Why Prep School?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
1

<p>The recent discussions on this forum are interesting, but trying to distinguish between excellent colleges and prep schools fatigues me. Having visited many colleges in the past year, I can't fathom predicting the most suitable college for a student in middle school. College matriculation is unreliable as a gauge of a high school's quality, particularly when hooks come into play in college admissions--and many good boarding schools have significant numbers of hooked applicants. (If you're interested, read The Price of Admission, by Golden, and The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, by Karabel.)</p>

<p>I saw this post on the Parents' Forum on CC: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1459199-warning-college-profs-w-post.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1459199-warning-college-profs-w-post.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The opinion piece Sue22 linked to is: A</a> warning to college profs from a high school teacher.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Even during those times when I could assign work that required proper writing, I was limited in how much work I could do on their writing. I had too many students. In my final year, with four sections of Advanced Placement, I had 129 AP students (as well as an additional forty-six students in my other two classes). A teacher cannot possibly give that many students the individualized attention they need to improve their writing. Do the math. Imagine that I assign all my students a written exercise. Let’s assume that 160 actually turn it in. Let’s further assume that I am a fast reader, and I can read and correct papers at a rate of one every three minutes. That’s eight hours—for one assignment. If it takes a more realistic five minutes per paper, the total is more than thirteen hours.<a href="emphasis%20added">/quote</a></p>

<p>Certainly, I'd prefer my children attend a demanding college. I do not accept that a middle schooler has no business dreaming of an elite university. On the other hand, in my opinion, preparation for college is more important than endless debates over matriculation stats. My children are learning how to write, analyze, think, debate and persuade. A huge part of that arises from the "individualized attention" they receive at their college-prep boarding schools.</p>

<p>I graduated from a public high school. I think the teachers who taught AP classes taught one AP section each year, maybe 20 students. We received careful feedback on our written work. In the interim, the world changed. In many respects, I send my children to prep school to give them the education I received decades ago in a public high school. Their curriculum is more grueling, at an earlier age, than my high school curriculum was. </p>

<p>More than five private high schools in the country offer this sort of "individualized attention." Many more.</p>

2

<p>Small classes are definitely a good reason to consider prep school, in my book. Not sure whether this is peculiar to our school district, or a more general trend, but here, more and more students are encouraged to take honors classes. So the average ability of the students in honors classes is declining, the classes are increasing in size, and behavior problems are occupying more of the teacher’s time. In the words of one teacher, “we are reducing the level of difficulty to meet the needs of the students who take the honors classes, until we start losing too many top students to private schools.” I took that as a hint.</p>

3

<p>In our public school, even small classes don’t guarantee feedback. I can count on one hand how many essays are assigned in both AP Lit and AP Language combined. At some point, you just have to call it what it is - fraud.</p>

4

<p>Well said, Neato. </p>

<p>Sadly, I think your child and mine are living the same nightmare. I’m starting to see it as educational abuse. And fraud. Yes, that’s it exactly.</p>

5

<p>“I do not accept that a middle schooler has no business dreaming of an elite university.”</p>

<p>The recent discussions have prompted me to think about exactly how kids get the notion that they want to attend an “elite” school at either the high school or the college level. </p>

<p>I’d guess that for a few, it does come from within. For the rest, I think it comes from peers, parents, and educators. As I noted in another thread, in our neck of the woods, some clusters of kids are talking about what boarding schools they’ll go for high school as early as 6th grade. It’s because their parents did or maybe an older sibling or other relative did. Then kids who don’t have that tradition in their families start to think maybe I should look into that…and the parents without BS experience do likewise after talking to parents with BS experience. At least that’s how I think it might work.</p>

<p>But I personally think it is a very rare middle schooler who is thinking about college, elite or otherwise. My older daughter is in 10th grade, but couldn’t tell you the difference between U Penn and Penn State beyond the fact that her dad went to one for college and her uncle went to the other one for medical school.</p>

<p>Truth be told, I kind of like that about her and see no reason to push her in either direction based on “prestige”. If anything, I’d steer her away from PSU, but only because I’m not a fan of its status as a party school.</p>

<p>If there ARE 13 year olds who “dream of going to Harvard” absent any outside forces (parents, peers, educators), I have yet to meet one.</p>

<p>I am personally uncomfortable with planting the seed of attending an super selective college. That seems to me to be a recipe for disappointment and resentment. I know that I certainly won’t be going that route, Penn sheepskin notwithstanding. While I know that I did as much for her BS path, for college that seems like a bridge too far…at least for me.</p>

6

<p>Why do you say that no 13-year old dreams of going to Harvard (or a similar school)?</p>

<p>At 13, and even younger, I dreamed of going to Princeton. I grew up just a few miles from it and it was always there as the place where the smartest kids (which I thought of myself as) would of course want to go. Part of it might have had something to do with the association in my mind of Einstein with Princeton.</p>

<p>That belief extended until my senior year of high school when they were the only college to reject me. :frowning: I had to make due with my choice of Yale, MIT and Cornell (choosing Yale).</p>

7

<p>My child, who doesn’t live anywhere near any of these schools, has no relatives that attended any of these schools, has talked about attending one of these schools for years. </p>

