Please help! Where to live? Best schools? (Chicago, Joliet: real estate, renting)

[CatfishJ]

Hi All,

Thank you very much in advance for all of your helpful comments. I recently sold my business in New York City and moved to Chicago to start a family.

My fiance and I are currently renting in Lincoln Park while we look around for where we might ultimately want to buy. We need at least 4 bedrooms and have a flexible budget around 1.5m to 2.0m.

We will be commuting downtown 3-4 days a week to Franklin and Madison area. We'd love to stay near the city, but are open to the northern suburbs and a Metra commute if required. Everything else equal, we still prefer short commute urban to long commute suburban however.

We are planning on having as many kids as mother nature allows, so being near good public schools would be huge. What are the top 3 public elementary schools in Chicago? More importantly, how would these compare to the top private elementary schools like Latin, Bernard Zell, Morgan Park, etc.?

Let me also similarly ask, what are the top 3 public elementary schools in the northern suburbs (Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, etc., etc.) and how would these compare to the top private elementary schools (Latin, etc.)?

Finally, we have assumed that none of the public high schools in Chicago or the north suburbs are going to meet our requirements (top 15% of graduating class to ivy league). Is this assumption correct? What are the top 3 private high schools if our goal is to place all of the kids into the ivies?

Getting the kids into the right schools is definitely our #1 priority and we can knock a lot off of what we pay for a house in order to plan for this.

Thanks again for all of your help and I look forward to your responses!

[oakparkdude]

In general, a lower percentage of top high school grads go Ivy in the Midwest relative to the Northeast. This is not because kids in the Midwest are less intelligent/qualified, but likely due to lack of proximity. Roughly 25% of my class during college was from New England/NY, which is a huge overrepresentation compared to the nation has a whole.

[Jandur]

Originally Posted by CatfishJ

Getting the kids into the right schools is definitely our #1 priority and we can knock a lot off of what we pay for a house in order to plan for this.

I have absolutely no evidence for this but most of my friends that went to top/ivy schools seem to come from the north shore suburbs. Lake Forrest, Lake Bluff, Winnetka, Glencoe etc. Pretty affluent suburbs such as these generally have better schools, higher Ivy rates etc.

Again this is all observation, but probably a good start.

[CatfishJ]

yeah, i am originally from st. louis, mo and noticed this trend big time at my catholic high school. i feel like it is more of an income disparity and cultural problem than one of geographic access, as both coasts are over-represented in the ivies. it is unfortunate as both school and student would be enriched with more geographic diversity. bearing this troubling trend in mind, does anyone have thoughts on the above questions?

[chet everett]

I think your goals are completely unrealistic. In my former life as a high school teacher I was privileged to work alongside some teachers for the top private prep schools on the east coast. NONE of them were able to consistently get ever 5% of their graduating class into exclusively Ivy League schools. Similarly the finest intensive math and science academies in the country consider themselves quite successful if the top half of their students all are accepted into "selective" colleges / universities.

While the stats turned out by Northside and Payton College Prep High School in Chicago are quite impressive, even their well selected students will NOT see 15% of the graduating class accepted into Ivies.

Ashe Emet Day School is well loved by its supporters but it is mission is not to churn out kids to attack the Ivy league.

The atmosphere at basically all private schools in the region (including Francis Parker, Latin, Ward, Lake Forest Country Day, Avery Coonley and others that I have had experience with) is more about the social environment for parents and students than it is about guaranteeing admission to any particular school...
The numbers at even the most rigorous colleges are woefully controlled by "legacies" and large donors and it would be both foolhardy and counter productive for schools to make any promises that they can work past those realities...

The simple rankings of the SunTimes shows the relative performance of students on the relative weak state mandated tests. I assure you that NONE of those schools will guarantee that ANY of their students will get accepted into Ivy League colleges or similar selective admissions institutions.

Even the the methodology of the ranking used by US News and World Reports that includes a useful measure of who well various high schools prerpare their students for college level work would be unable to predict what percentage of public high schools students would be accepted by Ivies...

I would further caution that just as in real estate folks that are overly focused on only the upside tend to be unpreppared for inevitable downturns...

[citylove101]

I hate to break it to you, but whether your kids will make it into Harvard or Yale is much more dependant on them than on where they go to school.

You are the type of parents that drives me nuts here at home in NY NY. When my oldest was in middle school on the Upper West Side I always remember one parent asking the principal how many of the kids there could get into an Ivy League school like Harvard. She told him she didn't know and then politley reminded him that it was important to worry about where the kids were NOW and how they were doing NOW and that college would take care of itself if the kids and parents focused on how their children were doing NOW--not seven years down the road.

