<p>Then there are others of us who pay the money for fantastic teachers, personal attention to our kids, interesting and creative parents, and avoid the social climbers at all costs.</p>
<p>Many grads of the top NYC independent schools (Brearley, Collegiate etc.) consider the educations they received at these institutions to have been better than the elite colleges and universities where they subsequently matriculated (including HYP). Given the almost absurd level of selectivity at these schools, the student peer groups are amazing and teaching is aimed at a very high level (the SAT medians of the graduating students are superimposable on those of the most selective colleges). All this notwithstanding, an equally talented kid will rise to the top at any public school that he/she might attend and will also, with some discipline and motivation, have a strong shot at a great college.</p>
<p>it’s not about how far the child will go – it’s about happiness. will the kid be happier in a 40k school or a public school? intellectually he might fit in well at a 40k school but not socioeconomically. what will prevent depression, attachment instability, psychosis, etc. in his twenties? that’s what parents should be asking.</p>
<p>intellectually he might fit in well at a 40k school but not socioeconomically. what will prevent depression, attachment instability, psychosis, etc. in his twenties</p>
<p>Can preschool do all that ?</p>
<p>Evitaperon : My kid’s NYC private has a mix of wealthy kids, upper-middle class, middle-class (financial aid, single-child home, generous grandparents, etc) and prep-for-prep (full scholarship, mostly minority) kids, skewing towards the wealthier side. I think this the norm. Most kids won’t go insane in this environment. I can’t speak of all schools, but I do not know that our school is the exception, and I can say the kids get an incredible amount of psychological support. It’s not a crazy cut throat environment that you see on tv. Who knows, maybe others have had a different experience.</p>
<p>Do any of these schools award merit aid?
I’m positive the 3 year old next door would qualify.</p>
<p>This whole thread sounds like the books The Nanny Diaries and Nanny Returns.</p>
<p>I sure am glad I live in the rural South. My children go to a public school with students who are: poor to upper middle class and everything in between; black, white, and (increasingly) Hispanic; extremely gifted students, average students, and special ed students. Our school periodically has food drives for families of the poorer students in the school, and often parents of band students will anonymously fund band uniforms for students who can’t afford them. We sure don’t have all the extras of exclusive private schools, and our financial resources are often strained. However, we have dedicated teachers who do the best with the resources they have, a very supportive administration, and parents who care about all the students, not just their own. Our top students regularly head for the best colleges in the state (we are fortunate to have strong public universities with low tuition) and make 4s and 5s on the AP exams. They also learn that they are not the center of the universe and that “to whom much is given, much will be required”. </p>
<p>My daughter is in college with some of those private school students from NY. They had exclusive arts programs, advanced instruction, and nearly-daily contact with guidance counselors who took them through the college admission process (which my daughter mostly had to negotiate on her own – we just don’t have enough resources for much hand-holding here). What she has found is that those private school students are no smarter than she is. She has also found that they often aren’t as prepared for life.</p>
<p>". What she has found is that those private school students are no smarter than she is. She has also found that they often aren’t as prepared for life."</p>
<p>Private school NYC kids are kids like any others. Some are great kids, some are spoiled. Some brilliant, some less so. You can’t judge all based on the evidence of a few people your daughter knows. </p>
<p>I don’t know if you read through all the posts, so maybe I will be repeating myself:
It’s great that you have access to a school system you trust. Many schools here in NY are terrible. Some are fine. It is an enormous, broken system, where parents struggle hard, often unsuccessfully, to find a decent school for their kids. There is a great link to an article describing the problems finding a kindergarten above. You cannot compare your system to ours. It is a different situation. NY has a lot of people with money who chose to use it for education. That does not inherently make them like something out of The Nanny Diaries. That does mean they are trying like everyone else to do the best they can for their kids. Some might be like what you expect, many are not. I’m not. Don’t be so influenced by the media. </p>
<p>Look, I have kids in both private and public schools here. It is a complicated situation that you probably don’t know much about. I really wish people were not so quick to judge.</p>
<p>I’m also wondering what school in the rural south are these private NYC kids going? Unless its Emory, or maybe UMiami, (I know they aren’t rural) I don’t know what schools there would have a huge population of NYers for your daughter to judge. I’m curious.</p>
<p>Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt…just off the top of my head :)</p>
<p>redpoint – I’m not criticizing anyone in New York for how they deal with what is obviously a very difficult school situation. How they handle it is their business, and they must consider the needs of their families. If they want to pay for private school, then that’s their choice. I’m just glad that it’s not a choice I have to make.</p>
<p>I posted out of frustration. I have read on CC post after post by people concerned that their children can’t get in the “right” school, and other posters who seem absolutely obsessed with the Ivy League, even in threads where that isn’t even the subject. Moreover, some people on CC even feel free to post snarky comments about what they claim is the sub-par education that people in the South get in high school versus their own high schools, as well as comments about some colleges being “too Southern” – whatever that means. Having spent most of my adult years working with college students, I have also been around an amazing number of students who come to college from NY private schools with the attitude that they’re smarter than the “natives” – not all, not even most of the students from NY, but a large enough number to be notable.</p>
