Overparenting

The only thing odd is not knowing why. I know parents who are willing to make extensive sacrifices for children who have a chance to be professional athletes or actors or physicians. Why not? But, there are fine schools public and private all about Los Angeles. (Heck, I know.) What is the point?

I've been looking up average SAT scores for seniors in Los Angeles County high schools. These are approximate:

Harvard-Westlake 1385
Whitney (public school with entrance test) 1380
Flintridge Prep 1340
Thacher (boarding) 1320
Buckley 1250
Loyola 1240
San Marino (public) 1230
Campbell Hall 1180
Notre Dame 1090

As you go farther down than that you start running into the methodological problem that many seniors don't take the SAT, so averages among those who do take it give an inflated picture of the whole school. For example, Beverly Hills (public) averages 1190, but only 74 percent take the test.

Overall in Los Angeles County, only about 10% of all teenagers (public and private combined) score 1000 or higher on the SAT (and that's under the easier scoring system introduced in 1995 - a 1000 today is like an 890 before 1995).

Stuyvesant, the famous public exam-entrance school in Manhattan, claims a 1410.

You can read all about this topic at:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070128_scores.htm

You know I'm of two minds on the overparenting thing. On the one hand, it's true, underparenting is much worse. For my job I work with kids with severe emotional disturbance for a public school district. Any of those kids would happily trade the little neuroses and personality tics that the overparented have for the debilitating behavioral and social problems they have.

On the other hand, I also feel that a terrible disservice is being done to kids by parents who seem to want to prevent them any hardship at all. For one thing, it's a futile pursuit. And for another, kids who never face adversity in their daily life have no coping mechanisms to deal with the problems that they do face. I meet these kids at work sometimes, kids who just have no ability whatsoever to mentally unpack adversity.

With parents that stupid, the kids need all the help they can get.

The real action in overparenting is in the elimination of unstructured free time for middle and upper-middle class kids and the decline in adults only time & space in the house.

This is truly everything that's wrong with this country

$56,000? That's ... more than tuition at any college in the nation by $20,000. What do you get that's possibly worth charging that much ... do they bring heads of state to weekly assemblies?

Considering the "sacrifice" that these parents have made on their kids behalf, I hope they don't fail or God forbid decide that they don't want to go to college or the college of their parents choice. I think the possible emotional abuse in these kids future, should they not live up to their parents heightened expectations, is beyond just a little neuroses.

Parents who care that much about schools aren't thinking about academics (Greek, or SAT scores, etc.).

They are thinking about early-life networking, being in with a certain crowd, and about rich husbands for their daughters.

One of my first year college roommates was a Milton graduate. He trashed the room across the hall and lit some kid's bed on fire. I watched it all. He was punished with a room of his own. In apparent violation of state law, I got myself one of those lady types for a roommate.

Sorry, my mistake above, about 16% of all students (public and private) in LA County will score 1000 or higher on the SAT (V + M). The 10% figure I gave above is only for public school students in LA Co.

The best source on how college graduate LA parents think about schools is the "Scandalously Informal Guide to LA Schools" by Sandra Tsing Loh, who writes about schooling for The Atlantic:

http://www.sandratsingloh.com/index.php?pr=Scandalously_Informal

It's very funny and very true.

They are thinking about early-life networking, being in with a certain crowd, and about rich husbands for their daughters.

Yes, and nothing helps you cozy up to the rich kids like having underemployed, desperate parents who can't afford to move their own furniture.

I'm a public-school product. The only insight I have into the prep school stuff is Catcher in the Rye. (Lord of the Flies also comes to mind - too much responsibility too soon with too little guidance.)

"They are thinking about early-life networking, being in with a certain crowd, and about rich husbands for their daughters."

Which they could have done at least as equally well (or perhaps better) by renting an apartment in the Beverly Hills school district and sending them to Beverly Hills High instead.

"$56,000? That's ... more than tuition at any college in the nation by $20,000."

I believe they have three daughters. It's obviously still quite expensive, but not particularly outrageous these days.

"(I believe Harvard-Westlake is the one to go to)"

I like the Webb Schools or Polytechnic, myself.

One of my first year college roommates was a Milton graduate. [class warfare ensues]

Look, rich kids can be assholes. But so can non-rich kids. And, hey, some times the kids who go to Exeter/Choate/Milton/Andover turn out to have done some interesting things in school.

