Does cost/benefit compute?

April 2, 2008 3:10 PM

What, if anything, are the advantages of attending an expensive private prep school over a local public high school.

Help me justify the $31,000 tuition cost of prep school. My 14 yr. old daughter has applied and been admitted, as a day student, to a top 50 prep school. My wife who works at the local high school says nothing can justify the cost (we have been granted significant financial aid.) Is this true? What would she get out of this experience that she might not get from a public school education?

posted by Xurando to education (47 answers total)

Connections.
posted by Enroute at 3:17 PM on April 2, 2008

I think it depends a lot on the local high school.

I went to a Catholic school for four years, despite not being Catholic, just because the local public schools were so abysmal. Before that, I went to an elementary magnet school. The difference between those two places and the local public schools . . . you had parents who cared at least a little bit about their children's education, which usually leads to better behaved students, attracts a different class of teachers, and allows there to be more focus on learning and less on keeping control of 30 kids.

But my guess is that if you can even contemplate a 31,000 tuition, you life in someplace with a halfway decent school system. In which case. . . it's a pretty big status symbol, I guess. Smaller class size, maybe?
posted by dinty_moore at 3:22 PM on April 2, 2008

I assume the $31,000 isn't the cost after financial aid, and that missing bit seems like the relevant number, unless they're only giving you loans.
posted by smackfu at 3:24 PM on April 2, 2008

Smaller class size.
More emphasis on academics in an environment that encourages academic excellence.
And, as Enroute says, connections.
It depends on the quality of your public schools.
posted by Floydd at 3:33 PM on April 2, 2008

It's probably going to depend wildly on the school - are there any local resources you can talk to? Counselors at either school, parents' groups not affiliated with either school, anything like that?

For whatever a little personal experience is worth, my wildly expensive private school (not as expensive as you're talking about, but it was a decade ago, so maybe not too far off with tuition inflation) was a pretty mixed bag. It gave me a far better education in my chosen foreign language than the local public school kids, and theoretically good connections in the area through a well-connected alumni network, if I had wanted to return there for a job after college (which I did not). However, the local public school turned out to do a much better job of other subjects like, say, math, history, English, etc. that would probably have been a lot more useful to me than a good French accent and great job connections in a town I would only move back to if it were a matter of life and death.

Once we discovered this, my younger sister went the public school route in the same town and it was a much better choice. For our family, in that particular town. Which is not necessarily generalizable except to suggest that you look into the specifics of your area.
posted by Stacey at 3:34 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to a private school in Australia, and the advantages seemed to be that there were better facilities, less behavioural problems with the students, and better grades overall.

I don't think you'll be able to answer your question with generalisations though. Your local high school may be excellent, and the gap between that and the prep school negligible. Have you already visited both?
posted by twirlypen at 3:35 PM on April 2, 2008

Enroute is right about connections. It can possibly pave the way in the future, assuming you can still afford to send her to a really good college after that sort of tuition.

Is the education there better? Oh, I'm sure. She'll probably have a much better exposure to "classical education" and less exposure to the "test driven, no idiot left behind" programs that are now the focus of public education.

I have significant issues with the current state of public education, and if I could afford to send my kid to one of the really good schools, I would certainly want to do it. That said; it sucks to be the "poor kid". The scholarship kids at those schools are often the ones that suck up a lot of the snobbery and asshattery of the over-privileged who aren't really smart enough to be in those schools, but are legacy kids. (Witness George Bush, who would have failed out of state junior college if his daddy hadn't been who his daddy was.)

I was a tutor at a very exclusive, insanely expensive school, and the way the scholarship kids were treated not only by students, but also by some of the faculty gave me pause when considering applying for financial aid to place my son there when he reached the right age.
posted by dejah420 at 3:37 PM on April 2, 2008

If your child really is gifted, have them apply to a math and science academy that is not only state subsidized, but actually gives good book. This school seems to rely on the "join us...because we are rich and old" kinda network.
posted by hal_c_on at 3:38 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to a private Jr High and then moved to the Public High School. My 10th grade English text book was the EXACT same book I'd used in 7th grade at the Private School.

You will not get lowest common denominator education at the Pvt school...chances are good that your child will not come home beat up because her test scores were 15 pts higher than the rest of the class...if she needs extra help she'll get it, if she's bored and ahead of the class the teacher will also notice that.