<p>Maybe I shouldn’t have posted, but when I read about how people were spending tens of thousands of dollars a year just to educate their young children, and I thought about middle class parents in our school reaching into their own already strained pockets to buy school supplies for students from poor families, that just did it.</p>
<p>My point is this: Expensive private schools may be important to some families. They may even consider them vital for their children’s safety and educational well-being. They are not, however, necessarily going to produce children who are any more intelligent and hard-working than children who go to schools without all the resources private schools can offer.</p>
<p>(While our high school is in the rural South, most of the colleges that attract New Yorkers are in nearby urban areas. The schools ohiobassmom mentioned, as well as Wake Forest, are certainly on that list.)</p>
<p>There will always be people with more money and creative ways to spend it. It does seem ridiculous that some people can spend more than a middle class income on educating a small child. It does seem that they are spending to get something more than an education. They are buying their kids a place at a certain level in society.</p>
<p>If kids go to school together they will usually end up making friends and sharing their growing up together. That will also mean that these kids will grow up and marry someone from the same social class. It is a parents way of keeping their kids within the same class from the beginning til the end.</p>
<p>They are also shielding their kids, and themselves, from having to rub elbows with the masses. For people that really think they are above others because of the amount of money they have, it is worth every last dime to them.</p>
<p>These schools will not make kids any smarter. They will likely though prepare these kids to later navigate the social strata that they have been put into. Basically it is training on how to deal with other rich folks.</p>
<p>Marsian -Well, there have certainly been many posters who say unkind things about the northeast as well. You can’t let it bother you. I know nothing about the South but I’m sure it’s A-OK.
I grew up in NYC and went to a small private girls Catholic school. Although my HS is still there, many previously affordable religious schools just don’t exist anymore. Catholic elementary schools are no longer a huge presence in the city. (My dad used to say that the Catholic Diocese should have chosen between schools or hospitals - they didn’t and now even St. Vincents is closed!)
There are just not that many options available. If these folks want to send their kids there, why not? $40k is a spit in the bucket for the overwhelming majority of attending families. The public elementary schools are generally a mess - which is why we moved out.</p>
<p>It sure seems like there are better ways to really educate a child instead of spending all that money on a school. If the absolute goal was to give a child an incredible education then those well heeled parents would hire tutors. </p>
<p>Instead of a nanny there could be a variety of tutors that come and go throughout the week. Instead of keeping the kid in class with 20 other kids that need attention they would have one on one attention. That kid would be able to learn several languages by the time they were 10.</p>
<p>It isn’t about education, it is about separating the rich kids from everyone else pretty much. That is likely the most important thing that is on these parents minds. The people that there kids will be getting to know and the people that the parents will be forced to socialize with.</p>
<p>With creativity, knowledge, and attention there is so much that kids are capable of. These schools with the big price tags are just another type of babysitting than the regular public schools.</p>
<p>Okay, so all of us NYers with kids in private schools are status seekers and social climbers. Great. I guess nobody read or believed a word I posted. Let’s all make sweeping generalities about people we don’t know.</p>
<p>So it’s bad to bash southerners but it’s ok to bash NYers, and to assume they are all a certain way.</p>
<p>Someone on another thread posted the 2011 PSAT results link. One statistic they have on there is the percent of test takers that are “college ready” whatever that means. It’s a statistic, read into it what you want but if you compare that number to other states that are typically considered to have “good public schools”, those states have roughly 50% of their kids listed as “college ready” by fall of their junior year (when they take this test). NY has 23%–ouch. Since the kids that take the PSAT, for the most part, are college bound kids, it’s a pretty fair comparison across the board. I see why people in NY go to private schools.</p>
<p>“It isn’t about education, it is about separating the rich kids from everyone else pretty much. That is likely the most important thing that is on these parents minds. The people that there kids will be getting to know and the people that the parents will be forced to socialize with.”</p>
<p>Jenthames, do you realize how offensive it is to pigeon-hole a group of people like that? You seem to know me. That’s exactly what I am like. Thanks. (not)</p>
<p>I object to the generalizations also, but I’m not feeling particularly defensive about my choices. I loved my Quaker private NYC HS that currently charges $35K a year.</p>
<p>My family never would have been able to pay that, and we did not. But I appreciated very much the small classes, the ethics instruction, the opportunities in music and sports, the individual counseling for college and class choice. </p>
<p>That said, I imagine there certainly are many parents who are appalled at the idea of their kids being educated alongside a bunch of non-white poor kids, and choose private school to avoid exactly that, even if the teaching at the public is great and the classes not overcrowded.</p>
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<p>I think this is IN PART due to the fact that many wealthier parents DO take their kids out of public schools. It becomes a self perpetuating thing, the more people choose private, the fewer people with money and influence left to make the publics better. And kids who are likely to score higher on those tests have been removed from the system.</p>
<p>Thanks, nm. It’s true. The graduation rate at NYC high schools is atrocious. That being said, I do have a child at a fantastic public high school. There are great places at the top.</p>
<p>Ohio—this was a stat for ALL test takers in the state. Are you saying that NY private school kids don’t take the PSAT at all? The stat was based on PSAT scores and self-reported GPA’s on the PSAT information</p>