Did you go to a public High School or Private?

[thebadguy1999]

POLL!

Also what is your view on education in private v.s. public High school.

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[DoctorPardi]

I think for most people public schools are fine. If for some reason you feel the need to go to Yale/Harvard then a private might be useful. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to get into one of the top schools, but you can do most things in life without getting into a top 5 undergrad.

 

[SeventhSon]

i went to public school and i still go to public school, b!tch.

 

[akinf]

Public For Life!!!

 

[Dr.Acula]

Public Highschool...Bitch!

 

[JimmyG]

I went to a private school my whole life until my 10th grade year and attended a public high school until graduation. Honestly, I thought there was an ENORMOUS difference in the quality of education between the two. I felt much more challenged at the private schools and was taught to think critically in all subjects from math to english to biology. In the public schools, even though I was in primarily AP classes in 11th and 12th grades, I felt it was much more rote memorization and not critical thinking. I did have a handful of fantastic teachers at the public school and I really feel it comes down to the teaching style of the teachers. However, I had too many teachers who wanted to be "buddies" with the students and thought in order to succeed in that, class should be "easy". If I had graduated from my private high school (had to leave b/c we moved), I definitely feel I would have attended a private university. Since I was influenced by my public high school, I attended my state school--I'm glad now b/c I'm debt free but I still always wonder how different my education would have been if I had attended a private university. I feel that the expectations of the students and parents, paying for it, are higher, thus the quality of education is a little higher... Just my opinion, though. Take it for what it's worth.

 

[NonTradMed]

Public high school, private college. I found my public high school too easy despite being considered one of the top schools in the city we lived in (and the most well funded). College was much harder and I found out there were students who attended private high schools or exclusive public high schools (i.e Struvysant, X State Science Academies etc) to have had a superior education. I don't think public high schools were bad, but I do think mine did not challenge me to the fullest. However, I'm back to attending a public school for med school, but I figure the quality of education at the graduate level should be more similar than the quality of high schools across the nation, right?

 

[mvenus929]

Went to public school from 3rd grade on, even undergrad. I'll probably go to a private med school, though. If I had been in a regular high school curriculum, or even if I had only taken AP classes, I probably wouldn't have been as well off as I am now. But I was in the IB program at both the high schools I went to (though I thought it was a lot easier at my second high school, because we only took 5 classes at a time), so I had to learn critical thinking skills in order to get my IB diploma. I did get it, with the highest score in the history of my school, so I don't feel public school disadvantaged me at all.

 

[akinf]

Wrong....j/k

 

[DrVanNostran]

i went to public school and i still go to public school, b!tch.

👍 👍

 

[CptCrunch]

I went to public high school and then I sold out.

 

[durfen]

I think for most people public schools are fine. If for some reason you feel the need to go to Yale/Harvard then a private might be useful. Not that there is anything wrong with trying to get into one of the top schools, but you can do most things in life without getting into a top 5 undergrad.

I went to public school and got into Ivy League. Granted, I'm in Cali, and in Cali 40% of state budget is devoted to public schools....so.

 

[akademiks1989]

i went to public school and i still go to public school, b!tch.

Ditto, and it was the largest and one of the best in the state of Michigan.

 

[Zoom-Zoom]

Boarding School 😀


A lot of the public HS's in Cali are pretty scary, not to mention horrible schools, unless of course you live in a country area or go down towards OC or S.D (where the public schools can get pretty nice).

 

[durfen]

Boarding School 😀


A lot of the public HS's in Cali are pretty scary, not to mention horrible schools, unless of course you live in a country area or go down towards OC or S.D (where the public schools can get pretty nice).

Silicon Valley getting no love?

 

[Zoom-Zoom]

Silicon Valley getting no love?

I guess I'm basically talking about the Bay Area and Los Angeles

 

[coco11]

private HS, private undergrad

 

[FiddleDr]

Public HS. 52 students in my graduating class. Not a single honors or AP class offered. Did well on the ACT and went to a really good private university where, on the first day, my physics prof started class with the words "I know everyone here took AP Physics, so we're going to just skip the first five chapters in the book." It was a rough semester. But by about junior year, the playing field was more even and now I'm starting med school in a few days. IMO, your education (like many things in life) is really what you make it. If sthg isn't being taught well, it's up to you to teach it to yourself.

 

[geno2568]

i went to a public school, and i go to a semi-public school, bitch!!

