What do you want to convince us of, cobrat? That there’s some incontrovertible definition of what’s normal and usual?
Of course new associates in biglaw work long hours, it;s no surprise. And junior accountants at top CPA firms. And med interns/residents, depending. The kid in question isn’t even up to a high school choice yet, much less what happens after professional school.
If a kid can’t hack a high school with demands, if it means not sleeping, losing balance or getting suicidal or then: Don’t send him there.
How hard is that?
I loved my tough hs. I slept, had friends, we hung out, we wasted plenty of time…and the education (the entire experience) was great. There was a solid reason we did not send my brother there.
When I was first starting my legal career, I worked for an insurance company and had a life. I dated a guy for awhile who worked for a white shoe Big Law firm. The associates would leave spare clothing at work, where there were showers and people to iron your shirts, etc. after you pulled an all-nighter To me, it was such an awful life style. He and I parted ways because I wanted someone to spend time with, not someone who could just spend money on me for an hour here and there. He wound up marrying a much younger woman who didn’t even attend college and just wanted to stay home and take care of a house for a rich husband. I wanted to BE the rich “husband.”
Of course, there is also the medical internship lifestyle.
Am I the only poster who is just sick and tired of hearing about TJ and Stuy? Do people who are affiliated with those schools not understand that they are only important to the people who went there, and otherwise they don’t have one more bit of relevance to anyone else than any of the other 30,000 HS in this country? God, talk about self-referential.
^ Do you mean my post above? I was only referencing to correct something another poster had said. No different than if someone had made a comment about Harvard and you/your child attended and you knew it wasn’t true. I rarely mention a specific school here or IRL.
Naming TJ or Stuy is just a reference point, a shorthand. (For most of us.) OP hasn’t given enough info for us to know what he really means. For all we know, his A+, is some ordinary “good school.”
To me, a discussion of student life and well-being at examples of A+ schools is absolutely pertinent to the OP’s question considering the pros and cons of such a school. If some posters find this discussion boring, why are they berating others for providing information of possible interest to the OP rather than skipping this thread?
I wouldn’t pick a school because it is A+ or A minus. I would look at where my child would best fit in. Where the EC’s he is interested in are stronger or where there is an active PTA. We lived on the border of two high schools. One had AP the other IB. Dd could have gone to either but for one I would have had to provide transportation to and from school. She chose the IB school because it provided bus service to and from home. Both schools were good but she wanted to also go to the school where she would have friends attending from her middle school. Both schools would have met her needs. It worked out fine. I would also find out which school has a better guidance dept. Talk to other parents and get their feedback on their experiences.
Why would you have to go to TJ/Stuy-level to have an “A+” school? Pretty much any any affluent suburban high school lands you in A+ land in any kind of big picture. This is no different from regarding HYP as “A+” and other Ivies as “A-” and we all know how eye-roll-worthy such distinctions are.
Thomas Jefferson in N Va. Dominates the area. (Well, not really, just when focusing on the insistence on Ivies or other tippy tops.). It can make a good example of an extreme.
But as I said before, for all we know, OP isnt talking that level, is overestimating.
Without OP in the convo, we’re just chatting among ourselves. Not a coastal thing, not earth shaking, we won’t solve anything.
OP: What is the basis for stating that one school is A+ and the other is A-? How are the admissions from each? If there is naviance, can you check where the students get in and what the GPA/scores are that get admitted? In our area, the super elites are tough no matter what HS you go to and you need to be a superstar to get in. One or two steps down from those, admission is probably a little easier if you are an excellent, but not top student, from a HS perceived to be more rigorous. OTOH, the competition is such that not having all As in mostly honors/APs puts you below the top students in rank. And top kids from the slightly less rigorous HS get into elites many years.
What motivates your kid? What are his interests? As others have said, pick the school where he will succeed, and the rest will follow.
My focus would be in finding the school that is best fit for the child where they would most flourish. Some kids thrive is a very high pressure school and some are better off at the base school. Just because a school is graded A+ shouldn’t be the only factor in making a decision. For example kids who go to their base school sometimes have better chances at top colleges because they are attending a school where everyone isn’t applying to the same schools.
At a school like TJ you will have more kids applying to a DUKE or an MIT but the colleges are only going to take so many from one school. The student would probably have a better chance coming from a base school because they maybe the only one applying from their school vs 40 kids applying from a local magnet. At a magnet it is harder to shine when you are competing to be in the top 10% of the class. If you are in the middle of the pack sometimes you are knocked out in the competition because there are better applicants coming from your school. If after attending a high school for two years (9th and 10th grade) you find the school isn’t the right fit you can always transfer to another high school for the next two years.
“OP: What is the basis for stating that one school is A+ and the other is A-? How are the admissions from each? If there is naviance, can you check where the students get in and what the GPA/scores are that get admitted? In our area, the super elites are tough no matter what HS you go to and you need to be a superstar to get in.”
In ANY area, the super elites are tough. Anywhere. The OP has already revealed herself to have an inordinate focus on HYPS so asking her to search Naviance and find out that gee, 4 students got in there from School A+ and only 3 students got in there from School A- isn’t helpful, because it reinforces the perseveration on those schools, which isn’t how she ought to be thinking.
While that’s true in one sense, one other thing to keep in mind is that at schools like TJ, admission to elite colleges…especially other than the tippytop HYPSMCC colleges isn’t necessarily restricted to the top 5-10%.
At Stuy and according to friends who attended TJ, one was viable for an elite college if one was in the top third to quarter. One illustration of this from my graduating class:…~1/6th of my graduating HS class of a bit less than 700 were accepted to Cornell Arts & Sciences or Engineering.
And elite/respectable colleges are more willing to dip deeper into each graduating class at such HSs for admits…such as a friend in the upper-middle portion of my graduating class who was accepted into Midd* or my own acceptance to Oberlin with a near-full ride FA/scholarship package despite graduating closer to the bottom of my graduating class GPAwise.
However, that doesn’t mean one can get by on GPA/SAT alone.
Putting in some credible effort to participate in ECs**, crafting a college application essay are also critical, and if an interview opportunity is offered by a given elite/respectable college…to not convey a bad impression as a friend and alum interviewer at an Ivy experienced with several interviewees…including one who bragged about the system he used to maintain the GC’s declaration of “most rigorous curriculum taken while taking classes well known in his HS for being gut classes/having easy grading teachers.”
In the upper portion of the middle 68% of overall distribution of GPAs, his SATs were actually barely average for Midd at the time, and he's not a URM.
** This includes a part-time job working as a cashier in a stationary store, selling ice cream bars from a cart***, etc.
*** One older HS alum did this with several HS classmates during their junior and senior years. He’s an alum of the elite Swarthmore College who has worked in the tech industry for a few decades.
Not in terms of elite/respectable colleges dipping deeper into the graduating classes of Stuy judging by what I’m seeing from recent GC stats and graduating seniors in the last few years.
This focus on the “A+” versus “A-” high school bodes poorly for when this parent guides kiddo toward college searches.
One of my DD’s friends whom she’s known since kindergarten picked up and moved to the other side of town for the “A+” school even though we live near the “A-” school. That school is ranked in the top ten in our state. The nearer one is like 15th or 17th.