The real issue that this raises is, why don't you have a subscription to the WSJ? True their editorials are garbage, but the news pages are excellent.

Nicholas- the couple has two daughters, so it's $56,000 for tuition for both of them. That's "only" $28,000 per kid per year.

Also Nicholas,
I would say that Linus' post isn't so much "class warfare" (even if the expansive WSJ definition is accepted). Rather he's pointing out an amusing anecdote suggesting that there are those for whom a Milton education did not help in terms of character based education. Down with the internet!

but it seems clear to me that if you live in California and want to send your kids to school in New England the thing to do is take advantage of the area's many fine boarding schools.

I would assume the parents didn't want their daughters to live away from home.

According to the Winsor website, tuition for 2005/6 was $26,500. (That's probably par for the course for these schools; it is actually slightly less than the tuition for the school that my wife teaches at.)

Although my wife's an alum of Harvard-Westlake, and I graduated from an all-male private school down South, we consider ourselves proud middle-class Brooklynites, facing the NYC public school nightmare for our brood. C'est la guerre.

"I would say that Linus' post isn't so much "class warfare" (even if the expansive WSJ definition is accepted). Rather he's pointing out an amusing anecdote suggesting that there are those for whom a Milton education did not help in terms of character based education. Down with the internet!"

Indeed, sir. Apparently, it's also down with delicious fried pastries which is a shame.

If you look at college graduates, GRE scores are highly correlated with precollege SAT scores, while college attended makes no difference.
I'd guess that the same is true for prep schools: no added value at all.

If you are looking for a girls-only school (like Winsor) the choices are very much reduced.

Also, everyone knows that if you send your child to Harvard-Westlake they are likely to become a plotting sociopath (although everyone I knew who went there were like these really despondent gay Jews).

But if you happen to live in the LA area and you send your child here they are certain to turn out as handsome, courteous, and generally above average as Linus (wink).

I would say there's probably some selection bias with kids who take SAT scores at private schools. In general, they already had to have had good grades and scored well in tests like the SSAT to get into private school. Of course pooling together a bunch of kids who test well will give you high average SAT's. The difference tends to be in learning how to write well, discuss philosophy in class, etc.

Oh, and Groton sucks.

in re: Linus' comment ... if you didn't intend to slur all Tony New England prep-school types (which I'm not one ... I just went to college with a bunch of them), then I apologize. Lord knows I liked mocking the room-trashing Milton types. It's just that for every one of those, I found four or five who were doing something incredibly useful with their college careers.

I simply fail to understand the benefit of this move. There are tony prep schools all over place, certainly in California. Furthermore, the marginal benefits that come from attending a tony prep school vs. a quality suburban school are not high. Furthermore, even there was a significance difference, it couldn't possibly outweigh the costs of fucking bankrupting yourself. Finally, as Yglesias points out so elegantly, boarding school is a lot cheaper than moving cross-country without a job.

In conclusion, this fails on every rational level. File this one away with all the other bizarro stories about people who do fucking stupid things because they can.

"Lord knows I liked mocking the room-trashing Milton types."

It's funny because I actually have limited knowledge of room-trashing Milton types. But I do have more extensive knowledge of Andover types with hearing so acutely sensitive it is better described as aves more than mammalian. They rap on the door of your lady friend's room at 3am to berate you both for turning the pages too loudly.

The article gave two grounds for questioning the judgment of the parents. The first was that they were willing to move 2,500 miles for a marginal, if any, increase in educational quality. The second, perhaps even more telling, was that they were willing to bare their family situation in the article.

Umm, I did a small scale version of the Journal piece: moved across the Dallas - Ft. Worth metroplex to get my son closer to his prep school.

And it worked: from, in his case http://www.cistercian.org/school/index.html to www.carleton.edu with a company foundation scholarship along the way.

And the move also got my daughter closer to her eventual prep school, and she went from http://www.hockaday.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1 to www.swarthmore.edu with a company National Merit scholarship along the way.

So, I ain't gonna criticize...

My god, what a bunch of privileged (i mean that in a litteral sense) fucks.

Being cheapscates, we resorted to cheaper measures. Subscribe to many interesting magazines and buy a lot of books. Make trips to museums. Take interest in academic pursuits of your kids. Hey, encourage those pursuits! Organize vacations to be entertaining AND educational (e.g. drive around New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona visiting Anasazi ruins, or visit several Italian cities taking interests in history and arts there). (One can consider educational camps too, we did not.) And you do not have to overload with formal activities.

