Are elite boarding schools overrated? Colleague's little brother just graduated from one...
She posted graduation pictures on facebook. I poked around the tagged brother's friends and they're mostly heading to respectable but not great colleges, e.g. Trinity, Bucknell, Colby, Michigan, NYU. So their college is going to be a downgrade in prestige from their boarding school.
Is this normal? Do they go to this tier of colleges and coast to magna or summa cum laude, gliding on to t14 law or medical school? Obviously the entire class can't get into HYPS, MIT and Chicago, just caught me by surprise as they jump through a lot of hoops and paid $210,000 for high school ... to end up in pretty meh colleges.
Of the kids that graduated from the most expensive prep school near me, about half went to in state-state schools, the other half went to like Stanford, Harvard etc. Basically only worth it if you're in that top half.
all that money and it's still just a daughter
It's kind of weird and insecure that you looked into it this much. Yes, I think they're generally overrated if you live in an area with a good public school system.
It required literally 5 clicks of my laptop trackpad on facebook.
Yes, but you had the curiosity to give a shit and click through at all.
It's weird and insecure? Look at your URL and then at your own user name please.
Depends. If you hate cocaine and easy admission to ivy league schools, yea it's overrated.
Most colleges weigh applicants based on the quality of the students at their respective high schools. Essentially, you'd be better off being #1 at a high school where most of the kids can't even write their own name than being #132 in a class with 45 national merit scholars. This explains how some of the kids at top schools slip through the cracks in the admission process.
depends what your comparing it to I guess, at my public HS only like the top third or so went to 4 year schools so the types of kids getting into UMich/NYU were generally top 5%. Obviously much less competition where i went to be at the top, but I wouldn't overlook the value of being surrounded by high achievers instead of average kids. Private school is prolly not worth it if ur at a top public school district though
When you say elite boarding school, I will assume TSAO/Eight Schools/HADES level.
When you poked around the tagged brother's friends, you probably were looking at the average to below-average contingent of students (top 80%). Which makes sense, because you probably looked at less than 10 of them.
And I don't know why you think Chicago is elite, because it was frequently considered a safety when I was at school.
I seriously hope this is trolling....
Nope, the reality. For top students at my boarding school, NYU, Chicago, USC (southern california) were very popular choices as safeties. I didn't say they weren't good.
Maybe you're on the older side? I know Chicago's reputation has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years. I graduated from one of the boarding schools you mentioned a few years ago, and Chicago was considered a reach for or semi-reach for the majority of the school. And was considered to be more difficult to get into than some of the lower Ivies.
With that said, a lot of kids just didn't apply to Chicago because they had an East Coast bias.
Your analysis as being "overrated" is from a college placement perspective.
In this day and age, I believe that if you go to a top public high school in your state then from a college placement perceptive if you are a good student you could be equally successful at a elite boarding school or a public high school. The value of the boarding school has diminished somewhat.
However, many parents who send their kids to these schools don't just look at it from the perspective of college placement but from the perspective of the "social circle" these schools put their kids in. Additionally, many of these kids parents may also have attended one of these schools. The American boarding school "scene" is quite incestuous and many of the students grew up in the same towns or were born and brought up in Manhattan. Many parents simply send there kids there because in the circles they run in many other people do and because they can afford it....a classic "Keeping Up with the Joneses effect
Many of the kids I know that went to these schools do in fact end up at the schools you mentioned and many have a lax attitude towards academics and their career. There are others that take things seriously. This is conceptually the same at any public high school in America. Trinity College, Hobart, and St. Lawrence are well known to be filled with kids coming from this "scene" who aren't exactly the best students. Again, students gravitate there for a certain "social scene" and knowing many people at these schools before attending. The ones that are smart end up at elite colleges and better NESCAC's.
Note: I did not go to boarding school but know many people in my circle that have. I went to a top public high school in my state.
Examples of the schools I am referring to: (Deerfield, Choate, St. Pauls, Westminster, etc...)
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