Oh, and it'll be worth the 30K a year to your daughter to NOT have to go to school where her MOM WORKS!! :)

However, I will add that if she can't dress the part, she will get picked on mercilessly...I was the scholarship student at the pvt school who wore plain pockets when everyone else was wearing LLBean and Gloria Vanderbuilt (That'll give you an idea of how long ago ;)
posted by legotech at 3:40 PM on April 2, 2008

A lot depends on the schools being compared. In general, top prep schools will have a much smaller student/teacher ratio leading to students getting more personal attention than they might receive in a budget strapped public school. There's also something to be said about the academic rigor that comes from an environment where failing can mean getting kicked out (students have a stronger incentive to study, and teachers aren't forced to devote a disproportionate amount of time on very weak students).

However, in your case you do have an excellent local public school. For you, Enroute pretty much sums up the key difference - contacts. One other important factor would be more of an emphasis on real education and student personal growth and less on the MCAS.
posted by dchase at 3:41 PM on April 2, 2008

Here are a few points from my personal experience at a similarly priced top 10 private school.

1. We had a couple of dedicated university counsellors. All of whom (as well as the headmaster) knew the admissions staff of the Ivy Leagues, Oxbridge etc. on a personal basis. Almost everyone got into their school of choice. So if this is the kind of path your daughter is hoping to pursue, it could be helpful.

2. When I got to university, I noticed a marked difference in the difficulty my new friends from public school had with the work load, work content and discipline of self-dedicated study and my own experience. Freshman year was a like a holiday for me compared to my last couple years of high school. (Which could, of course, be an indicator to not go to private school if this concerns you as a parent.)

3. My second job out of university was my dream job in a city across the country from my homecity. About a month after I was hired, I was told that what put me over the top with equally qualified applicants was my high school. Pretty much verbatim: "Meerkatty, we knew that since you went to X private school that you would be able to handle the work and the stress and be comfortable holding court in the boardroom."

4. I have been offered another job (which I did not take) simply through alumnae connections. We have an organized worldwide network and 12 years out of high school I am still in close touch with a lot of people.

5. Those Latin classes actually have come in handy.

And all of this is coming from someone who HATED my school while I was a student there. (I was the sulky one in the back row, with the blouse untucked from my kilt, perpetually in detention for talking back to the teachers.) Looking back now, my parents insistence of my attendance there was one of the best things they ever did for me. And...I have dinner every summer when I visit homecity with one of those teachers who kept giving me detention. Feel free to msg me with any other concerns/questions.
posted by meerkatty at 3:47 PM on April 2, 2008 [2 favorites]

Depends entirely on the quality of the public school and the quality/reputation/connections of the private school. I grew up in a town with several very snooty private schools (both religious and non-religious), though I went to the excellent public schools. The main difference that I noted between them was that my friends who went to private schools had access to more high-end drugs than those at the public schools, and their various shenanigans and exploits in crime and malfeasance were generally more tolerated by the private schools than they would have been by the public schools.
posted by The World Famous at 3:48 PM on April 2, 2008

My friends who went to more elite prep schools in my area always had better access to higher-grade drugs.

I'm not actually kidding, but to back up my point, seriously... it depends on what your local public school is like, as people have already said before. And, what the rep at this prep school is -- connections are great, but are they really providing a better academic and/or character-developing environment? Or is it more of a status symbol? And, is you daughter the type who might get carried away with the non-academic aspects of prep-school life? (Did I mention the drugs? Ok.) Also consider if your local high school has a high percentage of grads who go to college. Mine didn't, and thus I think a prep school was a good idea for me, since I was in a pool of people who were expected to go to college, had classes to prep me for SATs, etc. (and it was really strict, so no/less prevalent drug use.) Also, your prep school may have better arts and/or sports programs, as mine did.
posted by NikitaNikita at 3:50 PM on April 2, 2008

Although I should have previewed, I'm glad hal_c_on backs me up on this.
posted by NikitaNikita at 3:51 PM on April 2, 2008

As a teenager, I was kicked out of some of the finest private schools in NYC. The education I received from any and all of them was hands down, far superior to the education my youngest sister got at a top-rated NJ public school 10 years later.

Was this the fault of the public school? No, it was the fault of the public school system. My sister's public school classroom never had less than 25 students. My private school classes never had more than 12 students. My sister was forced to fulfil really ridiculous requirements with little or no flexibility. My senior year of high school, I opted out of my AP English class and instead, took English literature classes at a nearby university instead.

Can your local high school offer water polo, skiing and crew? Does it have an arts centre and a dance department? Can she take Russian there? Can she take astronomy?

