Purpose of elite schools?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
41

Um, no, @SatchelSF - on September 13, 2017, in the article I cited, which actually contains the latest data available (because it’s for the class of 2018), it was announced that Regis had 16 National Merit Semifinalists. You are correct that Trinity had approximately the same: 15, as I said. Check the link. Your number is from an earlier year.

Horace Mann has 734 in grades 9-12. Trinity discloses 960 in grades K-12. Regis has 534 in grades 9-12. As best I can tell, Trinity’s upper school is about the same size as Regis (although it could be smaller); HM’s is somewhat larger. Maybe HM’s relative performance was a little worse based on the larger class size, but it doesn’t change my conclusions in any significant way.

And, by the way, even in a year where Regis had 26 National Merit Semifinalists, that would just about put it in the same category as Stuy, Brearley and Collegiate (and behind Hunter) percentagewise. All of those schools, by the way, have plenty of smart kids, who are getting a great education - Trinity is most certainly not in a class by itself. I don’t have the data to say which school’s smart kids are the smartest of the smart, or which school has the highest average smartness - and neither do you.

http://www.horacemann.org/page.cfm?p=137
https://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/page/About/All-About-TrinityHistory
http://www.regis.org/section/?ID=103

I’m sorry for accidentally referring to Regis as coed when I grouped it with the other bigger privates - I’m fully aware that it’s all-male.

42

My apologies, @DeepBlue86, for not immediately recognizing that you were using the latest NMSF data (Class of 2018). My bad!

The moderator has threatened to shut down this side discussion, but if he or she allows your comment to stand, perhaps he or she will allow an acknowledgment and rebuttal, and my attempt to relate this back to the thread topic.

First, I’m glad to see that you are using NMSF data to try to validate impressions. I am usually the “testing” person on this forum – and I invariably get called out on it – so when another poster brings it up I am always happy. I have often made the same argument on this forum that you implicitly make: namely, that objective data like SAT, PSAT, NMSF, SAT II scores, etc. do have a valuable role in evaluating schools and student bodies. Matriculation at “elite” schools doesn’t tell us too much, of course, as so many are “born on third base” with respect to college admissions.

Second, you are basing your whole criticism of my characterization of Manhattan private schools on one year of data, but I think they are roughly representative, so let’s go with them. (As an aside, numbers of NMSF are down significantly for Class of 2018 at many top high schools – I have noted this on another thread with respect to PEA, and now we see that is true with respect to Trinity and Regis as well).

Third, my original comment that seemed to set you off (post #10) was that Trinity represents one of the very few private schools in Manhattan with a “good number” of “very smart” kids, and I acknowledged that the characterization depended upon one’s definitions. I am happy to add Collegiate and Brearley to that list, although I note that each is very small, comparatively. I know Collegiate reasonably well, and I never pretended to know much about girls’ schools in Manhattan.

Fourth, with regard to Regis, my only comment was that it “walks the walk” with regard to service and giving back, starting with its being tuition free, of course, despite its not having the funds to spend $45MM on a renovation or pay its headmaster more than $1MM per year. I said that “on average” Regis kids are “a bit smarter” than at Trinity (post #15), and made no comparisons with the elite public schools. Once you understand the selection process (Trinity doubles the size of its class in 9th grade, taking already “proven” kids in relation to its elementary school cohort who were evaluated back when they were 4 years old), which primarily involves testing at Regis and a smattering of other factors at Trinity, it’s not a large jump in logic to get to my “a bit smarter” conclusion. I stand by it.

Fifth, I didn’t mean to exclude Hunter College High School. I’ve known many, many kids at Hunter over the years. They are smarter, on average, than kids at Trinity or Regis or any other private or parochial. I never claimed differently. I also think Stuyvesant kids are a lot smarter than at any of the non-publics. Really, how could it be otherwise? The NMSF results that you brought up (and other things like math competition results) confirm this. You didn’t address the outliers issue at the top end of the scale, but again given the admissions processes at Hunter and Stuyvesant, can there really be any doubt?

