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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

Will processes like this result in families avoiding (or at least not seeking out as much) rigorous high schools? It seems like some families might choose to send their kid to a not-super-rigorous high school — where they can coast in class and learn via outside enrichment — instead of a school with more rigorous academics where they'll be held to a higher bar by colleges.

This would allow students to have a lower-stress life and have an advantage at college admissions — even if they actually learned less academically than they would have at the rigorous high school.

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I'm skeptical someone would risk giving their child a significantly worse education in the off chance it might give them a marginally better chance to get into a top university. Regardless high income families moving to low income areas to go to those schools I would assume would be a net benefit for all from a tax perspective. Some of those taxes would presumably go right back to improving the local schools for everyone else.

I wasn't suggesting that families would move, just that they would select lower-intensity schools that they currently have access to. For example, families in Menlo Park can send their kids to high school in Atherton, Redwood City, or San Carlos. If they can get an edge by sending their kid to a school in RWC, where they'll be at the top of the class, and apparently get a boost when colleges weight their SAT, I wouldn't be surprised if some families started choosing this path.

High achievers / high earners moving into lower achieving / low earning schools seems like a good thing regardless.

The student who would have been valedictorian but-for such migration would beg to differ!

Of course, this is a dynamic system, and if enough high-scoring kids migrate to less-rigorous schools then the advantage would be diluted. But at the same time, kids who previously would have gone to that less-rigorous school will now be measured against a different standard, since their school would no longer be one that has a very low average SAT. Basically, it's complicated, and there are weird incentives at play.

Why?

It's relatively common for similar behavior on the margin; people avoid sending their kids to the super competitive high schools for a combination of competitiveness/mental health/standing-out-to-colleges reasons

Indeed. If the level of instruction between neighboring school districts is the same but one is super competitive and the other is not, I really don't see why you'd decide to buy a house in the the more competitive one. What good does it do? And that's not even taking into account the fact that kids from a weaker school might actually have better chances during admission.

I think the general sense is that being around other high-performing students would be motivating and enjoyable. But if there is a significant tradeoff in terms of admissions, I think some parents will lean in the other direction.

There were plenty of high-performing students around her and she and many of her friends got accepted at top colleges.

Other commenters specifically mention this happening in Chicago (wrt HS admissions) [1] and Texas (wrt UT admissions). [2]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39266951

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39266262

This is nothing new. I went to a very rigorous high school in the late 90s. It was in no way a secret that every top university and even scholarship competition had caps for how many could make it in from our school. The joke amongst students was that the easiest way to get into a top college was for to move to Wyoming and just become valedictorian.

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