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Why Columbus Academy? Come Find Out on December 4!

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Started 5 months ago by Walker
Latest reply from gramarye

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Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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Why Columbus Academy? Come Find Out on December 4!

Columbus Academy will host its annual Admissions Open House on Sunday, December 4, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. All families interested in applying for the 2012-13 school year are encouraged to attend.

Activities will begin in the Dining Hall (signs will point the way) and will include tours of campus and discussions with current students, parents, teachers, coaches and administrators.

Columbus Academy is located at 4300 Cherry Bottom Road, Gahanna, OH 43230.

If you are interested in an Academy education for your child, now is the time to begin the admissions process. Screening begins in December. Places are awarded beginning March 1.

If you have any questions about the admissions process, please call 614-509-2220.

Columbus Academy is an independent, coeducational, college preparatory school with 1,074 students in Grades PreK-12.

READ MORE: http://www.columbusacademy.org/news/news.aspx?nid=154

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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I know why I would want to send my children there, but how about why not?

Lower School
Pre-Kindergarten: $9,800
2-Day Extended Day: $12,500
3-Day Extended Day: $13,800
Full-Day PreK: $16,000
Kindergarten-Grade 4: $17,800
Middle School
Grades 5-8: $18,500
Upper School
Grades 9-12: $20,200

Great School nonetheless.

Posted 5 months ago #
James
Upper Arlington
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I think expensive schools like that tend to have a high 'list price' and then offer aid to families that can't afford those prices. Higher income families then subsidize those of more modest means. Expensive nonetheless, but maybe not as much depending on the family's income level.

Posted 5 months ago #
FireEngine
Blacklick or Driving Park
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James said:
I think expensive schools like that tend to have a high 'list price' and then offer aid to families that can't afford those prices. Higher income families then subsidize those of more modest means. Expensive nonetheless, but maybe not as much depending on the family's income level.

Unfortunately, the other students don't hesitate to remind those scholarship students about that. My neighbor's daughter went through that for two years before she left. Now she is thriving at Eastmoor.

Posted 5 months ago #
Anidem
NE Ohio
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My nine year old niece attends there, started in kindergarten and has been on scholarship. I think my brother pays about 2 grand a year. In seeing the curriculum my niece brings home here and there and other misc, I honestly don't see much if any difference in this school versus a good public school but my sister-in-law is under the belief all public schools are terrible.

Posted 5 months ago #
arualpalm

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I used to beg my parents to send me to Columbus Academy (17 years ago), and I am glad that they did not. We could not have afforded it anyways, and I would feel so guilty if I now knew that they went into debt to do so. What they would have paid for two years' of high school was more than my entire undergraduate tuition and board. Plus, I now appreciate having been exposed to various social-economic classes in public schools.

My uncle went there on a scholarship almost five decades ago and has done very well, along with everyone else I know that graduated from there. I doubt the coursework is substantially different from advanced/honors classes offered in public settings, but I imagine the high standards and expectations set by the students' families is what really drives/pushes the students.

Posted 5 months ago #
AmyArt21
Short North
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If there's an entrance exam, I am wondering if Columbus Academy accommodates students with special needs...

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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Anidem said:
My nine year old niece attends there, started in kindergarten and has been on scholarship. I think my brother pays about 2 grand a year. In seeing the curriculum my niece brings home here and there and other misc, I honestly don't see much if any difference in this school versus a good public school but my sister-in-law is under the belief all public schools are terrible.

It isn't just that when picking a school like this, it is more who are your kids going to be around. I went to both public and private high schools, public middle school, and private grade school. In my case i saw very little difference in the curriculums, and in fact my public school probably had a better one. The difference is, the private school was not filled with trash, and had something like a 90% college attendance rate.

Funny thing is the kids I know that went to CA or Wellington already lived in great public school districts. Also, if you are spending this much, why not spend a little more and send them to Phillip Exeter if you are that concerned with how good their school is.

Posted 5 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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BuenaVista said:
The difference is, the private school was not filled with trash...

Insulting children is pretty a pretty childish thing itself.

Keep it civil.

Posted 5 months ago #
gramarye
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My public high school was filled with trash, too. Cigarette butts in the urinals, litter in the outdoor atrium, rubble from where the chemistry teacher got a little too excited with reactive compounds, you name it.

As for the students, remember that one's peer group will almost never include the entire student body, even at a relatively small school. My high school had around 900 students and I graduated with a class of about 180. My high school was midrange (slightly above average) in terms of test scores and college attendance and such, but my real peer group at the school was probably only about 40-50 students that I saw most frequently (including mostly people from my class plus a few from the classes 1-2 years behind or ahead of me). While only about 30% of my high school went on to four-year degrees, I'd say 80%+ of my peers were among that 30%.