Last, many people on this forum wonder why I go on so much about testing. Many people simply try to equate scores with preparation and socioeconomic class, which of course is largely nonsense, as demonstrated by the fact that free schools like Hunter and Stuyvesant outclass even the toniest and wealthiest of schools, in which students presumably have every environmental advantage possible. (As if this needs to be validated – there have been reams of studies confirming that SES is not very important after controlling for intelligence.) Even Regis punches well above its weight here – ok, I’ll give you Collegiate (another $50K+ school with very limited financial aid), and of course well mannered boys would never fight with girls, Brearley included! BTW, I disagree with your characterization of HM as “somewhat” larger – it’s 40% larger than Regis, has fewer NMSF, and of course also costs $50K+.

Testing represents the only plausible avenue for relatively disadvantaged kids to distinguish themselves – the same kids that the Trinity Head of School purports to care about in his missive to the elites on “noblesse oblige.” Every single time tests are dumbed down, grades are inflated, and character and extracurricular activity screens are instituted, relatively disadvantaged but smart kids lose another chance to distinguish themselves - and collectively academic measures are really the only way reliably to distinguish themselves in what is becoming a rat race. No one is calling the admissions offices on their behalf, their parents can’t afford to pay $7,500 so that they can pretend to build a house in Nicaragua over the summer, and the wealthy parents don’t want the competition anyway. The Trinity Head of School does nothing – and will do nothing – to upset this dynamic, which has been evolving for about a hundred years now. But as I said in my first comment on this thread (post #3), purchasing indulgences is easy when you are not the one paying.

43

Why is that? What do you think his salary should be? At what salary would you be more comfortable with the ideas he espouses in his letter? I don’t know this man, so I don’t know how he chooses to give or give back with his time and money outside of his job. Do you?

44

@doschicos I am 100% with you. Being a part of such a great school community has taught me so much when it comes to understanding education. To me, it’s not about IQ scores, test scores, etc., it’s about educating the whole child. It’s about my children becoming all around skilled learners and good people.

45

@PhotographerMom I thought this same thing (fuzzy grenade). Furthermore, I am close friends with the parent of a recent grad. She was completely fine with the letter AND thought it raised some excellent points. My guess is that the writer intended for Trinity families (and maybe all other high school families) to “take a breath” and to stop putting soul-crushing expectations on our kids. That advice is also valid for any school… and any family.

46

“What do you think his salary should be? At what salary would you be more comfortable with the ideas he espouses in his letter?”

I’ll take the bait. His education attainments are modest (degrees in English Lit, no Ph.D.), he has been at Trinity for over 9 years and evidently hasn’t changed the culture to his liking - that’s a lot longer than he’d get in the corporate or finance worlds - and he’s only worked as a teacher or administrator so far as I can tell. He also misunderstands basic concepts like contracts versus covenants (hint, they are analytically the same). I’ll say, given the cost of NYC which I know well, $400K more or less in salary. Plenty of people work harder for much less, even in NYC. After all, it is still about 7 or 8 times median NYC income. I’d still let him live in the free brownstone of course. If he loves education, he’ll take the deal. I mean it’s still the chance to live quite comfortably, especially after the housing allowance, and how many people get to mold one of the very finest secondary education institutions?

The savings for the school would mean more than 10 additional full financial aid scholarships, at least a 50% increase from what they are now. Perhaps more once you translate the cash salary savings into noncash tuition charges (just what is the marginal cash cost of each student?). I’d suggest a transparent merit competition open to the whole city, with guaranteed meeting of any financial need for the winners. They could use the SHSAT, as it has already been validated by hundreds of thousands of test takers, and has a high enough scale to allow fine distinctions at the top. My guess is that there will be some important - and humbling - side benefits for the existing parents and students alike once the winners get on campus. A win-win!

Of course, he’ll respond that his salary is set by a compensation committee after being benchmarked by an outside consultant. In other words, he’ll rely on the same credentialing factories that he decries. And, of course, that relying on a test for admissions - even for a small portion of the class - is just so unfair.

47

@SatchelSF you said, “Many people simply try to equate scores with preparation and socioeconomic class, which of course is largely nonsense, as demonstrated by the fact that free schools like Hunter and Stuyvesant outclass even the toniest and wealthiest of schools.”