I would say that all of those things give your daughter a much wider range of opportunities to learn and develop her talents as she is inclined. If she never has the chance to learn Russian, she's never going to grow up to be a Russian scholar, now is she?

The standard metric, of course, is which kids are getting into better colleges*. Private schools are college preparatory institutions in a way 99% of high schools simply are not.

For what it's worth, I disagree with Enroute the high school is about contacts. For me it was about enormous academic achievement. (And obviously, some behaviour and authority issues.) I grew more intellectually at the hands of exceptional educators in those four years then I did in a lifetime at university.

*Be sure, by the way, to also look at those stats by gender. You may find something interesting there.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:54 PM on April 2, 2008

Smaller number of students in a class is a big plus in Private School. Discipline is also better in Private School and they have more money to hire better teachers and usually have newer books,computers and better funded after school activities then public schools.
posted by blast at 3:55 PM on April 2, 2008

There are certainly some advantages to a private high school, but I'm of the opinion that they are not worth $124,000. With that kind of money, you could allow your daughter to spend summers studying aboard, get through just about any undergraduate education without any loans, pay for some mighty impressive tutors, etc. University is where anything interesting happens; as long as your daughter comes out of HS with the grades and skills necessary to succeed there, high school has done its job. (Note: I'm bias towards an science/engineering education. I can't really speak towards the advantages of private school in terms of a more classical, arts-focused education.)

How much are you actually paying out of pocket? Even if it's only 1/3 of tuition, I can think of countless ways to use that money to enhance your daughter's education experience that are more meaningful and interesting. Unless the high schools in your area are truly abysmal, find better uses for that money.

Additionally, if this private high school is non-secular and you do not belong to this faith, please do not send your child there. My cousin attends a private Catholic HS and he has wasted countless hours memorizing scripture. He absolutely loathes it and it makes me very sad thinking of the ways he could have better used that time.
posted by Nelsormensch at 3:59 PM on April 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

I went to both private school and public school. The private high school had roughly 100 kids in it and a good number were drinking, smoking and having sex (4 people were pregnant in 1.5 years and 3 more from my class have gotten knocked up since then). Literally the same people that were engaged in these activities would talk about how going to a private school helped them be better role models for the younger kids at the school.

The school I was at was college prep. I was constantly overburdened with homework and had a mental breakdown because of the stress levels. After the breakdown my mom let me switch to the nearby public school with close to 4000 students. Because there were more students and a more diverse population to chose from, I was able to find friends that I liked hanging out with (rather than ones I was expected to get along with). I took a couple AP courses (one of which was AP art and not offered at the prep school).

My parents mentioned a couple times that it was nice to no longer be under the stress of having to pay tuition either.

I don't feel that my public education was any worse than the private one, especially with the AP classes. I guess from my (slightly biased) point of view your daughter isn't going to miss much besides hypocrisy and the wii that you could get her if you don't waste your money on overpriced tuition.

Take an interest in her education and spend the money on trips to the museum or other fun educational trips (perhaps even a summer trip to another country to get some cultural experience (invaluable))
posted by silkygreenbelly at 4:01 PM on April 2, 2008

PS: I also concur with everyone else - the drugs were way, way better.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:02 PM on April 2, 2008

I'll tell you this: back in the day when I was in college (Ivy, so rubbed shoulders w/ lots of prep school alums), NMH had a rep as being a great school....for drugs. This is more than 20 years ago, so things may have changed.

I went to an excellent public high school, but this was also back when we didn't have to take state tests every fifteen minutes, and the course catalogue for my HS was huge: Latin, Ancient Greek, Mandarin, German, French, Spanish, and Italian were among the languages offered. We had the full complement of AP classes. Music and art classes were not only offered, you could get credit for them. Different times.

By winter term freshman year in college, once everyone was done introducing themselves, I don't think you could tell the prep school kids from the public school kids - everyone seemed to know how to work hard. Actually, you could tell them apart: the ones who got bombed every night tended to be from all-male boarding schools. Aside from that, though, I don't know that there was a discernable difference.
posted by rtha at 4:09 PM on April 2, 2008

It depends hugely on where you are and the caliber of each school, as well as the actual amount you'd be paying. I went to a private high school and middle school, and while it probably didn't change my life (I would have been a motivated, bright kid no matter what), it did mean that I was astonished at the lack of preparation many of my peers brought to college.