All of that adds to a small fraction of the cost described here, and, according to our experience, quite effective. Public schools here are better than LA, but averages quotes for LA are pretty misleading (kids are sorted by academic aptitude withing highschools).

"Crossroads" in Santa Monica run by a friend of mine Susan Davis and her mom is a good small liberal arts school. Mel Gibson's daughter was a graduate about 5-6 years back. Very humble kid- he didn't spoil her like a lot do.

The top all-girls school in LA is Marlborough. The star of the basketball team is 6'-4" Abi Olajuwon. A reporter asked her if she feels in the spotlight being the daughter of a world-famous basketball star. She said that her classmate who is Steven Spielberg's daughter has to put up with more attention.

Big ups to Marlborough girls. They are consistently great babysitters, and they're so self-confident that they're probably good role models for my little girl. (No Greek at Marlborough, though. Or lacrosse. But that hardly seems worth the cross-country trip. One could stay in SoCal, hire a Greek tutor, and enjoy reading the classics in their original Mediterrean climate.)

Really the best way to get into a fancy college is the way I did it: grow up in such a backwater that the admissions committee takes pity on you. If I had had my academic profile as an metropolitan student, I would have needed a safety school for my safety school.

Expensive prep schools are a great way to ensure that the public school kids who enter the Ivy League on account of their smarts get an immediate sense of achievement and a quick awakening to the class system. I think that's extremely healthy in the long run, and usually offsets the damage done.

So tell me again how the US is a classless society?

Prep schools should just be abolished. Everyone should have to attent public schools. That's how you create an egalitarian society, by having on school system. Not a lesser school system for most, a slightly better school system for a few and an incredibly advantageous school system for the wealthy. We need to abolish private education entirely. No more Harvards. No more Yales. No more Windsors. Until that's done, we're not a real democracy and we're not a meritocratic society.

I know Matt will hate that. He hates anything that abolishes class privelage. Hell, he's admitted in several posts to being completely against the notion of meritocracy. This isn't for purely personal reasons, he's good enough to make it fine on his own merit. It's about class. He doesn't think his loser friends deserve to fail despite the fact that they aren't really talented at anything.

As a NH public high school and Ivy League college grad, I'll throw in my observations - Phillips Exeter produces lots of well-rounded intellectually astute interesting kids. I'd almost consider throwing the money away to send my kids there. Concord Academy and Northfield Mount Herman are also very good - especially if you want your kid to pursue a career in film-making, publishing or some other creative field later in life. Choate and Groton seemingly produce only rich boorish assholes with no redeeming qualities at all. The most annoying thing about the private school kids when I was in college in the 80s is that across the board they tended to listen to way too much Grateful Dead and reggae - I assume that has changed. What probably has not changed is that the private school kids tend to be much heavier drug users than the public school kids.

They are thinking about early-life networking, being in with a certain crowd, and about rich husbands for their daughters.

Which they could have done at least as equally well (or perhaps better) by renting an apartment in the Beverly Hills school district and sending them to Beverly Hills High instead.

Beverly Hills High School is 40% Iranian. Mom and Dad wouldn't want their precious little muffins getting involved with any of them ("This is Mahmoud, my new boyfriend")

What probably has not changed is that the private school kids tend to be much heavier drug users than the public school kids.

Still true in the Dalton class of '99!

I confess I haven't read the article. But Occam suggests another explanation for this:

The parents didn't like living in LA and really wanted to move to Boston.

And the journalist writing the story either didn't get that basic fact, or ignored it cause otherwise she didn't have a story.

(Like that could ever happen.)

I went to CMU, nee Carnegie Tech, back when children of GI-bill parents could actually afford it. The way their tuition has skyrocketed, sans scholarship, my daughter can kiss any chance of doing that goodbye. Too bad--she could kick ass in the drama or dance programs. Or perhaps not; just down the street is Point Park, which turns out tons of working dancers every year.

One kid I met there, who was in my frat, was from Philips Exeter. He was a stone liar and a sociopath, but I expect that had nothing to do with the school. One of his prized possessions was a cartoon strip drawn by Pat Moynihan's kid, an Exeter classmate.