(public college in a private university)

 

[Severus]

Home school represent!

 

[Risa]

Home school represent!

represent!

...but only until high school for me, so i had to vote public for poll purposes 🙁

 

[power_to_people]

Public and it was great. Best school in Houston.

 

[musiclink213]

Public all the way through high school. Granted, it was one of the top schools in my city, so I think that probably helped. We had graduates who went on to Harvard and Yale, so it's not completely impossible to go to those places from a public school. BTW, I graduated with a class of 732. 4,000 people in the whole school. Gotta love those big schools.

 

[PsychEpathic]

I went to a public high school that is on the verge of being taken over by the state due to the students' abysmal standardized test scores . I don't see how taking it over will make a difference...

 

[spospo]

i've gone to private my whole life. almost everyone in my family has. i liked it. i found that i was much better prepared for undergrad than the people at the school who went to public high schools (especially in the area of writing). my uncle taught at my high school and he always said that private high schools are good for the average students, the middle 70%. no matter where they go, the smart kids will do well. no matter where they go, the kids who don't care/don't get it won't do well. it is the people in the middle who are really helped by the different style of education. 98% (of 240) of my graduating class went on to college. this expectation really helped the people in the middle pursue higher education. going to a public high school won't make you less ambitious, so don't take it that way. this is all just opinion.

 

[Severus]

represent!

...but only until high school for me, so i had to vote public for poll purposes 🙁

It's okay... I still love you loooooooooong time. 😀 😍


Hey, did your homeschool education ever come up during any of your interviews? I remember it was the "thing" to talk about during my college app process, but I wonder how much adcoms will look at it and/or focus on it.

 

[geno2568]

i've gone to private my whole life. almost everyone in my family has. i liked it. i found that i was much better prepared for undergrad than the people at the school who went to public high schools (especially in the area of writing). my uncle taught at my high school and he always said that private high schools are good for the average students, the middle 70%. no matter where they go, the smart kids will do well. no matter where they go, the kids who don't care/don't get it won't do well. it is the people in the middle who are really helped by the different style of education. 98% (of 240) of my graduating class went on to college. this expectation really helped the people in the middle pursue higher education. going to a public high school won't make you less ambitious, so don't take it that way. this is all just opinion.

Definetly agree with you there. In public high schools, the class sizes are very large, so teachers don't want to assign papaers cuz they will have too much reading to do. I went into college without having written a single paper longer than 2 pages...and it took ap english comp, ap polysci, and ap american.

 

[power_to_people]

Definetly agree with you there. In public high schools, the class sizes are very large, so teachers don't want to assign papaers cuz they will have too much reading to do. I went into college without having written a single paper longer than 2 pages...and it took ap english comp, ap polysci, and ap american.

Not all public schools are like that but most are because the teachers dont expect much from their students so they give them very easy work. But if you goto a good school like the one I went to you will see what happens when students are pushed to the best of their ability. 100% of my class went to college and the only reason is because the school weeded out the students who didnt want to work. Like my freshman class had 250 people by senior year there were 120ish and the whole class added up to 20 million in scholorships and grants. Also most of the kids who left the school and whent to their home school 95% graduate HS and 89% goto college. I dont even know where I am going with this post but I guess I am trying to prove public schools are good and prepare kids for college.

 

[spospo]

I guess I am trying to prove public schools are good and prepare kids for college.

i am in no way saying they don't prepare kids. i think most public schools do a fine job. it depends on where you live though really. different school systems in different cities may not do as good of a job as your schools. my school never weeded people out. most people who left my school left because they didn't like being at a private school. we started with 280 and finished with 240. it just isn't for everyone.

 

[power_to_people]

i am in no way saying they don't prepare kids. i think most public schools do a fine job. it depends on where you live though really. different school systems in different cities may not do as good of a job as your schools. my school never weeded people out. most people who left my school left because they didn't like being at a private school. we started with 280 and finished with 240. it just isn't for everyone.

I understood your post and I wasnt disagreeing with you I was just saying also
my school was the same way people left but also they were kicked out because they went to summer school too many times. Like second semester freshman year 25 people left because it was too hard. It was a little unnerving going there because I always thought they were gonna kick me out for no reason
You are right it really depends on where you live because Houston has some really bad schools so bad they are shutting some down.