Let your kids (when they arrive) go to school somewhere where they can develop theri own attitudes and abilities to the fullest rather than pressuring them into your idea of high-achieving little ivy Leaguers. Take your lead from them, not the other way around. In general, my friends and relatives in Chicago are much less Type-A about higher ed than you seem to be and I think their attitude is typical of teh Midwest in general, though that sort of pressure defintely exists in some wealthier suburban schools (but you say you prefer the city) The attitudes may be a big change for you.

That said, be careful in choosing a school on name and reputation alone. There is nothing worse than a kid mismatched to his school, i.e. the high-achieving intellectual in a school full of jocks, the down-to-earth kid in an ultra-preppy school, the obnoxious athierst in the top Catholic Prep school, etc etc Two Web sites to look at for particulars on schooling:

nighborhood parents network: Neighborhood Parents Network
chicago public schools obsessed CPS Obsessed

[CatfishJ]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I think your goals are completely unrealistic.

Thanks for your feedback. Point taken.

I guess my goal is to give my kids the absolute best education available in Chicago.

It seems like you would have tremendous insight on this matter.

Do you think the top public elementary programs in either the burbs or LP are at all competitive with the best private ones?

[CatfishJ]

Originally Posted by citylove101

You are the type of parents that drives me nuts here at home in NY NY...pressuring them into your idea of high-achieving little ivy Leaguers. Take your lead from them, not the other way around. [/url]

Oh man, I'd hate to be those parents. This isn't Battle Hymn of the Tiger Parents!!

My fiance and I both came from very humble backgrounds in Missouri and with a little luck both wound up at Harvard mainly due to our being recruited as athletes (obviously we had good grades and test scores, but our coaches really got us in).

We both received an excellent education, but no better an education than might have been available to a motivated student at a very large number of other excellent undergraduate programs.

The difference that made all of the difference was the access to the alumni network and the brand name of the degree. These opened up job opportunities for us that literally would just never have been available to people of equal intelligence but with a less brand-name degree. The difference is DRASTIC. This should not be so, and there are exceptions to every rule, but this is the way the world seems to be working.

We didn't know any better when we were in high school, but now that we've been through it, we just want to make that kind of opportunity available to our kids. The unemployment rate for recent college grads is 20% and the underemployment rate is surely much much higher. For better or worse, this simply is not (yet?) the case for ivy league grads.

No one from my high school ever went to Harvard before I went, but my high school has sent one student there every year since I graduated. It is certainly true that some schools for whatever reason place more students at certain schools than others do. It is too idealistic to behave otherwise. It wouldn't be the end of the world if the kids didn't get in somewhere great, but it would certainly be better if they did!

[chet everett]

I suspect the OP's initial post is not atypical of youthful high achievers, though I have to be honest and say that it does concern me that they are putting the cart far before the horse...

Since their own success seems to have stemmed in larger part from a balance of athletic talent with academic prowess I would caution that even at very well regarded public schools in Chicago the unique circumstances that draw students from across te city tend to make it difficult for balanced student athletes to thrive.

This is somewhat less of problem in the well regarded suburban schools, thought the larger size of some schools tend to amp up the competitive nature of the popular sports teams making it quite rare to have both the time and ability to reach the heights of both athletics and academics... There are kids cut from teams at Hinsdale Central, New Trier and Stevenson that would be starters at smaller schools.

When throwing private schools into the comparison it is probably true that the legacy of athletic success and strong academics is quite good in the Catholic high schools, though in fairness if one is looking for the highest levels of both one will be hard pressed to find any school that consistenly turns out graduates that are recruited by the top tier schools. The kids that might earn football scholarships from Joliet Catholic or academic scholarships from St. Ignatius are not typically the same group. Even a school like Loyola Academy,Benet or Marmion would not "guarantee" any talented 8th grader a spot at Notre Dame or Boston College let alone an Ivy.


I also would hold off on getting too focused on "as many as kids as we can have" or even a house big enough to hold 'em all in until the relaties of paying $25,000++/year in property taxes settles in after marriage. I have met all kinds of people that seem quite well adjusted / intellectually prepared to jump right into full blown family life and an awful lot of such folks who want a "forever" home find out in cruel ways they would have done much better with a "starter"...

[linicx]

CatfishJ Ivy might be a premature but it is not impossible. Much can happen in the next 20 years. However, imho, the best way to get your children prepared is to be highly active and involved with the teachers, principals, school boards, school activities and homework from K to college. And inbetween enlarge their worlds with exploring, nature, travel, museums, art, mustic and other cultures. Do make learning science, computers, research and math fun.

My friend who was born in China had his boy in his lap playing computer games with him at one-year. By three-years the child had his own computer. Now that he is in his senior year of high school he carries a 4.0 average, he's fluent in more than one laugage and he's been accepted at M.I.T.