<p>If indeed top 20 schools have an increasing population of students who don't really want to be there but feel that they have to live up to expectations put on them by their parents who are Ivy-or-bust, who are studying areas because of how lucrative they are as opposed to having an internal passion for those areas ... what a sad, sad commentary. What a sad set of values to pass on. And what miserable company for the students who really want to be there for REAL reasons, not parental pressure / threats.</p>
<p>Ah, Oldfort, I did misunderstand--I would've thought that Colgate was as tough as Williams, but I am not as familiar with the two schools as you.</p>
<p>OTOH, your comment about the kid who might have gotten into Princeton rather than just Cornell seems then to cut the other way, (again, I'm speaking from hearsay not personal experience) as Cornell seems to have a reputation for being "tougher".</p>
<p>My other post about Princeton vs Cornell is just referring to the fact the kid went to a small, no name HS, with no relationship with HYPS, and I think that's probably a factor for him not have gotten into those schools. Cornell is a tough school to stay in, but its acceptance rate is higher than HYPS, therefore this kid's high school was probably less of a factor.</p>
<p>it seems like the parents who send their kids to private high schools are being generalized as prestige whores. i don't think that's the case for all situations. </p>
<p>i go to a private high school (14k a year). Yes, I'm looking at Ivys, but my parents flat out told me I might not be able to go (if i even get in) because of financial reasons. we're looking everywhere... state unis, top 50, top 20, schools with good engineering programs, schools that give good merit aid, that are in the city et cetera. </p>
<p>the val a few years ago attned the university of Delaware... and he got into top schools as well. he's at UD. loves it and is attending for free. </p>
<p>also, the high school does count for something. if by some sort of ranking it would be below the student, then parents, then high school. </p>
<p>personally at my school the class size is ~260, whereas the public high school is about 1,000. there is a difference. teachers are personable, the GCs know my name and answer all my questions. my teachers are top notch as well as the courses. the students are competitive (all boys school) each pushing each other to do better. there are numerous ECs, activites, trips, and whatnot. school spirit is prevalent throughout the school. the atmosphere and education is just amazing. only thing missing is well... girls lol (but there's an all girls school a few miles away :))</p>
<p>too many times I've read students' comments about college saying they weren't prepared, they didn't know how to study, how to approach a professor for help because their high school didn't prepare them for college. well i've learned that at my high school. </p>
<p>and before my post is picked apart let me qualify it... i know there are public high schools that provide this atmosphere too. not all private high schools are geared like mine or geared like the parents at my schools (they are seeking prestige) but you can't generalize all private HS parents. in the end, the high school matters, but to how much it really matters differs from city to city and across the country. you just can't generalize all students and parents. they all have different motives, financial limitations, and ideals.</p>
<p>I realize at this point in my "CC" membership you can get to "know" people, but otherwise I would say some are really reading a lot into the original post. While I absolutely believe it is a complex interchange of factors that I believe starts generations before the student in question, the high school does make a diffence. Although H and I are well educated, I have never met people who talk like folks here! If I had not happened upon this site (and it probably wasn't just chance), I think my D would have been solely influenced and informed by her teachers and peers. the explicit advice there is; save money and go to a community college, then transfer to a UC. Or go to a christian school. My D has attended this school for 14 years and we watched other families leave for "better classes" but I didn't really "get it ". It's only now, after coming to CC and going through the admissions process that I even realize that there is a whole 'nother culture out there! Apparently other schools and other communities are immersed in it.</p>
<p>HS matters big time for any kid. The crucial factor I think, perhaps even more so than in choosing a college, is FIT. The best HS is one where your kid will be happy and flourish and that is different for different kids. Some overachievers may flourish and be happy anyplace. Others will wither on the vine unless they're in a top private or public magnet surrounded by others of his ilk. One local paper here recently ran an article about how many NYC kids were attending prestige colleges this fall and did NOT come from the specialized high schools (stuyvesant, bronx science, et al). Similar story recently in another paper about a kid from a tiny new nonselective school, in Brooklyn, where a kid was going off to Amherst. They found places that were good for them and were off to the races. Problem around here is that enough kids aren't offered choices of where to go to HS. Only the ones who test into the specialized high schools are offered another choice. All this , and my own kids' experience, reinforces to me that the big thing is that the kid--at any academic level--has to be in synch with the culture of the place, its academics, level of competition, social life, student body etc etc. If that's the case, the kid will be alright.</p>
<p>PG, per your post #76, could we please lose the judgmental words like: "disgusting" etc.</p>
<p>You are a parent, I am sure you have asked your kid to do things againt their will at least once, may it be cleaning up their rooms or eating brocalli. What is the difference here? What are parents for? It is not about my dream for them, it is about what we think is the best for them. </p>
<p>Persoanlly, I went down this road without really any guidance from my parents. All they know was for me to get an education and get a job, which I did. They are happy but I am not. I wish my parents had told me how hard this road will be and that I should pick a career that would make my life easier. Almost 50 years old, we live at the bottom of the social class, struggling every day financially. The burden of supporting a family with elders and kids is crashing. Walk a day in my shoes and you will know.</p>
<p>I am going to take a cue from owlice - wait 30 years and see how they deal with their own kids.</p>
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it seems like the parents who send their kids to private high schools are being generalized as prestige whores.
