Greenhill vs Hockaday (Dallas, Plano, Howe: best schools, live, pool)

[EDS_]

Moderator cut: orphaned

In my mind the great question is does the family prefer girls only or coed. Both schools deal very well with advanced kids.

[nakold23]

I agree, I stated that in my first post. There are intricacies between the two relating to test scores, college admission, etc but advanced students will thrive in either environment. That is certainly the biggest question about whether they want all girls (and uniforms) or coed.

[New to Dallas2]

Greenhill!!!

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Moderator cut: orphaned

In my mind the great question is does the family prefer girls only or coed. Both schools deal very well with advanced kids.

This.

This is why Greenhill is more competitive than St Marks or Hockaday. Fewer seats for either Gender.

[HockDad]

I don't think any reasonable person could honestly state that Greenhill is more competitive than St. Marks or Hockaday. I know numerous kids that were accepted to both schools and almost all of the kids (or their parents) picked St. Marks or Hockaday instead of Greenhill.

Greenhill is a fantastic school, but lets not go overboard.

[Vacation101]

depends on how you define competitiveness, i guess. for K, greenhill seems to add a class so there are many more openings than at hockaday, where openings are based on attrition. i would guess the same group of families apply to all three so "competitiveness" in terms of admissions will really be based on number of openings. the fact that people end up picking st. marks or hockaday over greenhill only means that the first two have higher yields than greenhill.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by HockDad

I don't think any reasonable person could honestly state that Greenhill is more competitive than St. Marks or Hockaday. I know numerous kids that were accepted to both schools and almost all of the kids (or their parents) picked St. Marks or Hockaday instead of Greenhill.

Greenhill is a fantastic school, but lets not go overboard.

Agreed.

[DFWBaby]

I find this conversation interesting. Among my friends with preschool-aged daughters, I was the only one with Hockaday as a first choice. So, at least among my small group, Hockaday wasn't the top of the heap the way many assume it will be. Perhaps this is a lower v. upper school issue. I'm not sure. But, personally I really liked it .

[HockDad]

I find that interesting as well. As most people know a couple of weeks ago was "admission" week. At my kids' schools there were all sorts of discussions about where kids (siblings) were admitted. We know numerous kids that were admitted to both greenhill and st marks/hockaday. I did not know one of them that selected greenhill first. Now, a couple of points:

1) parents might/do lie about where their kids were accepted. I really only can trust about half the people I talked with concenring the subject. You assume the rest of the people are telling you truth, but you really don't know them well enough to "know" they are telling you the truth.

2) Hockaday is single sex and that rightfully can be offputting to some parents. It took my Husband and I a little time to get our heads wrapped around signle sex education. I can understand completely how Greenhill is the first choice if you insist on coed education.

3) People know that Hockaday/st marks is difficult to get into so that they don't really admit it is their first choice. For example, a family might say that ESD (also a great school) is their first choice for Brad. The family might know that Brad's scores won't qualify him for St Marks, so why not make ESD the first choice.

4) Different preschools likely feed to different schools. Lamplighter, St. Alcuin, and Meadowbrook all feed to St. Marks and Hockaday. No idea what schools might feed to Greenhill as a first choice, but I assume it happens.

5) Alumni and Siblings make a big difference. Mike is admitted to Greenhill 2 years ago. His brother gets into St. Marks and Greenhill this year. I totally understand why the family sends the brother to Greenhill instead of St. Marks. Heck, I would as well.

[Big G]

Originally Posted by HockDad

I don't think any reasonable person could honestly state that Greenhill is more competitive than St. Marks or Hockaday.

Sure they could. I think you're missing the point about co-ed vs. single-sex. That factor right there reduces the potential pool of applicants by 50%.

Now, if you have the same group of "usual suspects" applying to Greenhill/St. Mark's and Greenhill/Hockaday, respectively, that's going to produce 2x the applicants for Greenhill, compared to the other two. Unless Greenhill has 2x the spots (and, in general, it doesn't), that would, indeed, make Greenhill more competitive than St. Mark's/Hockaday.

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As another poster commented, the yield rate is something completely different.