Further to what Vanya wrote:

Geesh, a long time ago my folks ponied up five digits to send me to Pomfret, where I broadened myself by drinking with the Bronfmans and taking psychedelics with a son of one of the principals of Solomon Bros.

Beyond that, I probably didn't achieve much more academically than I might have if I had stayed home and my parents had upped the pressure to excel.

My fault, entirely, but one wonders what one truly gets, beyond a well-connected placements office, when one enters a quality private school.

My fault, entirely, but one wonders what one truly gets, beyond a well-connected placements office, when one enters a quality private school.

From my wife's experience (as a teacher, not a student, at one of the Ivy League Prep schools): you get smaller classes - most class sizes are in the single digits - and the opportunity to read Aeschyulus in the original Greek. I wouldn't pay $27,000/year for that, but I'm just a middle class suburban public school kid.

If Greek is the issue, get a tutor, learn along with your kids, and travel to Greece during the off season for a cheap, safe, intense cultural experience. Greek-American middle-class families do this on a limited budget. If you want modern Greek, you can get a Greek-government sponsored and subsidized education at your local Orthodox cathedral.

It does not cost much to give your kids something unique and memorable for the college application process. Outsourcing this to a tony prep school is a relatively ineffective, unimaginative, and foolishly overpriced way to do this.

Since they were willing to move to Boston anyway, why not just move a little earlier, establish residency, and take the entrance exam for Boston Latin School (Oldest Public School in America [TM])? You get your Latin, you get your Greek, you get your Ivy League admissions, and best of all, you get to keep your money.

If money's no object, who cares? But for most of us, this would be a serious misallocation of resources. What will these people do when their kids hit college and grad school? The cookie jar will be empty.

Parents, here's a bit of advice:

Books are the same everywhere. Every once in awhile, a great math teacher might make a difference to learning math. Not so in the liberal arts. A kid who is an alert, sympathetic reader at 16 and 17 isn't going to learn anymore in school if he's taught by a Pulitzer Prize winning poet than if he's taught by Mr. Peeper's drunken cousin. (My Boston roommate's HS experience vs. mine. He was an uneducated oeuf despite the presence of a published poet on his HS faculty.)

Get your kid reading. The sooner the better.

"Beverly Hills High School is 40% Iranian. Mom and Dad wouldn't want their precious little muffins getting involved with any of them ("This is Mahmoud, my new boyfriend")"

Nu, what's wrong with that? The Iranians at Beverly Hills High are often wealthy and well-connected (and so are the 20%+ of Jewish students there, and so is the rest of the student body for that matter). It's not like there aren't a lot of minorities in Boston, either.

Not like I should be talking - since I went to the most mediocre Catholic high school in the city (Go Archbishop Mitty Whatever the Hell Our Mascot Was!). Did have roomates from Andover and Iolani in college, though.

Mandatory comment I make whenever this kind of discussion (the one in comments, not Matt's post) comes up:

Expensive prep school =/= high-income students. The class warriors who always most infuriate me are the very-upper-middle-class kids who go to Ivy League universities after going to a public school of a caliber that can only exist because their suburb is so wealthy, who affect attitude about "prep school" kids when the latter (like Ivy Leaguers) may well be scholarship kids who could not possibly have afforded the implicit tuition of the tony public schools.

Yes, this is personal-- irked the hell out of me freshman year at Brown when Connecticut and Long Island suburbanites with family incomes high multiples of mine threw class attitude at me on hearing I went to Exeter. But lo and behold if the assumption doesn't keep showing up...

Expnesive high schools, like expensive universities, are serious avenues of class mobility. They're bulwarks of class privilege, too-- they're *complicated*.

Here's the full article:

February 20, 2007
Anxiety High:
Moving for Schools
Some Families Are Uprooting Their Lives
In Search of a Perfect, Private Education
'To me, it's better than leaving them a house or my 401k'
By SUEIN HWANG
February 20, 2007; Page A1

BOSTON -- It isn't uncommon for parents to search beyond their neighborhood for the best school. The O'Gormans searched the entire country.

Settled in the well-groomed Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, Derek O'Gorman worked as an insurance broker. His wife, Mary Ann, took care of their two girls, both stellar students at top-ranked local schools. But in 2005, when the family visited a nearby private high school they expected the girls to attend, they came away disappointed. After an extensive search, the O'Gormans found the perfect fit: the Winsor School. Winsor, famed for its academic rigor and participatory classes, is also known for the academic success of its 420 students: About a third of its latest graduating class went to Ivy League colleges.