Make a list of what each school has to offer, as objectively as possible, and compare the two. Of course, this should be balanced towards the things your individual kid cares about, not just things that look good on the school's brochure. Things that really mattered to me include: advanced language classes (after I took all the French electives in my very-small school, they created two more, just so I could keep studying the language), small classes in all disciplines, an emphasis on writing, a strong science program, equal attention paid to male and female students, and (most of all) a culture that encouraged intellectual curiosity and independent thought, even to the extent of allowing high school students to embark on personalized research projects and design their own courses.

The bottom line, though, is that it depends on the individual schools. Given that your wife works at the local public HS, she may be in an ideal position to judge, or she may be biased towards it. Another thing to consider may be visiting each school. Before I went to my private school, I spent a day there, trailing a student. Though it's not as common, I also did this with the public school. Both experiences were very helpful.
posted by dizziest at 4:16 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to a mediocre public school with an excellent AP program. My fiance went to an excellent, rich-kid public school. Some of our friends went to private school (Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter, to be precise).

In college, the difference was practically unnoticeable, except that most of the private school kids and the rich public school kids did better drugs.

Parental interest in education is, IMO, far more important than what school a kid attends. If your public high school has a full AP program or an International Baccalaureate program, then those will generally have smaller class sizes with little to no emphasis on the "No Child Left Behind" tests.
posted by muddgirl at 4:22 PM on April 2, 2008

Long time reader, here. I've wanted to comment so many times in the past, but this is the question that actually made me cough up the five bones.

Background: my wife went to a very exclusive private school, k-12. Their alumni include a current presidential candidate and founders of Fortune 5 companies, among others. In contrast, I went to a public school. We had knife fights, metal detectors, older girls beating up younger boys, students hiring other students to kill their parents, and the kid in the locker next to me spent a semester in juvie after he got busted for grand theft auto. Other greatest hits, too - but that's what happened during my four years there.

I certainly turned out more than ok, but I also slept walked my way through a pretty unchallenging high school. I didn't really learn how to study or understand or work until halfway through college. I was bored all the time. I wasn't nearly as well prepared as my wife was for the workload in undergrad or graduate school. She and all her friends often talk about how much easier college was compared to their high school program.

We're also about to have a kid in the next month, so these issues are also in our minds. Part of me doesn't want him to lose out on what I got to experience - which for better or worse definitely had value and lessons that I think many private school kids miss. Part of me remembers what it was like to be that bored. Almost no one with whom I went to high school exhibits the level of curiosity and engagement with the world at large that I see in my wife and her high school classmates, and our shared college classmates.

In the end, I think it really depends on the kid. What does *she* want? Where would she fit better? Either choice has their respective pros and cons, but I think the generalized answer in my mind is that an excellent prep school carries fewer risks - or at least a very different set of risks.
posted by NoRelationToLea at 4:24 PM on April 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was a very academically focused student, and I went to one of the highest rated public high schools in the country, and then to an Ivy. The kids who had come from the decent private schools were much better prepared than I was for college classes. The most concrete and basic example is that in this renowned public high, I'd only ever written one paper longer than 10 or so pages, and only then for an elective class where the entire semester was focused on writing a longer paper. The private school kids were much less taken aback by having to write several in the first few weeks of college. Also, I've since seen statistics showing that private schoolers go on to grad school at much higher rates, though I don't have a citation handy.
posted by daisyace at 4:25 PM on April 2, 2008

A culture of success breed success.
posted by paperzach at 4:32 PM on April 2, 2008

Data point: I went to NMH, albeit only for my first year (I moved to a different prep school for location-reasons, although I was happy there), so I can't really talk abut academics. The campus has split now, but the work job system is great, and helped to de-snob-ify everybody. There were a lot of international students (even more than most colleges), which was awesome. I had a genuinely good time, at least while I was there.

You don't mention where you are. Would your daughter be going as a day student, or would she be boarding there? This makes a huge difference -- if your kid is living at home, she's still your kid, but if your kid is rooming, she's going to become more independent, and this change might happen faster than you expect. This is something that I don't think most parents who send their kids away really expect, if at all, and I'd say is the primary source of friction and conflict among my friends, several of which also went to private school/left to study away from their parents at a young age. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing necessarily (personally, I'm glad for the opportunity, and believe that it gave me a lot of independence and a tendency for self-sufficiency), but your kid will be doing her own laundry, managing her own finances, and studying by herself, without anyone there to tell her to.

