I am always perplexed by the parents that want their children to attend elite or top tier colleges but somehow believe that high school education is flat. At my local school the freshman English education is half honors and half regular track. To think that the 99th percentile is taught and graded to the same standards as the 50th percentile is ludicrous. Are the the top students learning or just earning A’s?
The other thing to think about is the depth of classes at the high school. Will they run out of classes and need to study at CC or self-study?
My children attended a excellent high school and hit the ground running in college.
My kids att dead a semi rural, small HS. It was not anything special. But we all felt the school more than met their needs. Both said they were more than well prepared to do well when they got to college.
You don’t have to go,to a tippy top HS to be well prepared to succeed in college. My kids went to a no name HS in a tiny town.
The kids in the AP classes at our school were being taught at the same level as kids in fancier districts. Classes were (sometimes) a bit larger. I don’t think they wrote quite as many English papers, and the turn around on grading as sometimes slower, but they did not appear to be at any disadvantage when they got to college. Often the B school will still be an A school if you are in honors classes. Not always of course, but you need to look closer.
Guidance counselors send a high school profile with their students transcripts so that the admissions officers are aware of what is offered at the school and if the child was taking the most rigorous curriculum. I am under the impression that when an application is reviewed they are looking at how a student utilizes the resources they had at their school. If a child hasn’t used the resources available at their high school I would think it would give the impression that the applicant wouldn’t use all the resources made available to them by attending a certain college.
The question arises- Did this applicant utilize all the opportunities that they had available to them at their high school?
For example I know of a kid who attended a stem magnet(TJ) and she had never even taken a basic programming class when they offered Java and AP Computer Science. That didn’t work out too well for her as she was applying to engineering schools. If you go to a highly ranked school or a top prep school I would think you would take advantage of the unique opportunities offered at that school.
“You don’t have to go,to a tippy top HS to be well prepared to succeed in college.” My kid, who attended what I would consider an A- school and pretty much exhausted what they had to offer, was noticeably less prepared than the kids from the A+ schools, although still better prepared than average. She had to work a lot harder in the same classes with them, and while she took a fairly advanced courseload, many of the kids from the A+ schools were able to take even more advanced courses so I think overall better able to take advantage of the college offerings. The preparation gap was evident both in the STEM and in the humanities courses.
My other kid just commented today about how she met kids from A+ schools at summer programs she attended and was amazed how they were getting all kinds of support and guidance for ECs and contests and portfolios and such things that are just unheard of at our school. There is clearly a huge difference in the kind of mentoring the kids at A+ schools are getting.
Kids spend just as much time in high school as they do in college. The high school experience should be a valuable one in and of itself, not just something to get them into a college.
@mathyone I love that. As I have one kid starting high school and another finishing I need to keep repeating it to myself and them
“Kids spend just as much time in high school as they do in college. The high school experience should be a valuable one in and of itself, not just something to get them into a college.”
Interesting discussion…my neighbor’s kid did very well at the local mediocre high school and everyone was very happy when he was accepted at U Penn. He only lasted a year as he could not keep up and felt everyone else was much better prepared and he was just so far behind from the start.
There are many factors that go into success at college with academics being one of them. I’m sure that there were other students from “mediocre” schools that thrived and others from A+ schools who left with your neighbor. There are outliers for every situation . It’s important to look deeper to understand trends .
Students from the local B+ high school get into Cornell and its peers with some regularity (? Every other year) but from what I see and hear about 1/2 of them find elite college too difficult and come home. I think HS is very important in preparing new to succeed in college. . . And I sent my daughter to a private school. She is now a junior at HYPS.
I agree. But I say…that is one reason there really is no reason to fret over whether your HS is A or A-.
We could all state examples of situations wher our kids did or didn’t feel as well prepared as students from say…Choate or Loomis. My kids both had the opposite experience. They went to a A -…maybe B HS and both felt very well prepared for college.
What grade would you give to a high school that sends about a third of its graduates to four year colleges (mostly state universities, and not just the flagship) and some of the others to the local community college?
