<p>DD was sheltered in private school til 8th grade before attend our neighborhood public HS. The decision was based on many factor. Save the money for college, has the varsity sports that the private school could not offer, convienient location for her other activities, etc… She only know 2 other girls from her middle school when starting her freshmen year. Now as a senior, she made many good friends, there’s teachers that she really like. The HS is very diversed, she know what the real world is like. She is very happy and enjoy her HS experience. </p>
<p>As an earlier poster addressed, going to public or private HS is a personal preference. We’re very pleased our decision and the decision was well-thought at the time. I don’t call this “experimenting” with our child.</p>
As far as my knowledge goes that President Obama children were in private school through out and so does most of the other senators, congressman and also California governor’s children.</p>
Not every student at any school will be happy and yes there is a notion of, if the school is a fit for the student.
A rigorous academic environment is not for everyone and that is why CalTech doesn’t have any sports quota at all.</p>
<p>“A rigorous academic environment is not for everyone and that is why CalTech doesn’t have any sports quota at all.”
So explain then why MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford recruit athletes for their teams.
Or do you not consider those universities to be of the same caliber as CalTech??If not why not??</p>
<p>So the only reason that a student might not want the environment of a $34K/year private high school (or for that matter an expensive private university), is that they don’t want a rigorous academic environment? What utter nonsense.</p>
<p>I went to my urban public high school <em>because</em> I wanted a rigorous academic environment (not that that was the only reason, but it was the biggest). And in my area, that school was the most rigorous high school academic environment, public or private.</p>
<p>Which is not to say that this is the case for everybody, but I bristle at POIH’s blanket insinuations about public schools, especially urban ones.</p>
<p>I haven’t had time to read thru this whole thread, but my son is a 2008 graduate of Swarthmore college. He had difficulty finding a job and was unemployed/underemployed for quite a while (about 8 months). He is employed now and gets somewhat decent money (enough to scrape by) but he does not have health insurance. Do I as his parent who paid full-fare ($50,000 a year) for his education think his education was a waste? Absolutely not. My son’s scholastic and other experiences at Swarthmore were great and he got a fantastic education. He is thinking of going back to graduate school and his undergraduate education will hold him in good stead at his graduate institution. But that is not the whole picture. The reason he wants to go to grad school is not as much to improve his chances of a good paying job, but to specialize in a field that he already loves. </p>
<p>In any case, I absolutely stand by his education at Swarthmore and do not regret any bit of it. Even if he does not have health insurance right now and just scrapes by financially. I think his education will hold him in good stead for the rest of his life - which will be long. He will be in the workforce for many many years and in the long run, he will do very well. Plus, (not to poke at anyone who holds a different viewpoint), I never thought an education was so he could maximize his earning potential. Although there is nothing wrong with that view as well.</p>
<p>I once said this exact thing in a blog on NYTimes and got dinged by people saying what a fool I was. That liberal arts colleges are not worth it and I was a fool for paying $50,000 a year on his education when he is unemployed with no health insurance. I did not keep posting to rebut this viewpoint, but I just don’t get it that so many people think that the only point in getting into a good college is to maximize earning potential (short term or long term). I suppose people whose kids go to Dartmouth or Wharton should be very happy - statistically, their (Dartmouth) kids make the most in the long run! Geez!</p>
<p>Well, achat, I think that people want to feel they received good value for their money. You’re definitely not a fool if you have that kind of money to spend and are willing to do so for the future of your child, you are generous and I hope he appreciates it! If you are wealthy, then it means very little to pay $50K/yr+ for a great liberal arts private school. If the parents have to struggle/scrape/get a loan for that kind of money-I would guess that they want to see results. If my child wanted to major and get a job in a career field that generally pays very little, it seems crazy to pay all that money to get the same degree when there are so many schools he could be happy at, for 1/4-1/3 the price. It certainly takes awhile to see how your kid’s life is going to turn out for them, but what if after 10 years, he is still in a low paying job with no health insurance? Will you still think it was the right decision to spend so much money for his college?</p>
<p>That was a great post busdriver11!
I am not wealthy, I am definitely upper-middle class and I have been saving since my son was born. but yes, I do worry about my kid. 10 years from now, if he still has no health insurance I would worry. But given the field he is in, that is possible too. Let’s hope, 10 years from now, I have some good news for this forum (if I’m still alive and still participating here).</p>
<p>But you have a very good point. That’s why I donot judge people when they say they want their kids to get a good job. And I said so in my post (#87). I just don’t like the ridicule I sometimes face, particularly since I am from Southeast Asia and the circles I move in, my friends all hope their kids end up being doctors or lawyers or Wall streeters. And nothing else is acceptable. I have to be very careful what I say to some of my friends about what my son is up to. :)</p>
Other than CalTech, only MIT falls in that category. All other universities recruits athletes because they have routes which are easy enough for these recruited athletes to get through.</p>
<p>The way to know whether or not it is possible to go thru a university without much effort to understand the minimum graduation requirement of core subjects.</p>
The term ‘experiment’ was used as ‘ucsd</em>ucla_dad’ believed in diversity in public HS as an advantage.
