Are going to private high schools worth it?

Answered

Hello! I think @annaitem has given you some great advice so far, and I'll try to add to it a bit and maybe approach from a different perspective. A lot of this really depends on the specific schools, not just public vs. private, because there are a lot of public schools that are better than/have more resources than a lot of private schools. I'll try to break that down for you.

First, an important piece to this answer that a lot of people don't realize is that colleges will always, without exception, judge your accomplishments and profile in context with the school that you go to. So if you go to a school with a lot of high-achieving students (as you likely would at a prestigious private school), you may get added consideration by having that school's name on your resume, but you'll also be competing with all those other students for the same set of spots at that college. In some ways, that means the advantages and disadvantages of these options will equal each other out, and how you perform at each place is really what matters (which is why fit is definitely very important).

I'd also say that it heavily depends on your public school options. If your local public high school is well-funded and well-regarded, offers lots of APs, and generally has students applying and getting into these colleges you're interested in every year, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference to attend most private schools instead. On the other hand, if your high school doesn't have a lot of offerings or opportunities for students to do those things, even though you'd be compared in either situation with the students around you, you might end up with more opportunities if you were to go to a private school. (At the same time though, people do get into Ivy League schools from low-ranking or underfunded high schools—it's not impossible from anywhere.)

Some schools will also "feed" into specific colleges, often because they're located nearby and have a lot of students applying to that school every year. If you see a school with an extremely high number of students attending a certain college every year, then it's likely a feeder high school for that college—it means that there's a pre-existing relationship between that college's admissions office and that high school, and that it's probably easier for students there to get into that college than elsewhere.

Also, as a sidenote, I want to clarify what the process is for studying medicine. "Medicine" is not an available undergraduate major at any colleges—it's something you would study in medical school, which is a kind of graduate school. Undergraduates in college do what's called a "pre-med" track, which means that they take the set of courses required for admission into medical schools (often while studying a major like Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Public Health, or something similar), and prepare to apply to those MD programs in their senior year or after they graduate. The full experience, from starting undergrad to finishing medical school, usually takes at least 8 years (if not longer), so you have a long road ahead of you still. As a high school student, if that's the path you're interested in, you should try to volunteer (if possible) in hospitals or clinics and gain experience shadowing doctors and physicians. This will be hard to do for a while, and many internships will not be available until you're 16 for legal and safety reasons, but that will give you the best preparation for pursuing a pre-med track in college.

You could also look into BS/MD programs if you're really serious about medicine. BS/MD programs are combined degree programs where you'll be simultaneously admitted into a college's undergraduate and medical programs. That means you'd spend 7-8 years at one school, first completing their undergrad requirements for your Bachelor's degree and then going through their medical school. Out of the "top" schools you're interested in, Brown University, Northwestern University, Rice University, and Washington University in St. Louis have these types of programs, as well as schools like Case Western Reserve University, Boston University, Penn State, the University of Miami, and RPI. These programs are extremely competitive—they are more or less the most difficult undergraduate programs to get into anywhere, and getting into the BS/MD program at Penn State or RPI is still more difficult than getting into Harvard. But if you're really serious about medicine, you should look into them.

Back to public vs. private schools, it really should come down to fit and which school you think would offer you better opportunities. Ending your private school career with lower tier activities and fewer accomplishments than a potential public school career could actually end up disadvantaging you in the end—because while you do have the private school's name on your resume, you're competing with all the other students there, and that would make having lower tier activities actually worse. But, a high-achieving student at a well-regarded private school will usually have a great shot at most colleges—just as a high-achieving student at a well-regarded public school will.