My kids’ high school sends 97% of its graduates to 4 year colleges. Average SAT of 1950 / 2400. Every year just under 10% of its class are National Merit Semifinalists. It’s always on the list of the top public high schools in the country (it’s not a charter or a magnet; it just serves a high SES community).
I’d still call it a B+ or A- high school. The reason its students do so well has only a little to do with the high school. It’s mostly the parents - their education level, their income level, and their genetic contribution to their offspring (even if I do say so myself ).
This seems very atypical. Cornell has a 97% freshman retention rate. I wonder if it’s just a blip or if there’s a deeper pattern here. I’ve been told that prospective STEM majors with weak backgrounds are often forced to switch majors, but I’ve never heard that they drop out in large numbers.
Cornell has a reputation for being tough. The rest of the Ivy’s … not so much. You truly have to not care at all about school at all and be unwilling to listen to your advisor to fail out.
Interesting. Our high school sends less than 2/3 of its students to 4 year colleges, the vast majority of them state schools. 1% of our class are NMSF. And I call it A-.
Yeah, the 97% of the kids going to 4 year colleges just means the parents have high incomes.
(Don’t get me wrong. The kids are generally more “college ready” than the typical student from almost any other public high school in the country. But I try not to kid myself about the actual reasons why something is true. )
Suppose a school like that described in #110 had about a half dozen AP courses, including English literature, calculus BC, a history, a science, and some foreign languages (where A students in the AP courses tended to score 3 to 5 on the associated AP tests), with honors options in English and math at lower levels. What grade would you give it?
Do you have a particular school in mind that you all want us to grade, ucb?
My answer is “who the heck knows.” Probably elite boarding schools and super affluent suburban schools are A+. “Merely” upper middle class suburban schools are probably an A-, shading into B+ and down as you head down the SES ladder. Obviously most inner city schools are likely D’s or F’s. This doesn’t need to be made more difficult than it is. My guess is that the OP’s distinction between A+ and A- is actually a choice between two pretty darn similar things and it’s as pointless of a differentiation as calling Harvard A+ and Duke A- when both are more than sufficient for any purpose in life.
Just like you would choose between Harvard and Duke on personal preference because there is no meaningful difference and the student makes the difference, choose between these two on personal preference, what fits your family’s schedule better, etc. There’s just not this need to overthink every single decision like this.
This can be true. But money isn’t everything. My kids competed against schools that had huge budgets and even ran Science Olympiad as a separate class while we had to do everything on a shoestring. Every year it was uncertain whether the school district would cough up enough money to get the kids a bus to go to the State contest. (Which they qualified for every year my kids were in the high school.) There was always extra glee when we placed better than the NYC magnet schools or the schools with huge budgets. Might we have gone on to Nationals if they’d had more money? Maybe.
I agree that the high school needs to be good enough, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact I can guarantee it won’t be, because even those A+ high schools usually have things I don’t like about them.
Our school has about 75% going to 4 year colleges. The average SAT was around 1000 for M/CR when my kids were there. Those SAT scores reflect the fact that a large number of kids did not speak English as a native language and there a huge range in SES status - from public housing to mansions.
Some former “segregation academies” in the south like the ones near my Mississippi relatives provide such poor academic rigor/preparation that even those who graduate in the top 5% or higher don’t usually complete more than a few semesters at the state directional/community college. One son neighbor of theirs was a val from one and he flunked out from a directional college after 2 semesters.
Another friend from Virginia recounted having a neighbor who attended the same type of institution who graduated in the top 5% who flunked out of 2 lower-tiered regional colleges and was booted out of the Army for failing to adapt within 180 days of enlisting.
There are also some Catholic high schools/colleges* which Catholic neighbors familiar with the Catholic education landscape in my local region(NYC tri-state) warned non-Catholic families like mine away from because their educational reputation/rigor was so abysmal one was actually better off going to the local public school/college and saving the tuition money.
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