[quote=fredo4]I’m a former teacher and IMO the biggest thing to look for in a school is parental involvement. It also helps if the school is hard to get in to whether it’s public or private. Schools that make you jump through a few hoops (with lotteries and other prerequisites) weed out the parents and kids that don’t care about education.
Personally, I’m a lot more concerned about the moral climate of a school than the academic climate, but the two often go hand in hand. I’m not nearly as concerned with my kids getting into elite colleges as I am with them doing well and becoming well rounded in high school.
I’ve seen too many people with elite college degrees who have done nothing with them.[/quote]
All good points. I know many people in college who slept through high school and aced college. They had IQs, but were lazy in high school. So need the genetic high IQ, HS is not really important unless you want Ivy League. Is Ivy league really worth it? The WSJ article doesn’t have third comparison which is in state school comparison. It would really tilt in favor of SDSU as long as you weren’t looking for special needs such as hanging with Georgetown beltway crowd, etc
I think you most of you are missing big picture which is grad/professional schools. Better to go to average school like SDSU and get 3.5GPA, then you could have much better chance to get into Harvard Med, then if you went to MIT Undergrad and get 2.0 GPA with same MCAT score. I’d pick the MIT grad, but enough colleges would pick SDSU grad.