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<p>No they aren't. </p>
<p>I was reacting to the OP's original conclusion, which was basically that his D got into the schools she got into because of the high school she went to, and this conclusion was based on the "datapoint" that the high school she went to sent ~20 students to top 20 schools, and the other high school sent only one student to a top 20 school. </p>
<p>The "datapoint" does NOT support the conclusion. OP's D went to a school where the kids were very wealthy. Might not the SES of the school's students have something to do with where some of the kids go to college? Yes, it might! Might not the educational background of the parents of the students in that high school have something to do with where some of the kids go to college? Yes, it might! Might the parents who send their kids to that high school be much more interested in getting their kids into top 20 schools, because those schools are in the top 20? Yes, it might!</p>
<p>I'm certainly not saying kids who go to private high schools all have parents who are PWs. </p>
<p>oldfort, methinks you need to learn a little more about Cornell (which is in the top 20, BTW). </p>
<p>BigAppleDaddy, fit works for high school, too, indeed.</p>
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What is the difference here?
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<p>The difference is that some people see the point of child-rearing to be raising a child to make his/her own decision about how to spend his/her adult life.</p>
<p>Yes, they have to eat broccoli when they are 12, but once the child is an adult, that adult chooses to eat broccoli, or not (even as President). </p>
<p>You already have a pretty clear indication how those who have been raised by parents who will always insist they eat broccoli even as adults feel -- those broccoli-haters who eat it anyway have told you: let the kids decide for themselves.</p>
<p>"You are a parent, I am sure you have asked your kid to do things againt their will at least once, may it be cleaning up their rooms or eating brocalli. What is the difference here? What are parents for? It is not about my dream for them, it is about what we think is the best for them."</p>
<p>Broccoli is objectively better for dinner than M&M's.
Is being an investment banker (doctor, lawyer, engineer - take your pick) inherently better than being (say) an art historian or foreign language teacher?</p>
<p>And certainly you see the difference between telling a child what to do during his CHILDHOOD and telling that child what to do during his ADULTHOOD.</p>
<p>IIRC, you posted that your income was around $10,000 / month on another thread, so that's $120,000 / year, so please, I don't think you're in a position to cry poverty.</p>
<p>owlice, I read my own OP a couple times w/o a clue as how did you get all those points. </p>
<p>All I said was that two high schools (BTW, both are public) are within a small area (assuming families incomes and educations are not very far apart) but the number of graduates attending top 20 schools is very different. Therefore, within what I could see, the HS makes a difference. </p>
<p>I did not say my DD got into Stanford only because of the HS. Do I think the HS helped, you bet.</p>
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Out of about 100 graduates, they have only one student going to a top 20 school - Vandy. <snip> Where as our DD's HS, I think about 20 out of 180 will be attending one of the top 20 universities.
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I think I have seen some people on the forum asking if the high school makes a difference. The data I have says a very loud and clear "yes".