Ultimately, like several people above have mentioned, it comes down to --- what does she think? I went to prep school because the schooling situation of where I came from seemed abysmal to me, and so I was happy to go and study. Your daughter might not want to leave her friends so far, and might like staying at home -- that's fine, as well. Just saying -- aside from academics -- consider the auxiliary effects of being away from home at a young age, because that's one of the most important effects that prep school had on me.

(and of course -- if your kid won't be rooming/boarding there, disregard my comment.)
posted by suedehead at 4:36 PM on April 2, 2008

If you're thinking ahead to college already (which you should be) going to NMHS might actually be a liability in a certain way. At a school that high-powered, many many many of the kids are going to be applying to the same A-list schools. And a college is only going to take so many kids from any particular school.

In the admissions game, your daughter might be better off being one of a few high-level, super-impressive kids in a large public school population than she would be as one of many high-level, super-impressive kids at a fancy private school.

Of course, that means she'd have to get a good enough education at the public school to get into an A-list school.
posted by mccxxiii at 4:39 PM on April 2, 2008

daisyace's point about the length of required papers is a good one. I still remember many of my college classmates groaning about our first fifteen-page paper freshman year. I just laughed and then went and wrote the damn thing.
posted by dizziest at 4:43 PM on April 2, 2008

For every year you send your daughter to public school, you could use the tuition savings to endow two entire schools in Sri Lanka.

If she slept on that thought, where would your daughter want to go to school? Consider actually asking her; she might learn a lesson more valuable than any she'd miss at the private school.
posted by gum at 4:53 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to a public school through sixth grade and then switched to a private, secular, all-girls school in seventh grade when my parents realized our public school system's concept of gifted and talented education was putting the smart kids at the table with the immigrants and troublemakers to teach them.

I loved my private school. It had a huge influence on who I am now. I learned a lot of confidence, found a good group of incredibly smart, motivated, geeky girls to be friends with (had I stayed in public school, I'm pretty sure I would have ended up a goth and lost a lot of my academic motivation), I still have wonderful relationships with a number of teachers, and I had the chance to kind of mentor some girls younger than I was, which I enjoyed and have continued on through college and into my professional career. I went to a great engineering college out of state (the public high school in my district in Ohio told a family friend who wanted to apply to MIT that "our students don't go there" and wouldn't write him recs, so there's no chance I would have ended up even applying to my college either).

While my friends in public school had nothing but band and phys ed the second semester of their senior years, all of my friends and I were in 4+ AP courses, I had a course at the local college, and we were all still in our extracurriculars. I'd written a 25 page paper by my sophomore year as a standard matter of course. I had access to very good chemistry and biology lab equipment. Class was never disrupted by troublemakers (actually, my friends and I were the troublemakers, just because we were smartasses -- not like we had kids with behavioral problems or anything).

I was also one of the scholarship kids and never really had a problem with it. About half my closest friends were on scholarship while the others were driving Mercedes at age 16 and taking me to their country clubs. We were the geeks anyway so it's not like I felt left out of the Kate Spade bags/designer clothing trends, but our school was very careful not to identify the scholarship kids and it never really came up unless you brought it up.

Yes, some people did drugs. Yes, some people were snotty bitches. Yes, the girl who got to fly to Paris to pick out her Vera Wang graduation dress was annoying. But academically and socially speaking I have absolutely no regrets (either about the private or the single-sex parts of it) and if your daughter really wants to do this, I would encourage and support her in any way you can.
posted by olinerd at 6:10 PM on April 2, 2008

Be careful when comparing classes with labels (AP, IB, etc..). In general you look for public schools to offer lots of these, since it ensures that there will be rigorous classes. For a private school it's an entirely different matter. At my (private) school, the AP classes were the most annoying, with a large but mindless workload for little benefit. The more advanced but non-AP classes were far better, since the teachers actually had control over how the subject was taught, instead of forcing the class to keep up with the AP syllabus. The labels look good to prospective students though, so to some degree schools are forced into them.

There's also a lot that the culture of the school has to teach students. I think private schools and smaller schools generally do a better job of conveying such basic ideas as respect for others, or a sense of consequences of one's actions beyond the default "rules and punishments" scheme. No test will measure and no brochure will convey these aspects, so you really must visit the place.

a culture that encouraged intellectual curiosity and independent thought

Spot on.
posted by kiltedtaco at 6:21 PM on April 2, 2008

The attendance at the school can help with admittance to an ivy league institution. So if your child wishes to be a fortune 500 executive, international law lawyer, or any of the 90 hour a week professions, then you should think about the exclusive prep school.