The hitch: Winsor is in Boston. After months of debate, the O'Gormans sold their house. Mr. O'Gorman, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, quit his job, and the family moved to a small Boston apartment. It would take three months and most of the family's savings before Mr. O'Gorman, 45 years old, found an insurance job in the new city.

"No place is perfect, but I wanted the place that was the most perfect for us and them," says Ms. O'Gorman, 44. "To me, it's better than leaving them a house or my 401k."

Across the country, a small but growing number of parents like the O'Gormans are dramatically altering their families' lives to pursue the perfect private school for their children. While past generations of parents might have shifted addresses within a town to be near a particular school, or shipped junior off to boarding school, these parents are choosing school first, location second. "I hear about it all the time," says Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools, or NAIS, in Washington, D.C.

Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia says four families have moved to the area in the past two years so their children can attend the school. Hathaway Brown School, an all-girls school in Shaker Heights, Ohio, reports five such families, four of which moved in the past few years. "It's been a little more frequent in the last two or three years," says Sally Jeanne McKenna, admissions director at Polytechnic School of Pasadena, Calif.

In the frenzy over private day schools, this is a new extreme, one that reflects the anxiety many affluent parents feel about securing their children's futures.

"It's one of the great ironies of American life. We're much wealthier than ever before, but we're more worried about our kids," says Robert Evans, a Wellesley, Mass., psychologist and school consultant. "People who by any measure are doing well now are much less confident about the future."

The phenomenon is driven by rapid changes in technology, which give many parents geographic latitude with their jobs. The Internet has created a national marketplace for schools, with troves of information on most any school in the country, and even particular administrators, available within a few clicks.

Parents are also looking to schools to provide a source of values and community for their children, replacing neighborhoods, churches or workplaces, educators say. Sometimes, it's also a source of community for parents as well. School "is the new town center," says NAIS's Mr. Bassett. "It's becoming the priest, the minister, adding a much larger dynamic of social expectations."

The vast majority of parents still send their children to their local public schools. Of those who opt for the private sector, the number moving to cities for schools may be higher than administrators realize because parents occasionally bend the truth at interviews, admissions officials say. School officials speculate some may be reluctant to admit to pursuing a school with such fervor. That concern didn't affect Ms. O'Gorman.

"It's a crazy world, and they need to be equipped both from an educational and social standpoint," she says. Since the family's move, "I think I breathe a little easier...knowing I'm doing the best that I can."

Carol Baldwin Moody, 50, decided her daughter should attend Germantown Friends, where she herself had been a student. At the time, Ms. Moody and her family lived in Brooklyn, the New York City borough where her husband, Ronald, had grown up. In 2004, they moved to rural New Hope, Pa.

For the next year and a half, Ms. Moody commuted five hours a day to her New York-based job as chief compliance officer at TIAA-CREF, a pension and annuity giant. In 2005, Ms. Moody left TIAA-CREF for a similar job at another company so she could work near her daughter's school two days a week. She spends three days a week in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Moody, 41, quit his job as a district executive for the Boy Scouts of America to drive Jessica, 14, the 45 miles to school and back. He's now a stay-at-home dad.

"It may not be what I'd envisioned doing at this stage of my life, but I'll do it if it's the best thing for my child," says Mr. Moody.

Parents argue that with today's flexible, and more uncertain, labor market, moving for school makes more sense than it did in an earlier era, when families usually moved for work.

"When I started my career at General Motors, they moved your family every three years," says Edward Case, 60, who worked for four other companies before retiring as chief financial officer of Formica Corp. last year. "But you could have expectation -- as I did -- that you had a job for life. The world isn't like that anymore."

The Case family moved to Philadelphia in 1996 so their four children could attend Germantown, a move that required Mr. Case to drive two hours each way to get to his job. The Cases chose not to move in 1999 when he switched jobs again, this time to Germany. Mr. Case estimates he spent five weeks out of every six in Stuttgart. In 2002, he took a job in New Jersey that required an hour-and-forty-five-minute drive each way, before ending his career in Cincinnati. He flew there during the week, returning on weekends.

The family says the time apart was worth it. "It's a fantastic community to grow up in," says Emma Case, a 17-year-old senior, the second-youngest of four Case children. "I've known three out of my five best friends since the first grade." Ms. Case says her father often traveled, even when they lived together, and so his absence wasn't notable.

