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Thank you for the recommendation. Yes we will only move if he gets admitted. We consider Dallas also because he is a competitive swimmer. We need to find a place with good swimming clubs as well. So what makes St. Mark’s so unique compared to other schools? My kid is likely to do high school swimming as well. Do private schools that you mentioned have good high school sport support?
When I said old money, I meant the schools here are not so diversified.
I have a 7th grader at a public school who is very hard working, competitive and high achieving. Although we have been happy at the public school, as we look to the high school, we are starting to realize the GPA race means not doing music and sports (since they are regular courses and not honors) and wondering if this wouldn't be the case at top private schools like St. mark. So for those with kids at top private school, is there less of a GPA focus? Or do the kids take as many honors/APs as they can? There is just something sad about not taking electives without worrying about honors/GPA bump.
Focus is not solely on GPA at St. marks (specifically). I can't speak to other similar schools. St. Marks actually grades and reports GPA differently than many area schools, and because of this the students are judged on college applications against each other and not against schools where bright kids push their GPAs up to 4.5 etc. Yes there are honors classes but every class from 10th grade up is essentially an AP course....whether it has a label like that or not. Whether it has a higher GPA boost or not...
At St. marks they WANT kids to pursue a wide range of interests, including sports and the arts. It's not just encouraged, it's required. Students are encouraged to pick a wide range of courses that support their interests. And while students will certainly work very hard on their grades with a concern about their reported GPA at the end of each year, this isn't the single focus of classrooms or the administrators. They are focused on the students as budding men. Colleges don't even want this GPA race or students that only have high GPAs and few other interests. They want kids that are well rounded and confident in their strengths, who can bring excellence to the University in a unique way. Schools like St. Marks realize this is much more valuable than a point system and so they teach to the whole student rather than some ideal. This is why they don't even rank students because they want the entire student to shine through on a college app, and not his "number" within the class rank.
I have a 7th grader at a public school who is very hard working, competitive and high achieving. Although we have been happy at the public school, as we look to the high school, we are starting to realize the GPA race means not doing music and sports (since they are regular courses and not honors) and wondering if this wouldn't be the case at top private schools like St. mark. So for those with kids at top private school, is there less of a GPA focus? Or do the kids take as many honors/APs as they can? There is just something sad about not taking electives without worrying about honors/GPA bump.
Take a look at your ISD and its GPA calculation. For example, DISD does GPA only on 15 core classes - not including electives. As such, it removes the incentive to completely game the system and not take arts/sports/electives that aren't weighted.
At Hockaday, all courses with a letter grade are weighed equally in GPA calculation. No special weighting for honors or AP classes. Also, students are not ranked. This was one of the reasons we decided to move our high achieving, very ambitious/competitive daughter from a great public school to Hockaday in middle school. This reduces the excessive competition and the stress on the kids.
I have a 7th grader at a public school who is very hard working, competitive and high achieving. Although we have been happy at the public school, as we look to the high school, we are starting to realize the GPA race means not doing music and sports (since they are regular courses and not honors) and wondering if this wouldn't be the case at top private schools like St. mark. So for those with kids at top private school, is there less of a GPA focus? Or do the kids take as many honors/APs as they can? There is just something sad about not taking electives without worrying about honors/GPA bump.
I have two high schoolers (and a middle schooler) at "top" privates. My high schoolers take almost all AP and honors but are not at the top of their class. We have spent a lot of time recently looking at colleges and what we have heard from the most selective schools (those with single digit admit rates) is this: They are looking for kids in the top 5-10 percent of their high school class (Val/Sal doesn't matter much), who have taken the most rigorous coursework available to them at their school, and who have been continuously dedicated one or two extracurricular activities where they have achieved a high level of mastery and or leadership. As long as your kid is near the top of their class, I wouldn't worry too much about the GPA to the hundredth of a point. Most schools recalculate the GPA anyway. Almost all unweight it and some colleges explicitly drop certain courses from the calculation. The most important thing academically (we've been told) is to take rigorous courses and do well in them. IF you do all this (including excel at extracurriculars) you can increase your likelihood of acceptance, but definitely can't guarantee it. So if a school has an overall 5 percent acceptance rate, and you do everything right, you may be able to improve your odds to...say...15-25 percent. So having great grades, rigorous courses, high test scores (test optional - ha!), and high caliber extracurriculars is all important. Even if you do it all right, it's still not "likely" that you'll get in to any top-level school. But...you might!
I'm sure that sounds negative (believe me...we are living it!) but honestly there are a lot of "very selective" "impressive" schools that aren't necessarily Ivy/Stanford/MIT. And high achieving students will have plenty of options if they are willing to apply to a range of schools. I think I'm saying this mostly to assuage my own fears so remind me of that when I'm stressing out next spring about college acceptances.