<p>I have no idea how they ever even got on his radar, especially at seven.</p>

8

<p>I remember watching a episode of The Flintstones when I was a kid when Fred went back to college at Princetone. He played for them in the big football game against Shale.</p>

9

<p>@Lvillegrad: Note that I did not claim that “no 13 year old dreams of going to Harvard”…I merely remarked that I had never met one. Since you are from the Princeton area yourself, you were in the “clusters of kids” I mentioned…and if you went to Lawrenceville, even more so.</p>

<p>@MamaBug: I would be curious how the idea came to your child, if you feel like asking him.</p>

<p>If anything, the only colleges that are on my daughter’s radar right now are 1) University of Chicago, because they send her interesting marketing materials; 2) Deep Springs, because her father is fascinated by it and because it seems like a college version of Thacher; and 3) U Del because they have one of the only undergrad programs in a field she currently thinks is interesting.</p>

10

<p>SevenDad,</p>

<p>I just read about Deep Springs today in the Economist. Looks like it won’t be an option for any daughter of yours or mine. A court decision ruled that it will remain a male-only school.</p>

11

<p>It doesn’t surprise me that there are youngish children who aspire to ivies. Those are among the most widely recognized college names. What amazes me are the kids who post here about their “dream” prep schools. I don’t even live in a rural area, and my kids had never heard of the acronym schools, nor any prep school other than a couple of obscure ones in our area. Maybe most of the kids who post here about acronym schools are from private middle schools, where virtually everyone goes to prep school?</p>

12

<p>SevenDad, I think you should vacation at a Dude Ranch!</p>

13

<p>@honorarymom: But the kids must hear about the colleges from some source in the first place, right? And I doubt it’s TV, because the Ivy league doesn’t get much airtime. Maybe we simply don’t talk about colleges much in our household…our own or others.</p>

<p>I could see kids growing up in an academic (parents are professors) household knowing about schools at a young age, but I am curious where other kids find out about these things.</p>

14

<p>It would be enlightening to ask an 8th grader, “why (Ivy League college),” then to compare the answers the same child would give as a senior in high school awaiting April 1st. There is no comparison in the depth of knowledge at each point. The “passion” of a 13 year old for “the Ivy League” is not nearly as intense as the passion of an 18 year old who has spent the past year applying to colleges. (This assumes a senior would speak with an adult about the college process at this point.)</p>

<p>SevenDad, I can believe some 13 year olds have their sights set on the Ivy League. Especially if their academic needs are not being met in their current schools, the Ivy League may stand as a placeholder for their ideal academic community. The idea need not come from adults.</p>

15

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<p>+1 Periwinkle. </p>

<p>That is exactly how the term is best used. As a placeholder for high academic requirements. If a student uses that as a benchmark, they’re on the path to be qualified for any college they desire. Which is why we love that our D desired a Prep school environment. She didn’t want to “GO” to an IVY - just have the requisite academic preparation to ensure she had choices - not defaults as she might have if she’d stayed home where the local community college is considered a “stretch goal.”</p>

16

<p>I am new to the community and glad to find the parent forum.</p>

<p>I ask the same question that OP asks, and I am willing to do an experiment on my kids. Both attend public schools. Our public high is very good, consistently appear in the Top 100 HS in the US list. In general I like it, but it can be difficult in many aspects due to over enrollment. </p>

<p>My son has done EVERYTHING he can to be prepared for an elite college, perfect GPA, 14 APs (all 5s except the 6 he is taking now, which will test in May), nearly perfect SAT I & PSAT, 3 SAT IIs, summer internship at a research institute and 500+ community service hours, performing musician traveling and competing internationally) </p>

<p>My daughter, an 8th grader, wants to attend a BS in NE. She has similar credential as her brother academically, but not as talented in music. If she gets accepted, we probably will let her go. Then we can compare the her experience and result.</p>

17

<p>It’s a nice thought, Bearsgarden, but she is not a clone of her brother, despite whatever academic similarities they may exhibit. So her experience and “result”, as you call it (and the fact that they are not the same gender), will not necessarily be, um, “statistically significant.”</p>

<p>Better to think of BS for BS’s sake. The experience is likely to be quite a bit different from that at most public schools (don’t know about your Top 100 school).</p>

18

<p>Agreed. At our Top 100 school, there are many excellent students, but not impressive or comfortable once they leave the classroom or subject matter environment. The magnet school is worse… the brightest kids but lack of attractiveness … The BSs we visited are just the opposite, and that’s exactly what draws my daughter into it. She told us that she was not interested in being more advanced in math and science, and she wants to become a more interesting person… Granted, the kids we spoke with at the BSs might have been handpicked by the AO, but they are impressive and fun to talk to!</p>

19

<p>Ah, Bears… so your d is seeking intellectual depth, rather than simply academic stimulation. A lofty goal. And sometimes difficult to achieve, even in BS. It is true that many of the students your d will encounter will be engaging and interesting. They will probably be focused on a wider range of pursuits than simply academics. For many, the ability to pursue interests, or develop new ones (and new skills, exposure to new ways of thinking, kids from other cultures, etc.) certainly is a big draw.</p>

<p>Whatever the outcome on M10, it sounds like your d has her head screwed on straight, and that will stand her in good stead at BS, or at her “top 100” school, and beyond.</p>