absolute intellect and talent from school to school. Somewhat like SATS are used to validate grades from high school to high school. Private schools have so many other influences on their student bodies --full pay students, legacy, possibly athletes at some schools (more boarding than city) and the requisite diversity bucket whereas most gifted and talented schools across the country are free, have little to no sports and tend to have admissions based primarily on test scores . The OP/question was “the purpose of elite schools.” Elite can mean many different things and how elite are schools like Trinity, Collegiate, and Dalton that, for example, use the parents’ college as a component of admission? It would be nice if there was more consideration of facts in many of these thread discussions where it is clear that political doctrine/opinion is underlying opinions.

If were considering applying to a school today, I would want to know about incidents like these. I would also think that graduates of elite institutions (many of whom are on these threads) would want all facts about any topic to inform their own opinions even if they decided that they still essentially believed a certain set of policies or agendas was preferable.

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If you read between the lines…this letter is actually a very warm and fuzzy stun grenade thrown at the ROI crowd… which- if I had to guess- is completely out of control at Trinity . You’re welcome. :wink:

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This Head of School could start “giving back” by agreeing to a lower salary! The tuition at Trinity is only slightly less than the median NYC household income, after all, and only about 20% of the kids at Trinity are on any sort of financial aid. The school as a whole only “gave back” 14% of its rack rate total tuition. (Cf. Part VIII, Line 2a and Part IX, line 2, here: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/135/135563003/135563003_201606_990.pdf).

I guess I am the only one put off by someone who is taking $1.1MM+ from a “non-profit” lecturing parents and students on “giving back” and “service”? If he would only go back to his salary of two years ago, they could increase the number of kids on financial aid by at least 10%. He’d still be making upwards of 18 times the median NYC income, and he’s got a nice UWS brownstone to live in (approx value i’m guessing > $15MM) for free! This is the example the kids should follow? Giving back 14.4% of your rack rate tuition is walking the walk? It’s like the old joke about the original Hawaiian missionaries in the 19th century: They came to do good; and they did very well, indeed.

39

I’ll bite on the question posed by this thread’s title (without regard to the letter itself), though I suspect I will probably regret doing so. Oh well, here goes…

For me, thinking about what a top-shelf education should entail begins with an evaluation of what I view as the most important goals of such an education. In no particular order, here are some of the more important goals to my mind:

  1. The student should graduate with an understanding of how fortunate they are to have received a top-shelf education.
  2. The student should graduate with a feeling of responsibility to give back to others who were not so fortunate.
  3. The student should graduate with the ability to acquire knowledge and solve problems on their own, without being spoon-fed solutions.
  4. The student should graduate with the ability to work with others to accomplish goals in an environment where others have different viewpoints and agendas.
  5. The student should graduate with the confidence of knowing that they have received an exceptional education in the core concepts and subject matter of English, history, math, science, and social studies, and the student should graduate with at least basic skills in a different language.
  6. The student should have been afforded, and should have taken advantage of, the opportunity to dive deeply into an area of interest.
  7. The student should have learned how to truly listen to and consider the viewpoints of others, and the student should have learned about what motivates others to have their viewpoints.
  8. The student should graduate with the confidence of knowing that they can tackle any issue to which they set their mind.
  9. The student should graduate with the confidence of knowing that they possess the ability to advocate for themselves, others, and the things in which they believe.

Simply put, for a school charged with educating students with the potential to develop into tomorrow’s leaders, I think the school should strive to produce graduates who care about the world and its problems, will consider the informed opinions of others, possess enough perspective/education about the world and its people (of varying circumstances) to make responsible decisions, have developed an area of particular interest to a very high level, and have acquired the tools to translate their thoughts into action.

I would want the school to aspire to produce capable, responsible world citizens, and I would want the school to provide students with the opportunity to develop exceptional skills, where such skills exist in a student. For example, if a student is an engineering genius, I would want that student to have the opportunity to fully develop his or her talents in that area. While this could arguably be viewed as just making that student a more marketable employee, I think it’s fair to say that the founders of some of our tech giants have tremendous influence in the world, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone who wields such influence were also a knowledgeable, responsible world citizen?

In my view, although many of the items on my list could be simply explained to students, any such explanation could never carry as much impact as a student’s direct interaction with other students having decidedly different backgrounds, perspectives, and values.

All of that said, I do not hold the illusion that others would necessarily define what an “elite” education—whatever that means—in the same manner. As consumers, all we can do is try to find a school that best fits our ideals and needs.

I shall now step off my soap box.

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I like your post, @CaliPops, and agree with most of it except for #6 which is more applicable, IMO, to college than a high school education which should be more broad-based and focused on students as generalists not specialists between the ages of 14-18, although that opportunity to delve often does exist.