With respect to Columbus Academy, I'm sure it's a great school, but if I made $200,000 a year, I wouldn't want my kid to go to it because I'd be paying sticker price--and if I made $50,000 a year, I wouldn't want my kid to go to it because there would be no way that I could support the lifestyle necessary for not just my kid, but myself as a parent, to fit into the social scene there.

Posted 5 months ago #
leftovers

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Nothing beats a solid public school system. It is great for property values and builds neighbohood community. I hope we will see the day when there is no need for Columbus Academy.

I am torn by whether I would ship my kid off to a private school or send him to the local CPS school and try to work to make a difference.

Posted 5 months ago #
labi
Weinland Park
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gramarye said:
As for the students, remember that one's peer group will almost never include the entire student body, even at a relatively small school. My high school had around 900 students and I graduated with a class of about 180. My high school was midrange (slightly above average) in terms of test scores and college attendance and such, but my real peer group at the school was probably only about 40-50 students that I saw most frequently (including mostly people from my class plus a few from the classes 1-2 years behind or ahead of me). While only about 30% of my high school went on to four-year degrees, I'd say 80%+ of my peers were among that 30%.

I had a similar experience, but thinking about it makes me wonder if a kid like me would have been any more socially isolated at a private school (because of nonconformity in income) than I was at my public school (because of nonconformity in academic goals/achievement). In my district there was only one high school, though, so the range of choices available in a larger public school system wasn't a factor.

Posted 5 months ago #
gramarye
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labi said:
I had a similar experience, but thinking about it makes me wonder if a kid like me would have been any more socially isolated at a private school (because of nonconformity in income) than I was at my public school (because of nonconformity in academic goals/achievement). In my district there was only one high school, though, so the range of choices available in a larger public school system wasn't a factor.

I only had one high school in my district as well. Districts with multiple high schools were actually somewhat more rare back then (I'm getting old enough to be able to say "back then"), and ones with open enrollment were even rarer. Olentangy and Pickerington only had one high school apiece back then, and Hilliard, Dublin, Worthington, and Westerville only had two.

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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gramarye said:
My public high school was filled with trash, too. Cigarette butts in the urinals, litter in the outdoor atrium, rubble from where the chemistry teacher got a little too excited with reactive compounds, you name it.

As for the students, remember that one's peer group will almost never include the entire student body, even at a relatively small school. My high school had around 900 students and I graduated with a class of about 180. My high school was midrange (slightly above average) in terms of test scores and college attendance and such, but my real peer group at the school was probably only about 40-50 students that I saw most frequently (including mostly people from my class plus a few from the classes 1-2 years behind or ahead of me). While only about 30% of my high school went on to four-year degrees, I'd say 80%+ of my peers were among that 30%.

With respect to Columbus Academy, I'm sure it's a great school, but if I made $200,000 a year, I wouldn't want my kid to go to it because I'd be paying sticker price--and if I made $50,000 a year, I wouldn't want my kid to go to it because there would be no way that I could support the lifestyle necessary for not just my kid, but myself as a parent, to fit into the social scene there.

Sorry Walker.

What about that return for the 20k you spent a year? Would there not be a future value that would make those 20k a year payments worth it? I would say of course there is. A graduate of CA I know went to ivy league, works on wall street, makes 7 figures a year and is in his early thirties.

If the goal of a school like CA is to provide an education that will get your child to an Ivy, and then that Ivy gets them a top career choice, was that not accomplished? I would say 20k a year in this instance would be well worth it?

Posted 5 months ago #
gramarye
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Did that student go to the Ivy League because he went to CA? Or would he just as plausibly have been an Ivy League candidate because his parents made the kind of money that would allow him to go to CA (indicating that they were probably both college-educated and career-oriented)? How confident are you that CA made the difference between him going to the Ivy Leagues and then to Wall Street as opposed to some other, less lucrative career?

Finances were definitely a concern to my family in the way that they probably often aren't to families sending their children to CA (particularly if they can afford the sticker price). That, more than academics, probably kept me from shooting for the Ivy League. I also don't have the mentality of an investment banker, either--I'm too financially risk-averse. I've spoken with several and simply couldn't see myself as part of that culture. That means that I probably wouldn't have gone to the Ivies even had I gone to CA, and might well not have gone to Wall Street even had I gone to Penn or Princeton or what have you. (There are a surprising number of unemployed and underemployed Ivy League graduates at the moment, and they *have* to be among the most disillusioned people out there.)

Therefore, even had I gone to CA (likely on scholarship, since my family could never have afforded the sticker price even in the '90s), I probably would have ended up at Ohio State anyway. Given that, it's almost impossible that I could have done better than I did had I been coming out of CA instead of Watkins--I got one of the ten best scholarships OSU offers, then got a significant merit scholarship to a top-tier East Coast law school on top of that. (I estimate my total scholarship haul at around $120,000.)

So I ask: Would your friend on Wall Street have been denied his Ivy League admission and/or his Wall Street job had he gone to Watkins with me? Would I have done even better in college and law school had I gone to CA with him? It's impossible to know for sure, of course, but my own history gives me a certain degree of confidence that it's the student and the parents that matter far more than the school.

