Are Private School Graduates Ready For College?

Question: Are Private School Graduates Ready For College?

Highly competitive colleges admit highly prepared high school students. That's a given. But less competitive tertiary institutions of learning face the grim reality: too many public school students lack the basic academic skills necessary to succeed in college. Can the same be said of private school graduates? No.

Answer: Private school grads ARE prepared for college level academic work.

For years we have assumed that every American child has the right to attend college. That assumption in turn assumes that every child is ready for college. When 30% of freshman students must remediate basic skills, you have to ask whether or not all students are adequately prepared for a traditional college academic program.

Condition of Education 2008 notes that public high school graduation rates vary from 70% in the District of Columbia to 87% in Nebraska. Very few private school students do not graduate. Essentially private schools make it their mission to prepare their students for tertiary level academic work.

A private school education features:
* high academic and personal expectations
* rigorous discipline
* exposure to ideas

Private school graduates can synthesize information, differentiate between fact and opinion, and impose their own creative solutions on the issues and problems of the day. They have been doing so for several years before going to college.

Private school graduates can digest the prodigious amounts of information which the technology age has generated. They have had plenty of practice during their three or four years in high school.

In sum, private school graduates on the whole are much better equipped to tackle college level studies than their public school counterparts.