Request for advice: high school transferring

What are your university plans? The more interested you are in going to a highly selective university or studying something very challenging there, the more valuable the academic strength of your current school.

Do you think the "outstanding" academics at your current school mean that you would actually learn more there than at the public school, or only that you would be better credentialled or something of the kind?

My impression is that later in life many people remain in touch with their friends from university and rather few with their friends from high school. If I'm right about this, the social advantages of the public school are shortish-term only. (That doesn't make them unimportant.)

Do you have a strong sense of how friendly the other people at the public school would be to someone newly arrived from a fancy independent school? That seems like something that could be a source of tension (e.g., they may expect you to think you're better than they are, somehow, which can cause trouble even if you have no such attitude).

Is there anyone else who has a say in where you go? (Parents, legal guardians, ...) If so, what do they think, and what do you think about what they think?

First, I would say look for the possibilities to make the boarding school work as best as possible.

What can you do directly? Have you considered actually boarding at your current school? Is that financially doable? If it's really an issue of coming home late every day, are there any activities that go late on some days, so that you have some long days, and then some short days? How can you adjust your schedule to make things work? You're going on 16, aren't you? Are you going to get a car for that commute? That might make life easier. On activities, have you looked at them all? You're young. Try things. Art. Music. Dance.

( I really can't recommend Dance strongly enough as something to get into young. It's fitness that can last and be used a lifetime. And it's a gold mine for young men, as there are a dozen girls trained in dance for every guy. I took up social dance after grad school. I'm 50 now, and dancing with girls half my age because I can. Me and my friends were just young morons for turning up our noses at dance. This falls under "try things" too. I had no idea I'd enjoy dance so much, or of all the benefits it would bring.)

After you look at your options for what you can do, I'd go talk to administrators at your school to see if they can help. Tell them you love the place - you LOVE the place - but you have issues because of being off campus and the on campus requirements keeping you from home. Could they reduce the participation requirements? Could they help further financially to get you boarding on campus? Maybe part time? What kind of high school doesn't have a math team?

Private boarding schools should have a good deal of flexibility in what they can do financially. Particularly with room and board, I expect that's just adding you to fix costs that the school already incurs.

I got a similar scholarship to a private (but not boarding) school. Though smart, I was not always so good a student. They counseled me and worked with me.

They want you to stay. They want you to succeed. They don't want you to bail.

Work for the best deal you can manage, and then decide.

The private school sounds like it would leave you better prepared, and certainly better credentialed to get into the best school you can.

The college you go to, and the friends you make there, have a huge effect on the rest of your life. I would expect the same principle applies to snooty boarding schools. You make connections that can last you decades. The college you go to matters if you want to go to grad school (because your grad school matters, particularly if you want to stay in academe).

The trade off you make now will be paying off in compounded interest for the rest of your life. It's a good time to suck it up a little for a long term gain.

I've noticed that when people tell me I have to do things, I enjoy them much, much less.

Everybody is like that. Particularly at work. Everything is a battle of status and control. It's not helpful. Try to let it go.

I will describe this first in an abstract way and then in a child comment I will describe some practical techniques that I think might help.

When facing a tough choice, it is important that you are as strong as possible in the following areas:

• Value awareness, i.e. that you have a full understanding of all the things that would impact your choice. People tend to neglect or not include certain things in their deliberations like being scared of change, for example, because either they don’t think about them or they don’t want to admit that they matter. You don’t want do this. If something is impacting your choice, then it should be included in your considerations.
• Prediction accuracy, i.e. that you have a correct understanding of how valuable each choice will actually be once it is made and in the future as well. In most instances it is possible for us to improve upon our innate and intuitive predictions.
• Agency, i.e. that you are fully aware of all of the moves and choices that you can make. You should be careful to avoid the false dilemma. As an example, let’s imagine someone wants to leave their job because even though they love it they have some major issues with a person at their work. This situation should not be framed as a choice between leaving their job or not, but as a problem in which leaving their job is one of many potential solutions. Even though the person may think at first that leaving their job is the only option, on deeper analysis they may find other better and less drastic strategies that they could follow to alleviate the problems with the person at their work.

I have several recommendations.

First things first, I strongly recommend reading this blog post by Siderea on the possible values of attending University. The difference between a public and private high school for you may very well be similar to the difference between a lower and higher status university. This article will expand your list of possible benefits and detriments to the two (and more) options. Spending lots of time around higher status and higher income people has a lot of benefits that aren't immediately obvious. (I'm assuming the private school is higher status here. I don't know your area and there are certainly low status private schools out there.)