Other then that, state schools and engineering powerhouses are most useful for colleges nowadays, so if you want your child to be happy, and have a happy life, avoid the prep school, and just put the money towards:

Developing leadership experiences for her, including starting and founding organizations
Maintaining involvement in activities such as FIRST robotics, mock trial, community outreach
Special tutors to help her correct any area's she has issues with
Participation in one sport, even if something like Golf (which is cheapest to learn at her age, hands down)

The education itself is not worth it at that age. It's only the last couple years of college where the "connectedness" even really matters.
posted by gte910h at 6:38 PM on April 2, 2008

The one drawback to a private school education I've noticed is that a minority of those grads have little idea how ordinary people live, work and play. This isn't a small issue. It can distort social skills (when dealing with regular folk), contribute to particular kinds of moral judgments, and breed a kind of unfeeling politics (both on the left and the right).


Here public school does have an advantage. Everyone learns to deal with a wide variety of other people.
posted by ferdydurke at 6:43 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to St. Paul's (my best friend here in college is an NMH grad), whereas my little brother goes to public school and we both went to public schools until high school. I was miserable in high school, but all the same, I'm glad I did it:
Private school gave me opportunities I wouldn't have dreamed of otherwise. It offered seven languages, and through an affiliated program, let me spend a year in China, all expenses paid, for my senior year. Our course catalog was more impressive than those of some small colleges. You could study virtually any instrument (I knew kids who were studying carillon, harp, and bagpipes). The faculty were amazing. Every year that I was there, I had at least one and often more teachers who had their doctorates- and because of the residency requirement, they were genuinely invested in their students (they had certain nights a week they would be around in the dorms to provide extra help, and additional hours could be arranged). Our classes topped out at 14. Since the school didn't operate under budgetary constraints, pretty much anything was possible. I remember that the kids taking a "Literature of Witness" class got flown out to the Holocaust Museum in DC as a day trip because it was relevant.
You don't say whether or not your daughter will be boarding there, but I think that that makes a big difference. SPS is all-boarding, and that made me really have to sit up and take charge over my own education. No one was there to make sure I did my homework, so I had to learn pretty quickly to get my shit together and find a system for getting things done. Also, we had to write so many papers, and be so diligent about proper writing (citing sources, etc) that I am thankful every time I sit down to write a college paper.
Another thing is, you meet so many different people, from all over the country and the world, that it really expands your horizons. And not only are you meeting all kinds of people, what they all have in common (generally) is that they're very intelligent and ambitious. I'm really grateful that, given my natural inclinations towards laziness, that I didn't find myself in a surrounding where that was the norm. Seeing that my peers actually cared about doing their homework made it a lot easier to take school seriously.
As for the disadvantages, I think some of the ones I experienced are peculiar to that school. While they do give generous aid, it still primarily attracts the children of the very wealthy, so a certain snobbishness is cultivated there. But my NMH-grad friend says that her experience was totally different, and NMH tended to attract less traditionally "preppy", more artsy kids, and that class snobbery was rare.
I'm sure this is more than you wanted to hear, but please memail me if you would like any more details.
posted by Oobidaius at 6:46 PM on April 2, 2008

Seconding nelsormensch and ferdydurke. Public school, whether it's high school or college, forces you to acknowledge, accept, and interact with a non-homogeneous group of people. This is good because it's like real life, whereas private schools that cost that much can get you out of touch reallll fast, all William F. Buckley-style.

Not to mention that this is high school we're talking about. In the grand scheme of life, high school is not worth $124K (I'm skeptical as to whether college is worth that much, let alone high school) That's an outrageous amount of money to pay for a high school diploma.

If your daughter is intellectually curious, she'll find ways to satiate her curiosity. High school teachers in all schools are usually willing to provide extra resources for interested students. Kids in my public school did local theater, traveled with church groups or through public school-offered programs, took community college courses, had tutoring in languages not provided by my school, and volunteered in the nearby city. (We also wrote 25-page papers in our public school, but I see this isn't the norm)

Ritzy trappings, trips to China, "connections" (oo, I get to connect with rich assholes! hooray!) lacrosse teams? No. But many of my high school's alumni went to Ivy schools, have careers they enjoy, and are, for the most part, not causing their parents pain with $400K in debt after college.
posted by landedjentry at 8:34 PM on April 2, 2008

(As a quasi-disclaimer, I'll say for starters that I went to a private day school; one that fell somewhere about in the middle of the elite-prep/reform-school private school continuum.)

