private schools

It is certainly worth it.

I had a much easier time in college due to my high school years.

Of course, there are also religious considerations.

Mtn Dew wrote:

I had a much easier time in college due to my high school years.

howso?

I went public school until high school then private school for high school and college. I think judging which is most suitable for a child depends on a lot of circumstances. IF you live in a pretty safe community and have a good school system I would send my kids to public school. This was not my case and it was the principle reason I was sent to private school (all boys at that)and I don't think it was necessarily better than the majority of public schools but it was a lot saferr than my public school options.(much better running wise as well). I think a lot of kids were there for athletic reasons. That was like 6 k a year. Then I went to private college and that's the real money sucker. I think that was a mistake. Espacially b/c I came out with a degree that really isn't that applicable and I will need even more schooling. You really need a plan and my parents never really had one they just knew they saved pretty wisely and could do it for me and my brothers but they didn't leave themselves much for when they retire and I actually feel guilty about this even though it was their idea. In any case, public and private both offer great schools and lousy schools it finding out about the specific school in question that is really important.

Come to think about it, I wish they hadn't sent me to all these fancy schools b/c now I feel the need to carry on this ever more expensive tradition. It really has had a lot of influence on the careers I am influencing. My parents would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars if they went the public route. It really is a big difference financially. You really need a good job to afford it. Mo money mo problems.

There are a wide range of private schools. Most of the generic parochial schools (10-15k a year) are by and large not worth it. At the other end of the spectrum, schools like Hopkins, Exeter, Choate, and Andover truly do provide children a better chance of attending Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. If your child has the drive, intelligence, and ambition, and you can afford to put up 40k 9th grade through college, you will have given your child an advantage in life that cannot be understated.

There is very little doubt that the best private high schools are far more academically rigorous than even above average public schools, and prepare you better for college. Part of that is top schools have a lot of money, part is self-selection: elite academic high schools are filled with elite students. Public schools are filled with people from every walk of life, some smart, some literally retarded.

But a local Christian high school is not likely to be any better than your average public school, and could easily be worse considering most private school teachers make less than public school teachers and might have religious beliefs that taint their lessons.

In short: a private school that is demonstrably better than your local public school is probably worth it, but a smart, hard-working kid in a public school will be fine.

for me, my parents had the money...i still just don't see what the overall benefit of it was. The public schools offer more AP/IB classes/programs.

To be completely honest, I think the only reason I was kept in private school was because they had the "christian" label on them (and they weren't even that) and because it was mostly white people.

Well you say you were a slacker. Maybe, and this is just speculation, maybe if you had gone to public school, you would have just failed out. Some people send their kids to private school b/c they are watched over a little more. In public school, no one cares if you just fail out and turn into a bum. i am sure the teachers at your school gave a shit about it, therefore you ended up with a 3.4 GPA.

This is off topic, but why wouldn't the public school teachers care if one of their students was failing out?

B/c they are the scum of the earth...

No, I am kidding. Hopefully most of them do care, but kids fail out of public schools at an alarming rate (29%), so obviously kids are slipping through the cracks. It is almost nil at private high schools. Obviously there are other factors, but you get the point.

The fancy prep school that your friend goes to is almost certainly of a different caliber. Really elite private schools are more challenging academically than most colleges, Ivies included. Whether they help you get INTO college is a different question (they may actually hurt an applicant's chances, due to lower GPA). Such schools certainly prepare one for college, providing a leg up that really lasts for the rest of one's life, provided one continues to work hard. This is before considering the value of the social network that once can develop at these schools. One of my friends, a math major at MIT, said it wasn't until his junior year that he felt that the math he was taking was as challenging as the honors program that he'd taken in high school.

An average Christian private school is usually no better than a good public school, and almost certainly worse than the best honors programs at top public schools. They offer a great alternative to weak public schools, which may be the only option in many areas. Average private schools also don't have to take everyone, so the bottom of the class may perform at a higher level. This isn't always true, however, because at many schools, the kids who pay full tuition would pretty much have to kill someone to ever be kicked out.

At the best schools, the education is extraordinarily expensive. Even at less exclusive private schools, the cost is still considerable. It's impossible to objectively say whether it's worth it, though one can say, with certainty, that there is value in such an education. I'm grateful that my parents didn't go out to eat for over a decade so they could pay for my secondary education. They frankly told me that if we'd lived in the suburbs, I would've gone to a public school.

my parents overpaid wrote:

when I was in highschool, I was a huge slacker, still had a 3.4 gpa, and got an ACT 28 (i know it's not fantastic, but it is above average). Now I am doing fine in college while majoring in chemistry.

Discuss.

A private school education does not automatically give you the edge. If most public school kids are doing better than you, it may just be because you are a slacker and you aren't all that intelligent to begin with. What separates people in school and in the real world is effort and hard work, and you admitted that you lack in that category.

800 dude wrote:

the kids who pay full tuition would pretty much have to kill someone to ever be kicked out.

i know a few people like this..it is ridiculous just how much they can get away with, especially if the parents are in the administration.

at my private school, they actually kicked people out much more readily than any public school. They had a zero drug tolerance and they actually enforced it.

The U.S. is the most racist country in the history of mankind and the public education system reflects the sickness of the American society. So you better be thankful you parents had the means to send you to private school. Hopefully you didn't get adversely brainwashed by Jesus Nazis and right-wing Chicken Hawks like the moderators of LR have.

my parents overpaid wrote:

Now I am doing fine in college while majoring in chemistry.

Good choice.

my parents overpaid wrote:

Another example, I have a friend who goes to a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts, sort of like a "pre-Harvard" and it costs the parents around 35-40K a year, just for high school. By the time anyone (unless you are insanely rich-which they aren't) is done paying 4 years of that, plus another 4+ years of Ivy-League tuition, no matter how good of a job they get once out of college, it will take years, if not decades to get out of all the debt.

It's only debt if you can't afford it. Most of the families who are able to send their kids to the elite northeast prep schools are not affected at all by dropping 40k a year on tuition.

The U.S. is Racist wrote:

The U.S. is the most racist country in the history of mankind and the public education system reflects the sickness of the American society. So you better be thankful you parents had the means to send you to private school. Hopefully you didn't get adversely brainwashed by Jesus Nazis and right-wing Chicken Hawks like the moderators of LR have.

ahhhhhh, you are such a cute little wanna be anarchist. have you ever been to saudi arabia little buddy?

Education is only part of what you get out of a school. Your parents probably thought that the atmosphere of the Christian school was worth the extra cash.

That's certainly the case for the expensive boarding schools. If you classmates' parents own companies, guess who will be there for you later in life...

As for whether it is worth it-- that really depends on what you do later in life. If you work in a skills-based profession (things like the sciences, medicine)-- no amount of connections are going to save you. If you work in a networking/opportunity-based profession (things like a realtor, personal financial advisor), the contacts are probably worth it...