Do you think the majority of the kids who get into Hunter for kindergarten aren’t being test prepped at the age of 2 and 3? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. I can tell you with absolute certainty that everyone that I know who had their child test for Hunter in preschool had a tutor for there child. Tutors cost thousands. Do you think the poor kids who never had that tutoring were competing on a level playing field? I think not. Also, these schools (the public G&T) aren’t very diverse considering they are located in the most diverse city. I believe socioeconomic status contributes to that. There are many kids who cannot afford the test prep and who are very smart. It’s never a leveled playing field with these standardized tests. How could they be when we have the wealthy prepping their kids with tutors for years before one of these tests.

I also don’t believe standardized testing is a true indicator of intelligence. There are many children who are not good test takers. I am more impressed with a child who has critical thinking skills, who has opinions and questions what’s being taught. I love when they knows how to work with others and to advocate for themselves. Those are skills that will be valuable in their day to day…not being a good test taker.

Also, there are a ton of 2E students that are NOT in these so called top schools. Twice exceptional kids are both gifted but have a learning difference. They need a different learning environment but they are as smart if not smarter than many but just because they aren’t at Stuyvesant, Trinity, Regis, Collegiate, HM, Hunter, etc. doesn’t mean they aren’t smart or that their private schools aren’t good. One more thing, I’ve sat with neuropsychologist and have discussed learning disabilities. A child’s IQ with an LD will not show their true intelligence because of the way the test is set up…they are at a disadvantage. Things like this is why I am not impressed or blown away by test scores.

48

In the spirit of the OP, we should look at private schools (where you are choosing to go) with a holistic view. Nobody is forcing you to apply. I would risk being flogged by responses on CC by saying that most of us parents (those born between 1950’s - 1970) on here probably attended public school, were raised largely in middle class households, and probably were raised somewhere between NYC and LA. I doubt relatively few of us attended “elite” prep schools. But I would venture to say that we were good kids, good students, and wanted even a better world for our kids than what we inherited.

Social awareness and being mindful of those in need were not concepts invented by Millenials or by generation X, , or Generation Y-do I have to? Growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I can asssure you that our education included developing an awareness of the “greater good”. That’s why so many of us on this board, I truly believe, are really great people - even you cynics out there.

Another thing: You may also want to look at the list of Board members and Trustees for each school. Who is making the decisions? What are their self interests? What businesses are they in? Our family left a school after a man in the porn business bought a chair at the boardroom table. So, you have a choice to decide if you want to stand for something and teach it to your children.

For those parents starting the process of looking at schools, you may want to consider the missions of each institution you apply to. Does the school live up to it? If this is important to you, then… Read the mission statements and decide if you feel a) the school is actually living up to their own standards and b) if the school includes an educational philosophy you want as your child’s “due North”. Do your research. Ask the students (not only AO’s) you meet during tours and visits about community service and/or environmental service programs. Is CS a requirement? Are CS hours carved into the weekly schedule? Some schools have time each week for CS. What are the service programs actually sponsored and coordinated by the school. Ask about the face-to-face connections students make with people. Ask about opportunities for students to create their own programs, also.

A list of EC’s (as we often see on the “What are my chances” threads) should not be considered “Stats”. This is unfortunate because so many kids have huge hearts, innovative ideas, and the motivation to help others because it’s intrinsically within their moral fabric. :x

49

@SatchelSF - But you do know it’s about more than IQ or test scores right? These schools offer a whole-child experience that allows them to grow in many ways - academic, athletics, music, community, social, exposure to different cultures, etc.

My comparison is to (strong) public schools, and I’m thankful that my son - who loves learning anything/everything - can attend a place where they genuinely care about his overall development and what kind of person he is becoming. And he doesn’t go to an acronym school. Also, his school gave no time to prep for PSAT - as they don’t believe in overemphasis on test scores. But, I bet day students at those top NYC schools are getting test prep - perhaps at school and definitely out of school. Boarding students don’t have that flexibility to attend test prep centers or get private tutors and they don’t have lots of free time.

FYI, although my student was a top math student in public school, the public school refused to let kids accelerate or to do math competitions. He was in G&T but it was lame. We didn’t know what the competitions were called when he was younger and the school kept telling us “we don’t believe in those sorts of competitions”. He was “dumbed down” by the curriculum and by the admin not thinking that any students should be accelerated in math because “we are a strong public school”. Math competitions are somewhat regional - depending on where they encourage kids to do this. And they require some preparation, even for the smartest kids.

