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Except that Harvard will know that the school your kids are attending isn't as good as their old school which makes getting in more difficult. A top 15% from a top/challenging high school is better than #3 from a mediocre school in the eyes of an admissions rep.
We are fortunate that we can get excellent schools in our public school system but I would probably do the same thing in your case if you can find a school with a challenging curriculum (enough AP classes, etc.) and not have to pay for private schools why not. I know a few people spending $20K+/year to send their children to private schools in our area to get into top colleges yet their acceptance rates to the tier 1 schools aren't any higher than they are at the top public schools here . Save the money for college I say. That doesn't mean I would send my kids to inferior schools just to save a couple bucks though. Besides, if you make under $180K, Harvard is only 10% of your AGI-meaning it's $18,000/year if you make $180K--that's less than a cheep state school in our state (Harvard is FREE if you make $60K or less).
By that same standard, though, Harvard also knows that the IB program at Suburbia High School isn't Phillips Exeter (no matter how much the school administration would like to think it is). They already have a ton of white or Asian, economically comfortable valedictorians. The diversity they seek-- and they do-- may well be served more easily by picking a kid who can manage to shine even though they're on the other side of town, attending Projects High (or that weird kid who homeschooled so he could have more time to design a new kind of large hadron collider-- though he might turn Harvard down for Cal Tech).
Except that Harvard will know that the school your kids are attending isn't as good as their old school which makes getting in more difficult. A top 15% from a top/challenging high school is better than #3 from a mediocre school in the eyes of an admissions rep.
I have no idea on how Harvard admits its students per se, but for the diverse students I had met while living in Boston when I was in college, this is a really interesting take on Harvard's admission criteria.
If this is true, I would love to know where it is published.
By that same standard, though, Harvard also knows that the IB program at Suburbia High School isn't Phillips Exeter (no matter how much the school administration would like to think it is). They already have a ton of white or Asian, economically comfortable valedictorians. The diversity they seek-- and they do-- may well be served more easily by picking a kid who can manage to shine even though they're on the other side of town, attending Projects High (or that weird kid who homeschooled so he could have more time to design a new kind of large hadron collider-- though he might turn Harvard down for Cal Tech).
Aconite,
Even this is slightly off topic from the thread, your post may be fairly accurate.
In my experience when I was living in Boston, some of my co-wokers during my restaurant server years went to Harvard. They were a VERY interesting mix ranging of ROTC scholarship recipients to athletes on the row team. Which at the time was very surprising considering Hollywood stereotypes and the "old money" cliches tied to Harvard and its prestige.
Mind you this was over a decade ago, so I am not sure how much has changed in student body or acceptance criteria, but I imagine not too dissimilar.
I have no idea on how Harvard admits its students per se, but for the diverse students I had met while living in Boston when I was in college, this is a really interesting take on Harvard's admission criteria.
If this is true, I would love to know where it is published.
This is exactly what I thought. Much as Harvard has "best" status, it does not seem to be the hollow status that most "best" high schools carry. The Admissions Office at Harvard seems to care less about numbers, especially b/c students with high tests scores and GPA's from "best" schools are a dime-a-dozen. It's been my experience that the better unis have more substantial criteria for the students that they admit, although I am sure that they still admit a good # of students from "best" schools.