A number of school officials hail parent's involvement, saying it reflects a growing realization of how important it is to find the right school. William Christ, head of Hathaway Brown, points to one family who moved to Cleveland so their daughter could attend the school, and moved back to California after her graduation. "They knew a lot about our school and knew exactly what they wanted for their daughter," he says.

At the same time, the phenomenon heightens the pressure on everyone involved. "It creates an unbearable set of expectations," says Michael Thompson, an Arlington, Mass., psychologist and school consultant. "If my parents moved for me, don't I have to be deliriously happy with school? How many seventh-graders are deliriously happy? It could overwhelm the child's experience, because the parents are so invested."

Then there are the admissions officers, whose yea or nay can determine the destiny of an entire family. "We handle these candidates carefully. The decision carries great weight," says Laura Myran, admissions director at Germantown Friends.

The stakes weren't lost on either the O'Gormans or Winsor School's small admissions staff. "I don't want to make a mistake," Ms. O'Gorman recalls telling the school at one point. "If we do -- and you do -- that's pretty scary."

The O'Gormans' odyssey began in the fall of 2005, when the two girls -- 13-year-old Mary Catherine and 12-year-old Colleen -- visited a top private school in Los Angeles. Although both children wanted to attend an all-girls school, the Hollywood-influenced culture of this one left them cold.

Curious to see if anything would fulfill her vision, Ms. O'Gorman began searching the Internet. Dozens of pamphlets from around the country flooded the family home. Both girls homed in on Winsor's simple brochure, filled with photos of fresh-faced young girls and examples of class artwork and lively academic discussions.

Soon, Ms. O'Gorman was staying up late into the night, searching the Internet to learn everything she could about the school, the teachers and its administration. She loved that the school, while academically rigorous, didn't emphasize advanced-placement classes, and the fact her girls wouldn't receive grades at first, giving them more room to take risks. For her, it was a refreshing new approach. "So many things I read spoke to me," she says.

When the O'Gormans contacted Winsor and told their story, the school was skeptical. "At first, it was a little off-putting, to be honest," says Pamela Parks McLaurin, Winsor's admissions director. "I thought: 'Well, there are wonderful schools everywhere. You need to move cross-country to find the right school?' "

But administrators were soon taken by the O'Gormans' sincerity and down-to-earth nature, and grew impressed that a family without significant wealth was willing to sacrifice so much. "It went from being off-putting to quite flattering -- even inspiring," Ms. McLaurin says.

In Los Angeles, the O'Gormans debated their options night and day. Reaction from friends and family didn't help. Many were confused or thought the idea ridiculous. But the girls wanted to go.

"We really wore out our wood floors in our house," Ms. Gorman says. "We sat down and talked with the girls about what it really would mean, what they would have to give up." Mr. O'Gorman had worked as an insurance broker for 20 years and was reasonably confident he could secure a similar job in Boston. In the end, "we said we had to try," he says.

In March, Winsor accepted both girls. When one admissions letter was stuck in the mail, Kristy Wells, Winsor's admissions office manager, who became close with the family, phoned up Ms. O'Gorman to give her the good news. Her reaction, they both remember: "Oh, my God. I've got to sell my house." The house sold in less than a week, and the O'Gormans were in Boston by Aug. 3.

Sitting in one of Winsor's conference rooms recently, Mary Catherine and Colleen, who was wearing a blue Winsor sweatshirt, both expressed happiness: Their peers are friendly and the stress level is lower than in San Marino.

As to her parents, "I feel thankful, really, really grateful to them," said Mary Catherine, usually the quieter of the two. "I'm kind of surprised they would do this for me, but I'm very thankful to them for doing it for our education."

Mr. and Mrs. O'Gorman are still grappling with the basics of East Coast life -- such as Boston's myriad roads and its aggressive drivers. Life in a two-bedroom apartment is a big change. Its swanky urban décor stems from the unit's origins as a model home. The family can't afford the $30,000 tab to move their furnishings. Money from their home sale is being plowed into the girls' tuition, which totals nearly $56,000 a year.

On a recent gray December day, sitting in her new living room, Ms. O'Gorman said she's still adjusting. She talked about the china the family traditionally used at Thanksgiving, and her clear blue eyes brimmed with tears with the reminder of her former life. Their finances depleted, Ms. O'Gorman said she soon plans to return to work.

