[bushbaba]

The funny thing about many of those 'top schools'. You're actually worse off as top universities cap the number of students from a given high-school. Worse yet, most the kids are doing after school tutoring to boost their scores, making it an arm race.

I'd argue that a well motivated student would do better by being in a slightly worse school

[whatever1]

The most important aspect of a top school is that a student is around classmates with high drive (maybe family influenced) to succeed. This does not just create competition, most importantly, you get the signaling that it is ok and expected to study hard, to do your homework, to say no to playing so that you can finish your assigned homework.

Now if you have a top student in a lagging school, most likely the classmates will drag them down. In my school good students were physically bullied by the “cool” guys.

I think that classes need to be divided based on the performance of the students, that will be assessed on regular intervals. Let the good students go as fast as they need to, focus for the lagging students to get at least the basics right. There is no reason to pretend that we are teaching advanced calculus to lagging students, when they cannot even do simple arithmetic operations.

[xapata]

There are bullies and is anti-intellectual sentiment in "good" schools as well.

[shuckles]

This is incorrect. You need to attend a school admissions counselors are familiar with. They often can’t evaluate grades, academic advisors, or recommendation letters from schools they don’t repeatedly place students from, and therefore have a harder time making a case for high performing students from unknown schools.

I once talked to an admissions counselor for a “selective” university who could name the challenging coursework and reliable recommendation letter writers at all the best high schools in the region she covered.

[gnicholas]

Yes, and the mental health aspects can result in continuing challenges. A family friend had three kids go through HS in PA and not only did none of the kids end up in a particularly great school, two of the three kids didn't finish on time due to unspecified/emotional issues.

When we were house-hunting we took it as a consolation that we couldn't afford to live in Palo Alto!

[michaelwww]

There's always East Palo Alto but kids there face a different set of challenges

[gnicholas]

For sure, though I think their HS is actually pretty good. At least parts of EPA feed into Menlo Atherton HS.

[bushbaba]

East Palo Alto students of 'color' can transfer to Palo Alto's school district among others.

[PradeetPatel]

Grades are only but one aspect of going to a "top school", the networking associated with it cannot be underlooked. It is likely that the students will create connections with others that may benefit them in the future, the same could be said about the parents too.

[gnicholas]

OT, but I think you mean "underestimated" or "overlooked".

[ec109685]

Are you sure there is a cap? There were a huge number of Stanford and Cal accepts my year and literally nobody talked of caps. I do agree that talent could be drowned out at a school like Gunn, whereas you might stand out more at a less prestigious school.

[BarryMilo]

I find it astounding that people still talk in terms of "talent". What else, do we still think America is a meritocracy? By and large, people.perform exactly as their socioeconomic status would predict. "talent" is a myth.

[barry-cotter]

If you think the US is a perfect meritocracy you’re a fool. If you don’t think it’s a great deal closer to it than an enormous majority of past and present societies you’re a bigger fool. The same is true of the entire OECD and many countries outside it to greater and lesser degrees.