Private vs. Public Schools - Academics
Level 2 - Admissions 101
Welcome! If you are a parent of a child, you will undoubtedly have questions as to whether private school is superior to public schools for your children.
The short answer is that there is no correct choice for every family. The decision to send your student to private school or public school will inherently be based on your unique family situation.
If we move past the unique family situation, the answer will also differ based on when you enroll a child and for what purpose.
Our assumption is that parents are looking at public and private schools to determine which will provide better college and workforce outcomes.
To that end, we are focused today on a brief guide to understanding the differences in academics between public and private schools.
Part 1: What are academic considerations?
First, you have to define what you consider to be academic considerations. In general, you want to define academic considerations as the following:
SAT/ACT scores
Available courses
College/Professional outcomes
Average class sizes
Athletics
Although we could go into depth on each of these, the better way to think of them is as a collective - which school offers the best opportunity to achieve all of the above?
For some of you, certain things may matter more than others. For example, some of you may not believe a path to college through athletics is truly possible for you.
You may also be evaluating schools based on the long-term. In that case, you may be looking to enroll a student at kindergarten or even 5th grade. In that situation, some of these may have less meaning than others. For our purposes, we will assume that you are looking to make a decision for high school.
Part 2: What academic considerations truly matter?
In our experience, there are really only three items that truly matter for the purposes of academic considerations:
Athletics
College Outcomes
Course Selection
Athletics only matters if you are trying to get recognized for recruitment purposes. In that case, certain schools are known for creating standout sports programs. You can’t easily replace that.
But aside from that, you want to know the college outcomes and the course selection. In our experience, the burden is on the private school to convince you to attend, not the public school. Why? Ignoring economic considerations, public schools typically reward stand out students because they are so few relative to the large masses of students that attend.
A high school with 1600 students may have 100 truly advanced students. Assume an equal breakdown among classes and that means 25 students out of 400 are truly “elite.” That means you are already in the top 10% of the class and that opens up a variety of opportunities.
Private schools are different. They are typically smaller, and other parents are paying for them to achieve specific outcomes. The more competitive the private school, the less margin there is for error in competing against other students.
That means private schools HAVE to sell you on something. Course selection is probably the biggest advantage. A private school that can offer courses not available in your public school offerings is a big advantage. This goes beyond just AP Chemistry.
Think about the school this way - what do their laboratories look like? What options are there for research? Are they able to offer foreign languages or study abroad? The more offerings a private school has, the better its potential to create a unique experience.
The second part is just as important - what are the outcomes?
If your plan is to go to the University of Texas or Texas A&M, why go to a private school when you can be the top 10% of your class in a public high school and get the same admission?
There are many non-academic reasons to do so, but using academics is not a good rationale.
When you go to private school, be clear on where students are getting accepted and where they are attending.
You do not want to pay for a student to go to Harvard if the private school only sends people to Harvey Mudd College.