Former Private School Students Share What They Hated Most: What Parents Need To Know
Last weekend, I was at a neighborhood backyard barbecue, swatting mosquitoes away from my burger and listening to a group of twenty-somethings talk about high school. My cousin Lila, who just graduated from college and spent four years at a private boarding high school, heard me mention I’m touring high schools for my 13-year-old, and leaned forward. “Don’t let the glossy brochures fool you,” she said. “I went, and the thing I hated most isn’t the snobby rich kids people always joke about. It’s that there was no room to be bad at anything.”
She went on to explain that by sophomore year, every single thing she did was filtered through how it would look on her college application. She liked drawing, but her advisor told her to drop art because it “wasn’t rigorous enough” to impress top engineering programs. She tried out for soccer as a freshman, made JV, and when she didn’t move up to varsity junior year, the college counselor suggested she quit to spend more time prepping for SAT subject tests. When she got a B on an AP chemistry midterm, her advisor called a meeting with her and her parents to discuss whether she needed extra tutoring, as if a single B would keep her out of every good school. She told me she still has fleeting stress dreams about turning in a paper late once— the teacher marked it down 10%, the grade stayed on her permanent transcript, and her advisor brought it up three separate times before college apps were due.
Mike, who went to a private day school 20 years ago, chimed in from the cooler where he was grabbing another beer. He said his least favorite part was the unspoken pressure to perform that extended way outside the classroom. “Everyone’s parents were dropping $30k a year on tuition back then, which is way more now,” he said. “There was no such thing as a regular summer break. If you weren’t doing a study abroad program, a fancy internship, or a volunteer trip that cost $2k to join, you were falling behind. I wanted to bag groceries at the store down the street to save up for my own car. My parents talked to the head of school, who told them that a part-time retail job would look bad on my apps because it showed I ‘wasn’t prioritizing academic growth.’ I never got that job. I never learned how to balance a shift with homework, or how to deal with a rude manager, or how to budget my own tips. By the time I got to college, I couldn’t even do my own laundry without calling my mom to ask how it worked, because I’d never had to do anything that wasn’t school or a resume activity.”
I’ve been to three private school open houses in the last two months, and I’ve never heard any administrator bring this up. All the talks are about small class sizes, college placement rates, 100% graduation, all the shiny metrics that get parents like me to write big checks. No one talks about what those metrics cost the kids. To get those 90% acceptance rates to top schools, you have to push out any activity that doesn’t contribute to the stats. You have to treat every small mistake like a big problem, because one bad grade can pull down the average that the school advertises. That’s the trade-off no one tells you about when you’re walking the perfectly manicured campus.
It’s not that private school is inherently bad. Lila ended up at a great engineering school, she has a good job now, she just says she still has to work on unlearning the habit of panicking if she gets anything less than perfect on a work project. Mike works in finance now, he’s doing fine, he just wishes he’d gotten more unstructured time as a kid. But there are concrete things any parent can do, regardless of where your kid goes to school.
If you’re touring private schools right now, add this question to your list of things to ask: “How many students get a C or lower in a core class each year, and how do staff respond when that happens?” If the admissions director acts like that never happens, or acts like a C is a permanent failure, that’s your answer right there. If your kid is already in private school, don’t just ask “how was school” at dinner. Ask them once a month, “When was the last time you messed up here and no one made a big deal out of it?” That question gets way more honest answers than any generic check-in. And no matter what school you choose, carve out one unstructured, resume-free activity for your kid. It doesn’t matter if it’s folding origami, playing old video games with friends, or walking the neighborhood dog. It just has to be something that doesn’t get counted, graded, or added to a list of achievements. My son has Wednesday afternoons off from any scheduled activity, and he just builds Lego spaceships with his best friend. It’ll never go on a high school resume, but that’s the point. It’s a place where he can mess up a build, throw it away, and start over without anyone caring.
Right now, I have a private school acceptance letter taped to my fridge. We’re still weighing it against the public high school down the street, which has a bigger theatre program and way lower tuition. I don’t know what we’ll pick yet. But I know that whatever we decide, we’re keeping those Wednesday afternoons. Some things matter more than the stats on a brochure.
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