I have a 7th grader at a public school who is very hard working, competitive and high achieving. Although we have been happy at the public school, as we look to the high school, we are starting to realize the GPA race means not doing music and sports (since they are regular courses and not honors) and wondering if this wouldn't be the case at top private schools like St. mark. So for those with kids at top private school, is there less of a GPA focus? Or do the kids take as many honors/APs as they can? There is just something sad about not taking electives without worrying about honors/GPA bump.
I have 2 Marksmen and I'm hearing this lately from transfers from publics. It sounds like maybe in the public schools the pressure to excel in sports/music/robotics/etc creates some incentive to focus exclusively on one thing, and other kids/coaches discourage a student from dividing their focus. If that's true, that's a bummer.
At SM the kids are generally expected to participate in sports in high school - there are a lot of teams and while few of them are very good, we get students here and there that end up in Power 5 D1 programs. More often we see students who love their sport but also excel in choir, journalism, photography, etc. A handful will play D3 or small D1 sports, more often they take a lifelong love of both sports and art into their college experience.
I'm pretty sure at this point most private schools only rank for UT/A&M admissions and don't release those ranks to the community - that's the case for SM but I hear similar for other schools. SM does a few other things to remove the incentives to juice GPA with nonsense behavior. The GPA calculation doesn't include + or -...if you get a 90 you get the same credit on your GPA as though you got a 99. That creates a nice cushion for the boys to make choices about their time. Also the school doesn't officially offer AP's until junior year and then only offers about half the possible classes. So extra weight points for AP/honors is a marginal contributor to GPA. My kid's Algebra II teacher told me that they finish the pre-AP curriculum by spring break and start precalculus after that, and that wasn't an AP or even honors class...that's just how they teach it.
All in all, we have found that the environment is pretty collegial in terms of grades, not a lot of sharp elbows. Plenty of room for everyone to succeed, and the boys are proud that there are so many multi-talented students at their school.
I'm sure that sounds negative (believe me...we are living it!) but honestly there are a lot of "very selective" "impressive" schools that aren't necessarily Ivy/Stanford/MIT. And high achieving students will have plenty of options if they are willing to apply to a range of schools. I think I'm saying this mostly to assuage my own fears so remind me of that when I'm stressing out next spring about college acceptances.
I found the book "Who Gets In and Why" by Jeff Selingo really eye opening if you haven't read it - he backs up everything you're describing.
One of the things he reports is that each school has their own way of analyzing the applicant high school grades, and it's not class rank. They pull the transcript into their system and assign the student a score taking account 1) difficulty of courses attempted 2) unweighted grades for only selected (aka academic) courses and 3) difficulty profile of the high school.
I have also been told by someone working in a college admissions office that if an applicant comes in without a standardized test score, they essentially "estimate" one for the student. And that they are not particularly generous about it. So...do with that information what you will.
This whole process is so crazy-making. I'm so ready to be on the other side of it for good.
...So what makes St. Mark’s so unique compared to other schools?....
It's one of the ten or twenty best secondary schools in the United States, that's what. On par, for academic rigor and selectiveness, with the Phiilips Academies, St. Grottlesex, etc. Kids who leave St. Mark's near the bottom of their class frequently end up as valedictorians at local public schools.
I found the book "Who Gets In and Why" by Jeff Selingo really eye opening if you haven't read it - he backs up everything you're describing.
One of the things he reports is that each school has their own way of analyzing the applicant high school grades, and it's not class rank. They pull the transcript into their system and assign the student a score taking account 1) difficulty of courses attempted 2) unweighted grades for only selected (aka academic) courses and 3) difficulty profile of the high school.
I have also been told by someone working in a college admissions office that if an applicant comes in without a standardized test score, they essentially "estimate" one for the student. And that they are not particularly generous about it. So...do with that information what you will.
This whole process is so crazy-making. I'm so ready to be on the other side of it for good.
There's not going to be any graduate of SM that doesn't have a high SAT.
If you graduate from SM without black marks on your record, you'll be pretty much an automatic admit at UT or A&M. SM graduates who choose those schools, instead of more selective universities, by and large do so because they anticipate that they will be spending their business future in Texas and expect to form valuable connections there.
My kid's Algebra II teacher told me that they finish the pre-AP curriculum by spring break and start precalculus after that, and that wasn't an AP or even honors class...that's just how they teach it.....
Back in my day all the math books were for a grade higher - so in 6th grade you were working from a book marked "7th Grade Math". And SM has gotten significantly more academically rigorous since then.
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