Perhaps world's wealthiest and smartest region today is PaloAlto/Woodside area
Lots of younger families where fathers (tech like finance is a male-dominated industry) are products of middle-income, mediocre suburban public HS all over US but often graduated from Stanford CS undergrad or grad...or some other elite college/major
Those who choose to have kids (it's more discretionary in modern era) often send kids to public local elem schools in affluent suburbs and will opt for private HS (when appropriate age) simply for physical safety of kids vs possibly violent poor kids (public HS often include kids from the many slums adjacent to PaloAlto area)
And many in this wealthy, jaded crowd predict their kids may attend Stanford CS for a yr or so before dropping out to form/join some start-up w/smart classmates (only relevance of a great school is meeting smart, industrious classmates, not some mythical "education" from sitting amongst 100s of kids in some big auditorium as some grad TA orally reads out stuff, kids take notes and later memorize nonsense for a silly exam, much like 100yrs ago)...the irrelevance and downright mockery of "formal", overpriced education is rather apparent in jaded, leading edge places like PaloAlto/Woodside, where engineers tend to analyze what are one's job-relevant skills/creativity, rather than blindly accepting "brand" cachet of any diploma or alleged "education" or miseducation
Suspect if had an academically mediocre but physically safe public school option many of this highly productive crowd are rational enough not to opt for some $40K/yr/kid pvt school; much more useful to hand the $40K/yr to the kid and educate them about investing, companies and the macroeconomy via hands-on stock investing, not throwing the money away on an inefficient, archaic, yet "formal" education
Many smart, moneyed engineers of modern era view any school (even elite engineering colleges) as a mere union card for entry to one's first elite employer
Kids of alums of such elite colleges have a natural legacy/financial advantage in gaining entry to such colleges, no matter one's HS
And any smart, industrious kid, no matter one's father's successes/failures, can acquire enough knowledge/skills/college credits, etc while in HS (esp in an online/Kindle/khanacademy, etc world) to enter such "easier-admit" colleges/majors like Berkeley CS or IL CS or CMU CS or MI CS, etc where many of SiliconValley's wealthiest misfits themselves attended college, perhaps as back-ups/safety choices when the "curious" lib arts-biased admissions office at Stanford turned them away for lack of enough "well-rounded" quals or community svc or affirm action ineligibilty, etc etc....the engineers have never gotten along well with the admissions office/lib arts/aff action/HR/sales&mkg crowd....some things never change...
Actually, since you don't have any kids, you don't see squat--no matter how many class warriors validate you. Since what you know about parenting and school districts can fit inside a smallish thimble, allow me to clear matters up for you.
School districts mean a great deal. Anybody who tells me that there's no correlation between school system and preparation for higher education is smoking crack. In my own metro area, all you have to do is look at the varying percentages for graduating classes needing remediation upon entering college, i.e., remedial classes in math, English, etc.
In some school systems in my metro, the remediation rate for graduating seniors entering college is north of 60%. In the school system where my children attend, it's around 3%. Care to tell me that there isn't a difference in the education a child receives in the two school system? I'll say that you're full of baloney.
And hell yes it's a class thing, but not for the reasons you think. Upper income classes in this country are largely that way for a reason, not that way by coincidence. They are that way because the parents have likely valued education in their own lives and entered careers where education is important. They likely are heavy readers and regard education as a lifelong process, rather than something to do for twelve years of one's life and then forget for the remaining sixty. That means they place a great deal of emphasis on education for their own children, and back up that commitment by attending parent-teacher night, dashing off e-mails to a teacher to learn why a kid's grades have begun to sag, and actively seek additional help when needed. Compare that to a blue-collar or working-class neighborhood where education ends at age 16 or 18, and it ought to be clear: It's not about differences in income level--it's about differences in culture and what each culture values.
Further, the classroom experience is markedly different. Whereas an inner-city school not only has to deal with a far less involved group of parents, it also has to devote far more of its time dealing with the social dysfunction of its student body's families. Ask any inner-city school teacher about the glorified social work that takes up so much of the day, time that simply can not be devoted to teaching the core curriculum.
What's more, parents in better school districts are not only more involved in their children's education, but they back it up with their wallets, voluntarily shouldering higher property tax rates to pay for better teachers, better facilities, and better programs.
So tell you what. When you actually start spawning kids, why don't you check in with us and tell us how your putting your theory to practice? Tell us how much you're enjoying your kids being enrolled in an inner city school district and what a fabulous education they're getting. Because until you've actually put your money where your mouth is, I'm not sure how you have the right to judge the motivations of others.