I recommend adding these ideas to your considerations, reading what ScottL describes below, and then doing Goal Factoring on the entire question. Goal Factoring is a very useful CFAR technique that works well in this exact type of situation. I don't see a great write-up for it online and I'm not sure how great that link is at describing it. However, if you'd like to hear a more thorough explanation and practice the technique after you've looked into this stuff you're welcome to PM me your skype username and we can chat about it sometime soon. (I'm decent at debugging, but if you get any other offers you should definitely take those up as well as or instead of mine.)

And I also recommend going and meeting some people who actually attend the public high school or just taking a day off and wandering into the place to see what it's actually like in person. You may be slightly dissatisfied at your current location but would absolutely hate the public high school. (Bullying isn't a myth, the grass is always greener on the other side, etc.) The year you're in will also have a lot of consequences in what your experience is like since many friendships are already formed and group boundaries defined by the end of the 2nd year (if not the 1st).

Last but not least, if you don't already have a clear answer and want a hundred other things to consider (or you've decided on an answer and are ready for your next challenge) you should take a look at the Starting University Advice Repository thread. One of the primary values of High School is preparing you for and enabling your progression in University. This includes socially (for relationships), academically (for knowledge), building study habits, developing your writing, developing interpersonal skills, acquiring culture (acculturating), making use of the high school's prestige, and more (as described in Siderea's post linked above).

If you're in the US, what are the average SAT scores at your independent school and at your public school?

This means that 1. I get home from school around 6pm and 2. (more importantly) it's very hard to socialize when you don't board at the school, and there's really very little besides drama or sports (neither of which I like very much) that people do after school and actually enjoy/make friends in.

Sports or physical fitness in general is an important activity to stay healthy. A lot of the processing power of our brain goes to coordinating the body. If you have better balance less of your processing power needs to go towards coordinating your body, even if you sit in a math test.

it's very hard to socialize when you don't board at the school

Are you saying that you don't have good friendships with other students at the moment?

How did this end up going? Any chance of us getting an update?

If I could re-do high school, I would get my GED as early as possible, and then do something useful with my time instead of gong to high school. For example, you could self-study a bunch of APs exams, test out of all the general education requirements at many universities, and then graduate from college early too.

Then, when you get to college, you can spend a bunch of your time socializing, on campus.

Biases/my history: I went to a good public high school after indifferent public elementary and junior high schools. I attended an Ivy League college. My life would have been different if I had gone to academically challenging schools as a youth. I don't know if it would have been better or worse; things have worked out pretty well.

You come off as very smart and self-aware. Still, I think you underrate the risk of ending up as an other-person at the public high school; friends may not be as easy as you expect. Retreating to a public high school may also require explanation to college recruiters.

I also think your conclusion that you would study better with more friends may be a self-persuading effort that there are scholastic reasons to switch. But there don't have to be scholastic reasons: Being unhappy for two more years in your teens is a big deal, and if you are satisfied that your happiness will increase substantially by switching, you should switch. Long view is nice, but part of that view should be that two years of a low-friend existence sounds no fun, and the losses of switching are likely to be minimal.

Finally, commuting is a life-killer. Adults very commonly underrate the loss of quality of life for commuting (I commute 10 minutes each way; I have had jobs with one-hour commutes.) I'd suggest it's even more valuable time lost for a teenager.

Finally finally, I'm confident you'll get this right for you. Take a look at these responses, talk it out, then rock on. Be good, stay well.

When thinking that the local public school is otherwise equivalent to your boarding school, you should consider two things in addition to the things that others have noted:

1. What's the base rate? Generally, private schools are better than public schools. Otherwise, people would not pay for private schools. Anecdotally, I am always appalled by the things I hear about public schools (since my kids went to private school). I'm also appalled by my own memories of public schools. The qualitative difference is usually pretty big.

2. Public schools' reputations are usually overblown compared to private schools. Generally, you get into a public school by where you live. The reputation of the local public school thus affects property values, giving all the locals a strong incentive to claim that their school is good. Additionally, they feel more comfortable assuring themselves that the school that they are sending their kids to for free is a good school. That is, their conclusions that their schools are good is motivated reasoning. The result is that 75% of people believe that their kids' public school is above average, which is just impossible.

Gather email addresses of teachers that you like. keep in touch with them (or ask if it's possible). Then have the best of both worlds?

Try looking into a programming course by distance. i.e. www.codeacademy.com and ask in your school if you can take it on.

Transfer.

I won't justify that answer because it sounds like you're looking for someone to tell you what to do. And really, you're smart enough to figure out why.