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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You could be right, but again I think this really comes down to who you are surrounded with. Sometimes it is not enough to have a career minded family, and you want your child around career minded children as well. I think it is also surrounding your child with kids whose parents are also career minded. Also, by saying career minded, I do not mean, go to OSU, graduate and work for Nationwide. I mean parents who want their kids at Goldman, Wachtell, SAC Capital, etc. I did not necessarily mean finance it could be big law or what have you.

In the case I am speaking of the parents were not "rich", but upper middle class (think 200k a year) which when putting two kids through CA that is pretty tough.

The biggest difference is exposure. How many kids from your high school even knew what SAC Capital, or Wachtell, or KKR were (we will leave out Goldman since they are all over the news)? Again, you could come out of a public school, and then OSU, and then become a top banker, but it is less likely, when there are kids that have been groomed for it forever. Heck, the head of JP Morgan's Investment Banking, is a redneck from my town, who went to University of Kentucky Law, and then became a partner at Cravath (partner at Cravath from UK, imagine that), and now heads up IB at JPM.

Anything is possible. Just much easier when you give your kids the right tools.

Posted 5 months ago #
James
Upper Arlington
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gramarye said:

So I ask: Would your friend on Wall Street have been denied his Ivy League admission and/or his Wall Street job had he gone to Watkins with me? Would I have done even better in college and law school had I gone to CA with him? It's impossible to know for sure, of course, but my own history gives me a certain degree of confidence that it's the student and the parents that matter far more than the school.

I read something a while back about some of the top tier boarding schools like exeter. They maintain very cozy relationships with Harvard/Yale etc because there's a mutual benefit - schools like Harvard benefit from having low admission rates (the kind that say 1 out of 20 applicants was accepted). In order to get that low admission rate while maintaining full enrollment, they need close to 100% of those students they accept to actually enroll. Schools like Exeter and Hotchkiss help make this happen by working very closely with their students (ie managing their application process) to make sure they only apply to one of their chosen top schools and then commit to enrolling there if accepted.
This system may have broken down recently, but for years it was the norm, and it says that students admitted to top Universities aren't admitted based solely upon qualifications. Much has to do with where they come from. As for CA, I don't imagine they have this kind of relationship - just a self selecting group of students with either money, smarts, a family history of college attendance or some combination of the above. I'm sure the education is excellent at CA, though.

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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Oh, I also wanted to add another anecdote. I also grew up with a kid who left our crappy public school for Exeter, went to Yale undergrad, and then to Harvard Kennedy School of Gov for grad. He did public policy for AEP, and now works for some smart grid company out in Cali doing public policy. Hardly what I would expect from a child I spent no less than 400k educating. So schools do not mean everything all the time.

Posted 5 months ago #
hugh59
Aboard the ultimate power in Olde Towne East
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I went to CA between 1966 and 1973 (I left after 8th grade). Back then, it was not as expensive. My family was upper middle class yet we could afford to send four sons there and a daughter to CSG. Back then, CA was less concerned with revenues and more concerned with providing a good education for its students. My class size in 1966 was about a dozen students; that was back at the Nelson Road location. The school moved to the Gahanna campus at the start of 4th grade, if I remember correctly. Our class size increased to over 20 students.

I transferred to the Columbus Public Schools because I was being horribly teased and the school administration was not willing to do anything to stop it.

Going to CA gives you the ability to network with the children of many of the top families in Columbus…but not everyone is good at networking. If you are one of the non-networking types, going to CA (or the Ivy League schools) is not going to be as worthwhile.

CA was an outstanding school while I was there. The academics were stronger than at the public schools I went to. Better sports facilities (which did not matter to me since I am an awful athlete) but minimal theater facilities (which mattered a lot to me). Things may have changed since the 70s.

The price for tuition is outrageous. My oldest brother told me a story about how he went to an alumni event where many people complained that the increased tuition meant that many alums could not afford to send their kids there.

With tuition that high, it would be wiser to move to Upper Arlington, Bexley, or Dublin and take advantage of the superior public schools there. The quality of the education might be slightly less than CA, but the price you pay in higher real property taxes is going to be a heck of a lot less than the tuition differential. And the chances for networking are not that much worse.

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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hugh59 said:

With tuition that high, it would be wiser to move to Upper Arlington, Bexley, or Dublin and take advantage of the superior public schools there. The quality of the education might be slightly less than CA, but the price you pay in higher real property taxes is going to be a heck of a lot less than the tuition differential. And the chances for networking are not that much worse.

The funny part is, in the cases I know of where kids attended CA or Wellington, the parents already resided in Dublin, UA, and NA. I guess that is probably the norm as well because most people that can afford 20k a year already live in the best suburbs with the best school systems.

Posted 5 months ago #