Thank-goodness for some straight talk! Right on all points! I'll be repping you until Xmas just to give you what you deserve for this post.
Yes I do realize that, I grew up in it. In the Upper West Side, back in the 80s and early 90s, this whole debacle NEVER existed. There was no coffee talk between parents and this subject. You went to whatever PS your neighborhood was located. Or you sent your kids to catholic or private school. But on the whole no way.
For the record, I never said I went to school in NYC.
I went school in middle class suburbia in NJ during the school year. My parents did not want to me going to school in the city.
I call shenanigans! I lived on the Upper West Side during that period with a child and oh yes, it did exist. We loved and wanted the best for our babies just like we do now. Oh, yes there was coffee talk between parents. Urgent talk! Yeah, like we just trusted whatever Public School was down the block!
Last edited by laysayfair; 07-16-2011 at 11:07 PM..
Really? Because I found the exact opposite - successful people who credit their parents for sacrificing and investing a lot in their education to send them to great schools.
Me too. My son thanks me all the time. And I always thanked my Mom for getting us out of Brownsville, Brooklyn and their horrible schools.
I call shenanigans! I lived on the Upper West Side during that period with a child and oh yes, it did exist. We loved and wanted the best for our babies just like we do now. Oh, yes there was coffee talk between parents. Urgent talk! Yeah, like we just trusted whatever Public School was down the block!
The thing is (trying to wend my way back to being on topic, since I'm told I'm veering from it)...what is best emotionally or physically or even intellectually and what is best scholastically (and yes, I draw a distinction between intellectual and scholastic)for one's particular child may be at cross-points. What is best scholastically for my daughter, for example, would be a school similar to the one I attended (old New England boarding/day school). OTOH, boarding school is something we're not comfortable with for her, for a number of reasons. Sometimes choosing "best" in one category means choosing "drop back and punt" in another.
This really is very characteristic of the bourgeoisie: image and reputation matter more than actual content. One thing that I have learned is that reputation and status these days mean nothing and are determined by everything but actual character or tangible content. It's usually a case of one well-respected person (or a few people) characterizing something as "good" or "bad" and others following suit without thinking for themselves or testing the premise according to their own standards. In such a case, parents lull themselves into a false sense of security wrt their child's education: they figure that a "good" school district will ensure an education and attendance to a "good" uni. Parents such as these are usually very competitive and want "only the best," regardless of any real, positive results that it has on their lives or the lives of their children. It's definitely a status thing.
Moreover, self-conscious parents want people to know that they care about their kids, so they make sure that they are in a "best" or "good" school district so that they are not seen as neglectful/crazy by other parents. There is often no real evaluation of the district or the school by one's own standards, which is perfect for the busy, status-conscious parent who simply wants to pick a school that will ensure that they and their children fit in with the "right" people to acquire a "good" reputation and be done with it.
There are certainly those parents who care about their children's educations, and there are certainly districts that deserve "best" status. However, more often than not, you find parents stating that the school that their child is attending is a "great" school, regardless of whether it actually is or not, b/c the parents see the school as a reflection of themselves and their kids and they are not about to admit that their child's school is crappy (b/c then that would mean that they are crappy).
It certainly has become problematic, as more and more schools are described and labeled erroneously so that people and children are not negatively labeled and treated accordingly by status-conscious bullies.
So, to the OP, yeah, I completely agree. But then, this is why the kids from the "best" school districts are often not going to top schools, b/c, although they've gone to the "best" schools, there is very little "best" content there. Thus, in the end, you find that the label of "best" is not always indicative of the "best," even at the university level.
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. Save the money for college I say. That doesn't mean I would send my kids to inferior schools just to save a couple bucks though. Besides, if you make under $180K, Harvard is only 10% of your AGI-meaning it's $18,000/year if you make $180K--that's less than a cheep state school in our state 
(Harvard is FREE if you make $60K or less).