"Some days you feel like the odds are stacked against you -- when Derek didn't have a job for three months -- but then Colleen comes in excited about a Greek test they had," she said. "Those moments are great."

Write to Suein Hwang at suein.hwang@wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117193805292813218.html

These bozos left San Marino? Jeeeeez ... San Marino might be the nicest place to live in America, if you take architecture, city planning, climate, and schools into consideration. The neighborhood public high school, San Marino H.S., has the highest average SAT score of any neighborhood public school in LA County: 1230. When the SAT expanded to three subtests, 105 kids in America scored perfect 2400s. Four of them went to San Marino.

This couple probably can't stand Chinese people. San Marino H.S. is now 70% Asian. Hong Kong millionaires started moving in about 25 years ago, leading to the San Marino Feng Shui Crisis of 1982: the newcomers were chopping down all the oak trees in their front yards because it's bad luck to see a tree when you emerge from your door in the morning. But the city government cracked down on that and most of the oaks were saved.

The article says "the stress level is lower than in San Marino," which probably means: fewer Chinese in Boston.

They looked at an all-girls school that was too Hollywood -- probably Marlborough where the Spielberg girls go.

So, it sounds like they wanted a school that was non-Hollywood and non-Chinese. It's fun to read between the lines ...

thanks for your insights steve sailer

O'Reilly: Okay Linus. You get the final word.

Linus: Thanks Bill. I just feel like there's something missing with this whole thing. I mean what's wrong with the day school down the road? You get the same j.a.p girls, the occasional gun toting daughter of a Hollywood star, the same cheesy fundraisers with the blue haired women and the ice sculptures, and if you stay in LA you get some really scary old drummer for a certain famous 70s classic rock band who happens to be the mental patient of one of your classmate's fathers (and who you suspect may still wander into the homes of strangers on occasion and fall asleep) to lecture you about the evils of drug abuse.

It does seem like there are more Asians (East, South, Southeast) moving into Boston, along with more families of Middle Eastern descent. When I first moved out to a suburb near Boston, I would be like one of maybe 10 families in all in town. We had a couple of crappy Chinese places and one decent Thai place. We now have decent Japanese, Chinese, Indian and other Asian food as well close by. A lot of the families moving in are wealthy and send their kids to prep schools while the ones who stay in public schools end up being the best students. I don't have any numbers on hand to back me up, but now when I walk into a video store or somewhere, I'm not as often the only Asian around. However, we still are nowhere near being California.

It's true - the affluent Asian population in the Boston area is growing rapidly. There are now better more authentic Chinese restaurants in Framingham (a shopping center/residential suburb) than anything you'll find downtown or in Cambridge. If this couple really moved to Boston to escape the Chinese and find a perfect New England Updike/Cheever Wasp utopia they are likely to be disappointed.

Agreed. It's not good to be in the minority. Period. Apart from the natural discomfort that comes from being in the minority itself, it might be hard to get elected to club offices in high school, which can matter for college. But I don't know if the parents thought about that so explicitly; their girls probably just felt left out socially.

You know, I didn't catch they were from San Marino......

wait, now this REALLY doesn't make sense.

Because if this family owned a house in San Marino (must be at least 3 bedrooms), the sales price must have been between 1 and 2 million. They've been there a while (at least several years is implied in the article), and the real estate prices have probably gone up 30-60% in that time in San Marino. So, we're talking this family cleared at least 200-400k on selling their house and possibly a lot more - and they're renting in Boston, so they should still have the vast bulk of that cash.

SO WHY ARE THEY SO BROKE THEY CAN'T BUY A COUCH? Doesn't make sense. Move shouldn't have cost any more than 30K (and really should be much less), and living expenses till the husband found his job - with rent, maybe 5 grand a month. Say 45K total, plus 56K in school fees. They still should have, at very absolute minimum, 100K cash in the bank.

The whole concept is idiotic. Private schools don't provide a better education, they just have smarter students.

As long as there is plenty of access to accelerated instruction in public shools, the same students from private schools would get the same GPA and the same SAT scores.

The only exception, might be if they had to attend schools with high numbers of disruptive students. Of course its a lot easier to move to a better neighborhood (and cheaper) than it is to move across country.

thanks for this article.

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