If I had to sum it up in one, the real advantage of a small private school is that it's much harder to slip through the cracks. In most good public school systems, I think it's entirely possible to get an education that's a match for the best private schools, if the student is driven and self-motivated enough to seek it out, take the right classes, etc. The difference at a good, small school is that those classes and that experience is the default.

It's a lot harder to sit in the back of the class when there's only one row of desks and 10 or 15 people in the room. And with fewer students, the instructors can spend significantly more time grading homework and giving individualized feedback. (I remember taking a writing class where I used to get back typed comments on each draft that were sometimes almost as long as the piece itself; I doubt that would be practical with more than a handful of students in a section.) There were also many more 'opportunities' – I wasn't fond of them at the time – for delivering presentations and oral arguments and having them critiqued, sometimes crushingly, by others.

Again, you could almost certainly get all those experiences at a good public school by involving yourself in the right activities – I'm not for a second saying that you can't. But I think the difference is that at a small school it becomes something you can't dodge. And that changes the atmosphere a bit, because there's no self-selected group of 'nerds' or 'brains' sitting in the front of the class, answering all the questions. You don't blow off an assignment too casually when you know you're going to be asked to stand up and discuss it in front of your peers the next day, and suffer a certain amount of humiliation if your ignorance is exposed.

There was also a difference in expectations, particularly when it came to choosing and going to college. There was exactly one person in my graduating class who did not go immediately into a 4-year undergraduate program, and that they weren't was considered scandal roughly on the order of drug rehab or pregnancy.* There was a full-time 'college counselor' whose function it was to get students into college (and who had a Rolodex full of names, just in case), and there was substantial time spent on how to ace interviews and write essays. SAT prep was mandatory. It was expected and encouraged that you'd expend most of your effort during the end of your Junior and beginning of your Senior year on college applications.

Since you asked specifically about the cost/benefit ratio, I'll admit I don't know whether it really was a good 'investment' or not, in the purely financial sense. Would I still have gone to the same college, landed the same job, begun the same career, etc., if I'd gone to the local High? (Moreover, have I done better enough as a result of going to offset the cost?) I'm not sure. I think so, but it's not exactly a testable hypothesis on the individual level. I've since learned that my performance and my attitude are greatly affected by the people I surround myself with, and I doubt that I would have had the foresight or self-awareness at 14 or 15 to choose the 'right' group of peers. (Actually I suspect I would have been attracted to whoever was most likely to end up dead or in prison first, with me right alongside.)

So I'm glad to have had the opportunity, return on investment aside. I've never gotten any good networking benefits out of it; I don't know or even keep in contact with anyone I knew from there. But it was an experience that's a significant part of who I am, and it's something I hope to be able to offer to any children I might have, if it seems to be the best choice for them.

* Possibly worse. And as a sidenote, although there might have been several students who got pregnant while I was there, nobody to my knowledge ever actually gave birth. The solution to that particular problem was well-known.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:00 PM on April 2, 2008

I know a lot about this (I work at a top prep school in Seoul, grew up at a decent one in the US, and every member of my nuclear family has taught at one somewhere), so feel free to pm me if you want more details, but my short answer is this:

attentive teachers and competent college counseling.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:24 PM on April 2, 2008

I went to NMH. My dad is an academic and went to public high school & ivy league college himself, on scholarship. He was convinced from early on that sending us to prep school was going to make the difference, though, and looked at all the stats about the percentage of kids at Columbia or Yale who come from private vs public high schools. I had always assumed I'd go to Stuyvesent here in NYC - public, but with an entrance exam. If my parents hadn't split up, maybe it would have been one of the private schools in the city, but since they moved out of NY, boarding schools came into the picture, and apparently this was what my dad had fantasized about most of all anyway. NMH was just about the least "preppy" of prep schools that we were able to find, partly because of the whole "work job" thing, so I found a lot of people there I could connect to.

Whether it made a difference in terms of my education and college opportunities is a complicated question, as I had a lot of emotional baggage to deal with during that time, so probably couldn't fully take advantage of the place, PLUS, who knows what my life would be like if I had gone to public school. But NMH was no magic ticket to the top schools for me; I didn't get into my first choice schools and got into a big fight with my dad over whether to go to my safety (which I liked better) or the middle tier school I got into but which I thought too conservative... I can't imagine things would have ended up all that different if I'd gone to public school, honestly. I had some pretty cool experiences through NMH, but at the time I resented being sent there pretty intensely, so in the end I'd call it a wash.

