Irvine vs Surrounding Cities?

mightybluff

New member
Having grown up in Irvine in the 80's/90's, I know the value of Irvine and IUSD first hand. I still live close by in Lake Forest but now that I have a toddler and one on the way, I'm trying to find my way back to Irvine and the IUSD... Obviously, home costs have skyrocketed, which makes it even more difficult. My question for the experts and folks in general is... is it really worth it? I can spend $1.6M to 1.8M to buy a 4 bed 4 bath , 2500 sq ft SFR or quasi SFR in PS or maybe Eastwood if I'm lucky. OR... I can spend the same amount to buy a 5 bed 4 bath 3500 sq ft dream house in Ladera Ranch, on the side closer to the freeway and have the kids still go to good, if not great schools. Tesoro High School is highly ranked and on par with Woodbridge and Irvine High... obviously not Uni or Northwood. It's a tough conundrum. Would love to get people's thoughts. Thanks!
 
The Irvine schools aren?t magic jujubes.  It?s really the parents and the extra supports they put in place.  The after school and summer programs they build schedules around to accommodate the extra lift.

Peer pressure of other parents doing it helps.

 
If you want your kids to learn how to handle stress and pressure ...then yeah IUSD all the way.
Because you will be competing with a bigger population of tiger parents then other school districts.

This isn't bad....it teaches you and your kids how to handle pressure.
 
Thanks for that comment! Very true... one other thing that keeps me leaning towards Irvine vs somewhere else is not only the IUSD schools but also the networking it provides. My inner circle of close friends are all from my HS and IUSD... They are all uber successful one-percenters, with multi-cultural and diverse backgrounds. I did enjoy that. Having close friends from all different backgrounds. Smart and success driven friends... my worry is the unknown. I know what i'll likely get for my kids from IUSD... I don't know what i'll get from Capistrano school district, Tustin or other places. 
 
Irvine is the only OC option for the kind of public schools that register with college admissions officers, unless your kid is really smart and you feel he/she can dominate at a less competitive school.
 
with a child in college now my observation is these are the 3 most important qualities they are judged on for competitive admissions schools, especially given most (but not all) eliminate test scores:

1) GPA and class schedule - did you schedule max/close to max the toughest classes?

2) 4 year athlete (SUPER IMPORTANT for some reason - this + test scores helped our child balance out the gpa that was lower than it should have been for schools that looked at test scores)

3) anything else that really stands out about you

If your kid can graduate from an IUSD high school with decent grades + 4 yr athlete they will be competitive for college admissions.
 
The reason why I moved to Irvine was not specifically schools but rather that the schools were passable. I was previously from Cerritos in an area with 10/10/10 rated elementary/middle/high schools and also access to Whitney High School which at one point was rated #1 in the nation. I think the rating slipped to something like 9/10/10 but still my point is that Cerritos has higher rated school neighborhoods. I don't think there is a single neighborhood in Irvine that is even all 9+. (Just searched Irvine does not have a single 10 rated school).

I moved to Irvine because of the newness of homes, planned community and parks for my kid, and the amount of younger like-minded kid and education focused families.
 
great topic. while it may be easier to get to good colleges like Berkeley if not attending IUSD, but IUSD prepares you better in a competitive environment like in Berkeley. this is from personal experience.
 
OCtoSV said:
with a child in college now my observation is these are the 3 most important qualities they are judged on for competitive admissions schools, especially given most (but not all) eliminate test scores:

1) GPA and class schedule - did you schedule max/close to max the toughest classes?

2) 4 year athlete (SUPER IMPORTANT for some reason - this + test scores helped our child balance out the gpa that was lower than it should have been for schools that looked at test scores)

3) anything else that really stands out about you

If your kid can graduate from an IUSD high school with decent grades + 4 yr athlete they will be competitive for college admissions.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have very small kids in preschool, but love to learn from parents of grown up kids. I am curious why athlete is so important? And how does arts compare to athlete in terms of importance?
 
If your ONLY goal is to get into some Ivy/Top 10 school, then IUSD might not be the best choice. This has been posted on TI ad nauseam. It is simply a matter of numbers. Many top tiers colleges will cap the number of students they will take from any school. If you aren't ranked at the top, forget about it. IUSD attracts way too many smart kids with resource rich families. If you have a smart/motivated child and are confident in your abilities to navigate the system, it may be worthwhile to explore other districts.
 
iacrenter said:
If your ONLY goal is to get into some Ivy/Top 10 school, then IUSD might not be the best choice. This has been posted on TI ad nauseam. It is simply a matter of numbers. Many top tiers colleges will cap the number of students they will take from any school. If you aren't ranked at the top, forget about it. IUSD attracts way too many smart kids with resource rich families. If you have a smart/motivated child and are confident in your abilities to navigate the system, it may be worthwhile to explore other districts.