 

[top]

If you are in a district with a decent public school, I think you should take it...the price difference isn't worth it IMO. I also went to my state public school, and the same rule applies; I felt I had most of the same opportunities and it's nice being debt-free! Unfortunately, I had to sell out and go to private school for med school, so that trend is no longer going to continue.

 

[Looque]

Small town public school through and through: 56 students grades 9-12, and 7 in my particular grade. (We had 6 my junior year, but a new guy moved in for the last year. It ruined our "dirty half-dozen" moniker.)

 

[freshh.]

i went to public school and i still go to public school, b!tch.

-cosigns-

 

[Risa]

It's okay... I still love you loooooooooong time. 😀 😍

Hey, did your homeschool education ever come up during any of your interviews? I remember it was the "thing" to talk about during my college app process, but I wonder how much adcoms will look at it and/or focus on it.

Yeah, it definitely did! I think it'll depend on how much you choose to feature it, but I deliberately made it one of my main selling points. I was most interested in ungraded, PBL-ey kinds of MD programs, and used my homeschooling background as the foundation for why I'm a good fit for that kind of stuff: integrative, self-motivated and all that jazz. I wrote about it in my secondaries whenever possible, and talked about it in pretty much every interview. The interviewers were always very interested and impressed!

I'm rooting for you hardcore! 😍

 

[somemaybedoc]

I went to private school and when I got to college I felt like I had a lead on many of my public school peers. Specifically with regard to critical thinking and writing. It seemed like public schools did a decent job of teaching the facts, but neglected to educate them on how to think critically and analyze data.

BTW, 100% of my graduating class of ~110 went to a 4 year college.
The best public in my state wasn't near that, so I guess private school is like an expensive form of success insurance.

 

[somemaybedoc]

If you are in a district with a decent public school, I think you should take it...the price difference isn't worth it IMO. I also went to my state public school, and the same rule applies; I felt I had most of the same opportunities and it's nice being debt-free! Unfortunately, I had to sell out and go to private school for med school, so that trend is no longer going to continue.

Whether or not the money is worth it probably depends on how much money you have.

 

[minijoy]

public high school to save cash for the uber expensive "public ivy" school and private grad school...then med school...ouch.

 

[TPROrgoTutor]

I got my GED =)

 

[Skaterbabe74]

Education in general is definitely what you make of it, even high school. I went to a public school - one of the top 5 in the state (and competing against a math and science academy) but when we moved into the district two years earlier we just followed the administration's advice on classes. I had been in all the extended learning programs in grade school (which basically just meant more creative stuff than the other kids) so I hadn't really learned much grammar yet (because middle school didn't start til 7th in my old district). They stuck me in the middle track. I was bored to death. We tried to get me into 8th grade algebra but after a year of crappy math my skills were very rusty and I missed the entrance exam by one point. So my math skills continued to decline. High school came and we just listened to the administrations suggestions for classes again. I was still bored to death - especially in science. So finally my jr. year I petitioned to take the soph accelerated chem (big mistake because the teacher and book were awful) and AP physics (which was also a mistake because I was only in Alg II/Trig - no calc yet) and Honors english and AP US History. English the teacher said no despite being a peer tutor for 2 years (she had it out for me my entire high school education - had her for 3 of the 4 years). History said no because I was already taking two science classes and she felt it would be too much work. Physics I dropped down to the regular physics because I didn't have enough math yet, but either way I should have been in the AP history. I was sooo bored in regular history. Then senior year I took A&P and a 20th century history class that was awesome. By that time I was pretty math-anxious so I gave up on it for several years until I had to get ready for calc in college, and I was focusing more on my singing/theater stuff anyway. I definitely didn't see a disadvantage in my critical thinking/writing skills thanks to several longer papers in both english and 20th century history (I got a 31 in those areas on the ACT) but my math was dismal and my science was just ok as a result.

My whole point in this ramble is to make sure you and your parents fight for what you need. If you know you can handle the higher classes and for some reason the teachers are telling you no fight for it. You know yourself better than they do. My biggest issue coming into college was that I hadn't learned any study skills because just about everything had turned out to be a breeze in high school thanks to not being challenged. I didn't graduate in the top 25% of my class of 427 but that's because I didn't have the higher gpa classes (none of my classes went above 4.0 while other kids in the school did). If you're only going to get that challenge through a private school go for it, but with all the AP/IB options these days the likelihood of not being challenged in high school is way less than when I went to school (we only had a few AP's)