private schools if you live in hyde park/oakley/mt lookout

[soapdish]

My son is a senior at Walnut and has been there since 7th grade. In short, I would have him go nowhere else in the city or suburbs, public or private. It is a phenomenal school and the opportunities it has afforded him, both in school and after graduation, are unparallelled. The fact that the school is urban, public and two miles from my driveway isn't bad either. As a musician, he has played Carnegie Hall, will march in the London New Year's parade, has toured Europe with a state-wide honor band and has studied under accomplished professionals. In academics, he has been pushed and prodded under a curriculum that will rival anything he sees in college. In society, he has befriended students from neighborhoods across the city, with widely varying backgrounds and demographics. We moved to Cincinnati 6 years ago and were determined to live in the city and not in the sprawlburbs. Walnut was the lynchpin to our plan and it has turned out extremely well.

Feel free to PM me for more information.

[gman5431]

Originally Posted by soapdish

My son is a senior at Walnut and has been there since 7th grade. In short, I would have him go nowhere else in the city or suburbs, public or private. It is a phenomenal school and the opportunities it has afforded him, both in school and after graduation, are unparallelled. The fact that the school is urban, public and two miles from my driveway isn't bad either. As a musician, he has played Carnegie Hall, will march in the London New Year's parade, has toured Europe with a state-wide honor band and has studied under accomplished professionals. In academics, he has been pushed and prodded under a curriculum that will rival anything he sees in college. In society, he has befriended students from neighborhoods across the city, with widely varying backgrounds and demographics. We moved to Cincinnati 6 years ago and were determined to live in the city and not in the sprawlburbs. Walnut was the lynchpin to our plan and it has turned out extremely well.

Feel free to PM me for more information.

The values of Walnut Hills in a nutshell.

G Man

[Doppelganger69]

Another school to consider is Cincinnati Country Day School. It offers a lot academically in a very warm and welcoming environment. What ages are your other children?

[trancespottingpl]

I am a 21 year old male that is currently a Senior at Xavier University. I moved to Cincinnati right after high school where I attended in Chicago. I attended a prestigious Jesuit (private) high school in the downtown Chicago area, Saint Ignatius College Prep, which was several thousand more than the other already expensive private high schools around the City. I attended there my freshman and sophomore year and then transferred to the local public high school, Lake Forest High School. There was way more diversity at Saint Ignatius than Lake Forest because students from all parts of Chicago came to attend. Perhaps the same could be said about the more prestigious private schools in Cincinnati considering that many people are willing to travel to attend a better school. The public school I went to wasn't diverse at all though. It was in a rich suburb and it was definitely at least 90% white.

Nonetheless, I still preferred the public school over the private one. The private school was in a bad area and I could tell that they let in a bunch of kids that weren't smart and didn't deserve to be there but they let them in anyway to make the school diverse, fill their quotas, or whatever. These were the kids that would like the same teenagers you seen in over the rhine. I was pretty sick of my parents paying over 15 grand a year for me to go to private school with a bunch of thugs. The atmosphere created by the staff wasn't appealing either; we weren't allowed to even listen to mp3 players during lunch or a free period while we were writing homework, we had uniforms which were a pain to press every morning, the technology as far as computers sucked, etc. However, the school was renowned for its academics and many of my teachers earned degrees from schools such as Northwestern, Princeton, Yale, and Brown just to name a few. I might also note that our campus was open meaning that we were allowed to go off to get lunch and stuff, however, the surrounding area was filled with low income housing (which has now been torn down), gangs, drugs, violence, etc. Someone was shot at a hot dog restaurant I would frequently eat at over a parking spot.

I absolutely loved the high school I went to after Saint Ignatius. I made so many friends that I felt were like me. I didn't have as much close friends at the old high school because everyone lived in different parts of the city and you'd pretty much just meet at school, hang out there, and that's it - especially for freshman and sophomores who don't have cars yet. As far as the education, I personally thought it was better than Saint Ignatius. This high school let in everyone from the suburb who wanted to attend because it's public and didn't have any type of placement test like the other one. Yet, the average act score for my graduating class was either 25 or 26 while Saint Ignatius was either 26 or 27. As far as diversity: well there was none. That's how I liked it too. I have friends of many backgrounds, but regardless my closest friends are those who are most similar to me.

As far as public schools in Cincinnati, go for it! Just go to one that belongs to a good suburb and your child will have a similar experience as I do. I'll never send my kids to a private Catholic school - it's a waste of money. It's a business like any other - they're just brainwashing parents thinking their kids are going to a much safer and academically superior school when in fact there's plenty of public schools that are overall superior to the private ones.

As far as drugs, yeah they were everywhere in high school. If your kid isn't into drugs, it won't really matter. There was as much drugs in the private school I went to that there was in the public school. Although I'd say probably more in the public school because rich suburbs are notorious for having drug problems. Although there weren't much hard drugs, primarily marijuana. Most high school kids get a rush off getting a 30 pack of beer for the weekend anyway, and that may be stereotyping but that's atleast what I remember from my days back in high school and it wasn't just me and my friends.