Does graduating from a magnet school help you to go to an Ivy league or a UCLA/USC/UCB?

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Kinda makes me sick when parents freak out this much about college. Theres a good chance your child will rebel against the pressure and expectations, I've seen it happen many times(*cough*).



I thought i'd throw in my two cents. College really has little to do with happiness or earning power. I didn't graduate college, and I'm doing quite well. Out of everyone I went to school/grew up with , I have 3 friends who make significantly more money then I do(and they arn't in the real estate field), and i'm not saying this to toot my own horn. The interesting thing about it is that:



Two of them also didn't go to college. They both work in Software. The other is a lawyer, and he went to a community college for two years before transfering to LA and then got into a tier 1 law school.



I have a few other friends who went Ivy, or other tier one schools right out of high school, and they seem to really be struggling. I know a few others that are on the road to getting an M.D. in which case, I think a good school helps, but its not neccessary.



I still keep in touch with my friend who happened to graduate with the highest GPA and SAT score in our class (an irvine school). I wish I could say he was doing better professionally.



You might be thinking "this isn't just about the money" or "why are you so money focused", in which I'd reply "i'm not". If its not about earning power, who *cares* where they go to school, as long as its some place they enjoy?



While I admire and applaud those who do very well academically, I'm certainly not regretful that I didn't spend every waking our of my teen years studying. Far off into the future when I have children, I definitely will not lord over them demanding straight As and an Ivy degree.
 
<p>I'm late to this thread, but, here is my Uni High experience.</p>

<p>You are constantly in competition with your classmates/friends about grades, club positions, positions on sports, etc. I don't know many Uni grads from my graduation class that enjoyed their experiences. However, college seemed like a piece of cake compared to the crap we had to go through in high school. In my graduation class of 550 people, over 50% went to the top tier UC (B, LA, SD, I) and/or Ivy League schools. There are more AP classes that are offered than you can fit into a 4 year curriculum. One of my siblings graduated top of the class. She had to share the valedictorian w/ 4 other people. There were over 120 kids who graduated with a 4.0 higher GPA (weighted) in my class. Welcome to Uni.</p>

<p>IMO, if you graduate near the top of any high school, you are an excellent student w/ great discipline. My SO graduated top 10 in her high school and is more well rounded than ANY of the top 30-40 in my class. Smart kids with good study habits and caring parents will do fine in any high school.</p>

<p>As a random note, Uni High wins a lot of academic competitions not because our smartest and best students are that much better, but because we have some of the smartest/best C-avg students in the country (and also possibly the laziest). A good friend of mine from HS graduated from Uni w/ a 2.0 and got a perfect SAT score (got into a top school of course). Another one got straight As in year 2 & year 3 (important requirements for UCs), ditched 100 classes in senior year, got a full ride and finished UCLA in 3 yrs and graduated from Harvard Law in 2.</p>
 
High school for UC's? Doesn't matter. If you go to the ghetto school, it might actually help, because the Affirmative Action folks made it so that the top 10% of any HS class could go to a UC. Bad idea. . . the UC's are so homogeneous that if you get a little bit of favoritism going into a school, you will sink in the curve.



UC's use an index score. SAT plus 3 SAT scores plus 1000 times GPA. Of course this is different now with the new SAT. If you are above a certain score, you are first tier and you get in automatically. If you are between two lower scores, they look at essay, etc. If you're are below a certain score-- you're rejected. Sounds harsh? UCLA got 30,000 apps the year I applied. How else could they possibly go about it? I was very happy to just have cleared first tier.
 
"Kinda makes me sick when parents freak out this much about college."



There are good reasons parents freak out about college. You are probably too young to understand at this point, but, believe me, you will one day.



Besides the fact that every study ever done on this matter showing college-graduates make more money, college opens more doors, bestows upon students experiences, and widens your intellectual and personal horizons more than anything I can think of, other than perhaps extensive international travel. Of course, if you are the rare self-motivated person who reads extensively and surrounds himself with people fascinated with intellectual discussion, you can obtain an education close to what you can at a university. I have found only a handful of such people.
 
With regards to Irvine vs Troy IB, I agree with the previous poster that it comes down to your kid's personality more than anything else. Is he (I'm going to use the masculine only because you did in the OP) the type to enjoy top-level competition at a place like Troy? Or will he do better at a place where the competition will be a bit less intense (say, 50 top-level students instead of 250) so he has a better chance at shining? Is he so talented at one particular thing that he would be a star at a school like Troy that offers perhaps a greater selection of extracurricular activities (e.g. math, violin, chess, badminton, oil painting)?



It is difficult if not impossible, perhaps, for parents to know these things, especially if the parents didn't go through a similar academic competitiveness. I think it is a good idea to ask your child what his opinion on the matter is and take his input seriously.
 
[quote author="brealiving" date=1207452142]ISB... UCLA actually got over 50k apps last year.</blockquote>


I believe it. . . apps to all schools have swelled as online common apps have made multiple school applying that much easier. It's so insane, these schools need to start doing rolling apps, they would get the best possible student bodies that way.
 
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