What is better for high school: Tough academics or being able to get top grades? (SAT, universities)
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Still doing the high school choice here. Sigh.
Next question:
Better to be a good (top 25%) student in a highly competitive very strong academic school and where you will have to work really hard to be in the top 1/4
OR
A top (top 3% likely) student at an average school that is not very competitive and where you do not have to work overly hard.
Should high school be about getting the best education you can get and being with academic peers?
OR
Should high school be about being a great achiever and coming away with top notch grades in a less stressful environment?
A lot of that depends on future plans for college. We were transferred about the time our kids were starting junior high school. For our kids we chose to buy in top notch academic high school district, where they were challenged academically and ended up in top 25%. We had coworkers that were also transferred to the same city at the same time. They had kids the same age as ours, with whom our kids had been in school with, and were about evenly matched academically. Our friends choose a much less difficult school district when we moved. I'm talking about the kind of school where the teachers let kids take tests home to finish, if they don't finish them in class. Gee, no cheating going on there!
Their kids ended up at the top of their classes and got into their dream schools. Our kids ended up in the top 25%. While I do feel that our kids got a much better education, and were well prepared for what was to come in college, they didn't get into their dream schools. Yes, they did get accepted to what I've heard referred to as their "stretch schools", but not their dream. Did it all work out okay? I think so, they are both happy now in their respective universities. However, I think if I had it to do all over again, I would have opted for the easier school.
My high school had a happy medium...a mix between both. It was not an overly competitive school, but I took honors classes. I ended up in the 8th percentile. Some of those honors classes were a joke, but colleges don't know that when you apply. They just see that you took honors and got a good grade so that looks impressive. But not all of my honors classes were jokes...some of them were actually effective and prepared me for college.
Education is a game. Sometimes you just have to do what's best for your GPA, which might be taking a class where you don't learn much but get an easy A.
In my school, the only way you could be in the top of the class was to take honors classes because of the weighted grades. You could get straight As in the college prep classes and only end up with a 4.0, while the kids in the honors classes could achieve up to a 4.9 (PE and electives are non-weighted).
I worked in the admissions office of a highly ranked, competitive college for four years and the dean of admissions was often asked a similar question: should a student get the higher grade in the easier class or the lower grade in the harder class. The answer, across the board from all the top public and private colleges is: they want you to get the higher grade in the harder class.
Still doing the high school choice here. Sigh.
Next question:
Better to be a good (top 25%) student in a highly competitive very strong academic school and where you will have to work really hard to be in the top 1/4
OR
A top (top 3% likely) student at an average school that is not very competitive and where you do not have to work overly hard.
Should high school be about getting the best education you can get and being with academic peers?
OR
Should high school be about being a great achiever and coming away with top notch grades in a less stressful environment?
The school I teach at is one of a highly competitive environment with an exceptional reputation to the degree that we do not rank our students at all. When transcripts go out they will have the GPA but not rank of any kind. Even our lowest performing students usually get into top colleges many with scholarships, and our top 15% go to the academies and ivy leagues.
Compare that to the top 3% at an average district and you will see that the more academically rigorous programs tend to be well known and understood by the admissions departments at universities.
I don't know the US system. However, the UK system has standardized public exams which are not administered by the various education departments and access to Universities is competitive based on results in those exams. If you go to a tough school academically then you have more chance of getting good grades in the exams.
Universities - with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge who have their own entrance exams - use a national standardized admissions system and will make offers to students in their senior year which are usually conditional on that student achieving certain grades in their exams.
I appreciate that this is a bit off topic but thought it might be interesting for comparison purposes.
My high school had a happy medium...a mix between both. It was not an overly competitive school, but I took honors classes. I ended up in the 8th percentile. Some of those honors classes were a joke, but colleges don't know that when you apply. They just see that you took honors and got a good grade so that looks impressive. But not all of my honors classes were jokes...some of them were actually effective and prepared me for college.
Education is a game. Sometimes you just have to do what's best for your GPA, which might be taking a class where you don't learn much but get an easy A.
This is where you are wrong. Colleges are very well aware of how rigorous a high school is and that does factor into admissions. If you are top 25% in a rigorous and are going up against someone that is top 10% from an easier high school, your school will factor into the decision more than your grades and chances are you will get the placement vs the one with better grades. We see this happen quite often in our high school, which is highly competitive. Kids that are in the top 25% are almost always getting into their top choices for college with the top 10% getting into Ivy caliber schools.
I agree. Colleges generally do know the reputation of a school, and will take that into account.
I personally think it's better to be a good student at a tough school than to take easy way out and coast through with what sounds like a subpar school. At the same time, I would prefer to avoid those school settings where the kids are overly competitive or focused on resume building and GPA at the expense of an actual education (which seems to be increasingly the trend these days); pressure to do well for the sake only of getting into the "right" college isn't what education should be about, either.
I think it depends on the student. My kids graduated from a competitive HS, and it served them well. My youngest was friends with other highly competitive students, to the point where they took the SAT multiple times trying to outscore each other. Now he's one of the few accepted into the honor's program at the college he'll attend next year.
I have a good friend whose kids were eligible for (FL) state tuition scholarships if they graduated with at least a 3.0 gpa, and it didn't matter what courses they took. Once her kids covered their core classes needed for graduation, she told them to take all easy elective type stuff so they wouldn't lose the scholarship money. It was no surprise to me that neither of them was up for the college level work. They both lost the scholarship money after the first year.
If you have a capable student, they are much better off in a competitive, challenging high school.
Ultimately, any desirable, truly competitive employers or competitors or peers or customers "see through" all the gamesmanship of HS or college or office politics
Best preparation for an ever-changing, tech-intensive, globally competitive world is to acquire job-relevant skills needed for overall career success...and the "brand cachet" diplomas, GPAs, test scores, recommendation letters, etc for entry to certain elite colleges and employers
Always interesting how many allegedly "pressure cooker" HS or colleges or stressed-out, "well-rounded" kids actually have rather unremarkable career outcomes, even as alums 5-10-20yrs post-grad...
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