Schools like Stuyvesant are burning out their kids. This is not necessarily the best preparation for life. I’m happy my student is at a school that believes in balance. Maybe my student is less likely to go to Harvard, but hopefully he will end up at the place with the best fit (and frankly, we were not impressed with Harvard’s tour - led by a girl who talked about her professor who chose to spend an entire semester on making Hot Sauce in the required Engineering course, and who couldn’t answer any questions about computer science).

50

@SatchelSF - thank you for qualifying/clarifying. I don’t fundamentally disagree with a lot of what you’re saying, although I think you underestimate the degree to which some of the high-end privates “counsel out” kids who started there in kindergarten but didn’t fulfill academic expectations, often replacing them (particularly at the high school entry point) with proven academic stars, many of whom are on scholarship. Also, a good number of those wealthy and powerful New York parents, as I’m sure you know, happen also to be really smart, with similarly intelligent children. Sure, there are some useless wastrels at the privates (more at some than at others), but there are also plenty of kids who underperform or burn out in the atmosphere of a magnet school even though they tested well enough to get in there. As for outliers, I don’t know how to analyze which schools they might most likely attend, or what that implies for average “smartness” at those schools.

Returning to the topic of this thread, and the Trinity headmaster, I think the New York private school scene is just a variation in miniature on what goes on at Harvard and other top private universities, explained in layman’s terms by Malcolm Gladwell a number of years ago in his excellent article “Getting In: The social logic of Ivy League admissions” (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in).

Essentially, Trinity and its peers, analogously to Harvard and its peers, feel driven by self-interest to employ a “best-graduates”, rather than a “best-students” approach to admissions, because their focus is on enrolling, providing academic and social capital to, and graduating kids who will be most successful in the next stage of their lives, not primarily those who are the “smartest” by some set of criteria (although some of them are, because pure academic achievement is one path to success). Hunter and, say, Caltech, make the opposite choice.

Each is happy with the results it gets from its approach. In particular, Harvard sees its mission as educating the world’s future leaders in many spheres, so that it can increase its power, reach and ability thereby to educate even more of the world’s leaders. The route to achieving that is emphatically not giving the 2,000 offers for the freshman class each year exclusively to the applicants with the highest academic credentials. Caltech does that sort of thing, because its almost exclusive concern is recruiting those who available evidence suggests will become the best scientists. Harvard (or Trinity) doesn’t want to be Caltech (or Stuy), and Caltech (Stuy) couldn’t be Harvard (Trinity) even if it wanted to.

In this regard, it seems to me that the Trinity headmaster is getting paid for performance. Similarly to a private university president, in addition to running an academic enterprise, this includes cultivating relationships with wealthy and influential alumni and parents so as to be able to make that $45m renovation, thereby continuing to attract many whom Trinity considers to be the most desirable students, who are likely to be admitted to the most desirable colleges and go on to positions of wealth/influence in the world, which is seen to be good for Trinity. As the Gladwell article points out, smart as those Hunter kids are, far fewer of them seem to be on that trajectory (but most of them seem to be happy that way).

51

Its really just about maintaining the ruling class…

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  1. What you do with your education is more important than where you got it.
  2. Being a brilliant student or having a sky high IQ does not mean you are more likely to make a greater contribution to your community or world, make more money, or lead & inspire more people.
  3. Schools should help prepare kids for life, not just college, and help them maximize the development of their own potential — and their potential to have a positive impact in the world.

PS: My kid would point out that Lin went to Hunter.

53

I just love Malcolm Gladwell.

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@SatchelSF: What makes you think that a reduction in the head’s salary would be redirected to scholarships or tuition? Perhaps it would go to more plant improvements or perhaps just sit in Trinity’s coffers? I think your real concern is that he just makes too much money in your opinion for someone with so “modest” an education who has “only” been a teacher or administrator and works for a tax-exempt organization. You are entitled to your opinion, but IMO, this guy’s salary is not relevant to the message he conveys in his letter.