When you go thru 30 HS (public and private) and select 1, you are not experimenting but are sure that the HS fit your child need.
It is like you go thru 50 Universities and select one that best fit your need.
If you blindly putting your child into your neighborhood public HS then it can be best described as ‘experimenting’.
If on the other hand you have selected this public HS after visiting and studying all the public and private HS in your area then you are not ‘experimenting’.</p>
<p>It’s the economy folks. I spent a little time with the link noimagination put up from the UCBerkeley Career Center <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a>. Even the so called vocational degrees, compsci, engineering and business are struggling. Business placed 80% of its grads but the average across the engineers is below 50%. Economics did around 62% and compsci did 65%. That still leaves a significant chunk of people out there who majored in “the right things” who still don’t have a job.</p>
<p>The one phenomenon I’ve noticed is the high achiever who suddenly doesn’t know what to do when they don’t get a job. Neighbor’s daughter was Miss Everything in school - Athlete, Salutatorian, Volunteer, etc. Got a straight 4.0 in college, had all the right internships but now can’t find a job. Worse than that she can’t seem to get herself off the couch to even go look anymore. In talking to her, it’s as though she feels lied to somehow. She did all the things that everyone told her she had to do to succeed, but now there’s no job, no next step. She feels she was given a plan, executed it and now is left holding the bag. When I’ve mentioned this story to others I’ve been surprised how many similar stories I’ve heard back. I know it’s an immature attitude and I know she needs to pick herself up and get back into the game, but I just find the reaction curious.</p>
<p>p.s I dont think the original poster meant to ridicule anyone with that viewpoint either, or anyone else here for that matter. But I face a lot of hostility and ridicule from friends of mine whom I have known for years, who think I just wasted $200,000…and worse of all, that the field he majored and minored in is just a bunch of crap. I suppose CC just lets me blow off some of that steam.</p>
<p>I am confused. What if you had a child with Down’s Syndrome, who would never have a reasonable prospect of being able to be completely independent, whose maximum earning potential was essentially minimum wage, and whose living circumstances/lifestyle would not likely be affected much by any work he did? If you had a chance to spend $50,000, $100,000, for something that would meaningfully increase his happiness and quality of life (but not his earning potential), wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you maybe even take on some debt to do it now, rather than waiting 10-20 years before you had saved up to pay for it? What is the difference between that and sending a smart kid to Swarthmore with no guarantee of employment at the back end? The main difference seems to be that it would be easier to decide to send the smart kid to Swarthmore, because there WOULD be some chance of a better economic outcome.</p>
<p>Parents of kids with severe disabilities – Down’s, autism – seem willing to spend huge amounts (or often to have the public spend huge amounts) to achieve quality-of-life improvements with no monetary payoff. What’s so different about their other children?</p>
You are taking the statement out of context. ‘Columbia_student’ made a comment about a friend of his(er) daughter who didn’t like the experience at DD HS indicating the meaness and competitiveness of the children at that school.
Competitiveness is the way of real life. In the real world no one is going to give you a pass. You will have to compete and that is why I made the comment that ‘rigorous environment’ is not for everyone.</p>
<p>I’m talking about my own experience with this private HS and not my DD friends or their parent. I went to this school for 5 years every day 2 or 3 times, so I can at least put forward my experiences. </p>
<p>The other school which I felt would have been an equally fit to my DD need is ‘Philips Exeter’ in NH.</p>
<p>JHS, that is a great point. There must be something in our Southeast Asian diaspora or whatever, that we as immigrants don’t want to try something for our kids that is different. Something where the pot of gold is not assured at the end of the 4-5 years is not worth it. Although a lot of Southeast Asian young people are branching out in different directions now and that is hopeful. Anyway, I hope I don’t offend anyone here who is Southeast asian. I could just be generalizing and I could be completely wrong. But I am not exaggerating or making up my own experience here.</p>
<p>Vinceh, I think that is a common story. It’s so easy to get discouraged in the job market because you never know what’s going to happen day to day. One day you’re just unemployed and feeling bleak, and the next day, boom, you could be hired. My roommate spent a couple of months (not very long but felt like an eternity) unemployed when we first moved to our new city and keeping herself positive and motivated and out there applying and looking for work was a constant struggle. She did very well, but I could tell it was hard on her and we were happy when she found work at last (not in the field she wanted or was expecting, but steady, interesting work that pays enough for us to make rent. It’s definitely a for now job, but she was happy to take it when it was offered).</p>
<p>One of the advantages of having a noncommercial major is that you don’t fall into the trap of believing that the world owes you a job. My bohemian hipster English-major daughter did all the right things, too. Her resume was used by her career services office as a model of how to assemble internships, experience, extracurriculars, etc. to qualify you for the jobs you want. Of course, she didn’t come close to getting that kind of job, but she knew from Day 1 that it would be unlikely that she would. And she’s practically a corporate tool compared to her Theater and Art major friends. These kids’ plans always assumed that they would have to take subsistence jobs and live like paupers while they tried to worm themselves into a position to work on what they love. And none of them has the attitudes blossom criticized.</p>