This.
Watch the new documentary ?try harder?. IUSD is obviously not Lowell but the numbers rule apply. I would imagine it gets worse in the next 10 years as schools move away from test scores and as the current generation of irvine elem kids grow up into high schoolers.
 
iacrenter said:
If your ONLY goal is to get into some Ivy/Top 10 school, then IUSD might not be the best choice. This has been posted on TI ad nauseam. It is simply a matter of numbers. Many top tiers colleges will cap the number of students they will take from any school. If you aren't ranked at the top, forget about it. IUSD attracts way too many smart kids with resource rich families. If you have a smart/motivated child and are confident in your abilities to navigate the system, it may be worthwhile to explore other districts.

This is my thinking for not moving to Irvine area before my son graduates from high school. First of all, you need to know your own child's abilities. Is (s)he good enough to be ranked at the top at ISUD. My son is plenty smart, but he's just not smarter than the IUSD kids. So why add extra stress and pressure to the kid, only to have him/her finishing at the bottom half of the ranking? A decent amount of stress and pressure is good, but I just feel that IUSD causes way too much.
 
CalBears96 said:
iacrenter said:
If your ONLY goal is to get into some Ivy/Top 10 school, then IUSD might not be the best choice. This has been posted on TI ad nauseam. It is simply a matter of numbers. Many top tiers colleges will cap the number of students they will take from any school. If you aren't ranked at the top, forget about it. IUSD attracts way too many smart kids with resource rich families. If you have a smart/motivated child and are confident in your abilities to navigate the system, it may be worthwhile to explore other districts.

This is my thinking for not moving to Irvine area before my son graduates from high school. First of all, you need to know your own child's abilities. Is (s)he good enough to be ranked at the top at ISUD. My son is plenty smart, but he's just not smarter than the IUSD kids. So why add extra stress and pressure to the kid, only to have him/her finishing at the bottom half of the ranking? A decent amount of stress and pressure is good, but I just feel that IUSD causes way too much.

Apple doesnt fall far away from its tree, doesn?t it? 😎

Anyhow, I hope people dont put their kids in IUSD so that the sole purpose is for them to go to Ivy schools. You put your kids here so they can be better prepared for the real sh!t that life going to throw at them.
 
Great feedback and discussion here. Thank you! It's hard to assess how smart my 2 yr old and unborn child are but if my wife and I are examples, they will have potential. Wife is a book worm and Dentist. I have a graduate degree but much less book smart than the wife... more of a go getter. Honestly, I'm not even interested in my kids going to IVY's, unless that's what they desire. I'd be more than happy with the top UC's, like Berkeley, LA, SD, etc... and being an IUSD product myself, I didn't see it as an unhealthy environment, as far as pressure. I grew up with great friends, safe environment, great education, loads of extracurricular activities. My friends actually helped me try harder. I would never think about volunteer work or joining clubs like amnesty international... but my friends joined because it would look good on college admissions (maybe they cared as well)... and I followed what they did. I guess... I'm leaning towards Irvine then. Dream house can wait for retirement then...
 
Understood. That's why i said "more than happy". I assume IVY's would be even harder or worse than that to get into. A top 100 school on the US News Colleges rankings report would be ideal either way...
 
WTTCHMN said:
mightybluff said:
I'd be more than happy with the top UC's, like Berkeley, LA, SD, etc...

Good luck with that plan.  UCLA admit rate is 14%.  Berkeley is 17%.

At least a quarter of those admitted have perfect GPA's (unweighted).
https://admission.ucla.edu/apply/student-profile
https://admissions.berkeley.edu/student-profile

I'm glad that Berkeley had higher admission rate almost 30 years ago when I applied.  ;D

But I did have perfect unweighted GPA and was valedictorian of my high school, although it was Pasadena USD.
 
Honestly some schools are overrated. Take Berkely for example, if all you get is far left brainwashed education like the poster above that are easily manipulated and controlled  by the media (aka sheeple) then it is pretty sad.
 
akula1488 said:
Honestly some schools are overrated. Take Berkely for example, if all you get is far left brainwashed education like the poster above that are easily manipulated and controlled  by the media (aka sheeple) then it is pretty sad.

Stay on topic. This isn?t Facebook.
 
mightybluff said:
Great feedback and discussion here. Thank you! It's hard to assess how smart my 2 yr old and unborn child are but if my wife and I are examples, they will have potential. Wife is a book worm and Dentist. I have a graduate degree but much less book smart than the wife... more of a go getter. Honestly, I'm not even interested in my kids going to IVY's, unless that's what they desire. I'd be more than happy with the top UC's, like Berkeley, LA, SD, etc... and being an IUSD product myself, I didn't see it as an unhealthy environment, as far as pressure. I grew up with great friends, safe environment, great education, loads of extracurricular activities. My friends actually helped me try harder. I would never think about volunteer work or joining clubs like amnesty international... but my friends joined because it would look good on college admissions (maybe they cared as well)... and I followed what they did. I guess... I'm leaning towards Irvine then. Dream house can wait for retirement then...

It's easy to conflate your experience growing up here to what high school and the college application process is today. Much of what you described happen in affluent neighborhoods across the county.
 
Back
Top