But as others have said, it depends on the other options available to you, and on what your kid wants.
posted by mdn at 9:32 PM on April 2, 2008

Would your daughter be going as a day student, or would she be boarding there?

As stated in the FPP: "My 14 yr. old daughter has applied and been admitted, as a day student..."
posted by ericb at 10:01 PM on April 2, 2008

Ultimately, like several people above have mentioned, it comes down to --- what does she think?

Agree 100%. In my family -- individuals from the previous generation, the current and its siblings were/are all giving the choice. Public, private, boarding or day student. Up to you.
posted by ericb at 10:08 PM on April 2, 2008

*the current and its offspring*
posted by ericb at 10:09 PM on April 2, 2008

*all given*
posted by ericb at 10:10 PM on April 2, 2008

Another thing is, you meet so many different people, from all over the country and the world, that it really expands your horizons. And not only are you meeting all kinds of people, what they all have in common (generally) is that they're very intelligent and ambitious.

Spot on!
posted by ericb at 10:15 PM on April 2, 2008

For every year you send your daughter to public school, you could use the tuition savings to endow two entire schools in Sri Lanka.

If she slept on that thought, where would your daughter want to go to school? Consider actually asking her; she might learn a lesson more valuable than any she'd miss at the private school.

Since money seems to be the primary concern in the question, I doubt they would have the financial security to endow two schools in Sri Lanka a year. They could, however, decide that the (possibly) superior education she receives and the connections she makes could ultimately help her contribute to aiding the Sri Lankans in a more effective, long-term way -- perhaps starting with her ability to locate Sri Lanka on a map.

Either way, I don't think it's fair to ask a young teenager to choose between her own education and the education of however many others.
posted by prophetsearcher at 11:30 PM on April 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

This question came up with two of my children, one who was already in 10th grade in the public HS and the other was just going to start at the same public HS. The private school, home to such luminaries as Bill Gates et al, was offered and refused by both of my kids. They took AP classes at the HS and were also able to take Community College classes as well. They put a lot into the high school and took a lot out of it. But the reason they took the AP classes was to avoid dealing with working with the general HS population. They were burned out on supporting the drones in group work from their first quarter. It was their choice, and they were a lot more informed about it than I could have imagined.
posted by ptm at 12:48 AM on April 3, 2008

I will say the classes there were really pretty good though, and I still have good memories of both intellectual and artistic opportunities. I still remember the paper I did on glasnost & perestroika for my senior yr Euro history class; I also remember the production of Brecht's Mother Courage I was part of, and the class I took on the Bible that I expected to hate (it was a requirement, which I'd been upset about since I was an atheist) but ended up really enjoying (it's a fascinating piece of world mythology/literature, and a western education should be familiar with it so you recognize the references in other work...). It was also nice to have so many options for sports teams etc, though if I'd stayed in NYC there were a lot of things I'd have had access to that one couldn't get in New England. So again, a little bit of a wash for me, but there really were some great aspects to the place.

Also, it is a very diverse student body - a lot of foreign exchange students & so forth. I would imagine it is far more diverse than your average small town high school, anyway, and very likely more diverse than most city high schools because there are literally people from all over the world. You live with people from Minnesota and from Saudi Arabia and from the Bronx and from a Native American reservation in South Dakota. In that respect it's a pretty unique experience. Well - I guess that often happens in college - but unusual for high school.
posted by mdn at 7:46 AM on April 3, 2008

I guess I don't have a politically charged opinion here, but I'll share my experience with you. I graduated from high school four years ago, and from my experience (as a graduate of a upper middle-upper class public high school), the private school kids (who my friends from my own high school and I hung out with frequently) got in a lot more trouble than we did. I'm not sure if it was them rebelling, but it was strange to see all these private school kids getting kicked out of school or charged with vandalism or underage drinking problems, while the rest of us managed to stay out of trouble. From my experience, these guys are more "clique-ey", and stick to a certain few friends-which is fine, but I like to expand my horizons a little more. I think if the school is a good fit for your kid is a good question in your case, because obviously Massachusetts is different than North Dakota. If I were you, and depending on the amount of financial aid I was getting, I'd probably consider it-as long as it was ok with your daughter.
posted by whiskey point at 5:57 PM on April 3, 2008