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<p>The high school made a difference between 20 acceptances at top 20, and 1 acceptance at top 20. That's your contention, your conclusion, not mine!</p>
<p>"All I said was that two high schools (BTW, both are public) are within a small area (assuming families incomes and educations are not very far apart) but the number of graduates attending top 20 schools is very different."</p>
<p>Yes. And I gave a similar example in my area. Some towns / high schools have a different culture than others. It is inseparable from <em>how</em> the parents earned their money. In my area, a lot of them went to the state schools, started small businesses, and took that path up to being well-to-do. In the other area, a lot of them went to better schools and took a more professional white-collar path up to being well-to-do. It's no surprise, then, that the neighboring school sends more kids to top schools than ours. However, there's a downside to everything. There's also a lot more parental pressure at the other school and you'd be competing with other kids from your own school applying to certain colleges. Everything's a tradeoff in life.</p>
<p>"The high school made a difference between 20 acceptances at top 20, and 1 acceptance at top 20. That's your contention, your conclusion, not mine!"</p>
<p>Exactly! You can't separate it from the mindset of the parents!<br>
And really ... there's a hell of a lot of people in our school district where the parents are successful (if I want to define that as six-figure income, nice home in the suburbs, etc.) and they went to state schools (not even the flagship) and are conservative with their money and don't particularly value the idea of $45,000/year for a fancy-schmancy school when they did just fine with state schools. I disagree with them, of course, but that's their prerogative to steer their kids in that direction. Not everyone has the same dreams you did / do, Dad II. Not everyone has the same starry-eyed top-20-or-why-bother attitude.</p>
<p>owlice and PG, I think both of you are reading too much into what a simple statement. You think you know exactly what I want to say and use what you think what I say for all these arguments. </p>
<p>I did not say you need to attend a top 20 schools to be successful, did I? I did not say that my DD's admission to top school is ONLY because of the high school, did I? </p>
<p>I still hold my conclusion that a HS makes a difference. If you simply think otherwise and want to discuss with your own sets of data, I don't have a single problem with it.</p>
<p>I know a bright kid who was at a competitive private high school, but really hated the pressure, he left junior year to attend a public "alternative school" for kids who don't do well in traditional classrooms, wrote his essay on why he did that, and was accepted at Harvard. He had a lot of confidence, as do a lot of kids who intend to go to college from high schools where it isn't assumed everyone will go to college. I bet your daughter would have been just as successful with the shorter walk to school!</p>
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<p>But that's the big assumption. Without knowing that, it's hard to make the judgement that one school is clearly much better than the other.</p>
<p>The real question for any parent is what school is better for their own kid. I recall looking at the testing data for the public elementary schools in our immediate area, many many years ago. One school that parents were slavering to get into because of its high overall test scores had substantially lower test scores for the low SES kids. It was blindingly obvious when you dug into the data that the school just didn't put resources into working with those kids. The soil, to keep your analogy, was not equally rich for all students.</p>
<p>Both of my kids adore broccoli, and the 15 year old actually cleans her own room unasked on occasion. I'd like some extra parental gold stars for this, please. :)</p>
<p>I definitely think that high school makes a difference. My D was part of a very strong group of students from elementary through middle school. D went to a private high school & her friends stayed at the public school. D & her friends were in Midwest Talent Search in middle school, and several scored around the same on standardized testing. When they took their ACTs a couple years later, D had a score that was much better than what was predicted by her earlier score ... and much higher than her peers who attended the public high school (D & friends did not do test prep classes). Kids do talk about these things. When the kids applied to schools, D was the only one who got into her reaches. Now, I am not naive ... there are many possible reasons why this happened. It could simply be coincidental. It's possible that D would have had the same success in admissions had she stayed at her public school. However, I don't think so. I think her curriculum was far superior to the curriculum she would have been exposed to had she stayed. For her, that was the difference, I believe.</p>
<p>S is at a high school in a neighboring district, under our state's choice law. I truly feel that the overall expectations at this school are higher than those at our own district's high school. The curriculum is much better aligned to what a student pursuing a top college would need to be successful in admissions. </p>
<p>Now, to be fair ... our district HAS had one NMF (no semifinalists or commended, though) in the past 14 or so years. It CAN be done ... it just doesn't happen often. </p>
<p>A top kid who really wants to succeed almost always will, no matter where he/she attends school. I just think some schools make it a whole lot easier than others.</p>
<p>Safety is a huge issue; in some hs, kids won't go to the bathroom all day for fear of being attacked. Some kids don't even go to class for the same reason. My kids were lucky to live in a public school district where this doesn't happen (that I know of).</p>
<p>Are we talking about the differences between inadequate inner-city schools and gold-plated suburban high schools, or the differences between "good" and "excellent" suburban high schools? Two very different comparisons.</p>