As the monotone bell signaled the end of another long school day at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, Rashika Jain couldn’t help but feel dejected when remembering the several hours of homework that awaited her at home. She trudged across campus, reminiscing about her unfulfilled dreams of being a dancer.
Dance was Jain’s passion, but she saw BASIS’s academically-centered environment as a barrier, making it difficult for her to pursue dance. This motivated her to leave BASIS and find a well-rounded environment that could accommodate both learning and dance. After moving to MVHS for ninth grade, sophomore Rashika Jain found the environment she sought, especially after joining the Andaaz team.
“I think Monta Vista is a lot more well-rounded,” Jain said. “There’s a lot of focus on sports and social culture, rather than just academics. I think you could find a little bit of everything here. At BASIS, it wasn’t like that — there were no sports teams or anything. I think the fact that it was so academic was not a very good environment. Being able to pursue dance outside of the dance team and take charge of the Bollywood team was a big factor in my switch.”
Math teacher Terry Yu, who taught at Bellarmine College Preparatory for eight years, expresses contrasting sentiments to Jain. From his perspective, private schools allow more freedom for individual creativity while putting less emphasis on grades.
“The faculty and the students can value activities and academics on equal footing, rather than here, where it’s just grades,” Yu said. “They have more clubs and activities. Their schedule is less grueling and has less class time, so the students are freer to pursue their own interests throughout the day.”
Junior Chloe He, who attended Stratford School from fifth to eighth grade and switched to MVHS for high school, believes that while both schools are academically inclined, the fact that MVHS is tuition-free and within walking distance of her home was a major contributor to her transition. Despite this, she sees a wider range of motivation at MVHS compared to a consistently driven student body at Stratford, which she attributes to parental pressure.
“I feel like in public school, you can either be pressured to succeed, or you can kind of give up, versus in private school, everyone is really driven and trying to be the best,” He said. “If you’re paying so much money to go to a good school, then your parents are definitely going to put on a lot of pressure.”
However, Yu believes one advantage that private schools have over public schools is their ability to provide greater support for students in all aspects. Whereas public schools rely on taxpayer funding, private schools are funded through tuition. According to U.S. News, the median tuition at private schools for the 2024-2025 school year was $32,251. This funding allows private schools to have smaller class sizes, provide students with better resources and offer a wider selection of courses that public schools can’t, such as film studies, discrete math and multivariable calculus.
“They gave everybody a Microsoft Surface – a real computer, not a Chromebook,” Yu said. “If at least 10 people want to do a class and they have a teacher who’s willing to do that, then they can start a class, so everything’s tailor-made.”
Additionally, Yu believes that a strong emphasis on sports at private schools led to higher faculty engagement at games. He notices that at MVHS, most teachers only attend school sporting events if they have supervision duties, but faculty at BCP would go to sports games even if they weren’t obligated to. Jain attributes this discrepancy to the lack of school spirit around sports, which she believes lowers MVHS teachers’ motivation to participate.
Despite coming from different private schools, He and Yu both agree that the level of rigor between their private schools and MVHS is similar, since all three schools are very academically inclined. However, Jain believes BASIS was more rigorous because even in eighth grade, students were taking three science courses and AP classes. Yu believes that MVHS is more rigorous than most private schools.
“People usually say private schools have demanding parents, but MVHS parents are probably just as, if not more, demanding,” Yu said. “And then academics-wise, coming into MVHS from any other school is basically, ‘Good luck with that.’ That’s still true even from BCP — there aren’t too many private schools that would be as rigorous as here, at least for most classes.”
Since MVHS is relatively large compared to private schools, Jain and He both had smooth transitions into public school life. Jain said that she lacked opportunities to find new people to connect with at BASIS because the students already knew each other. She adds that the cutthroat nature of private schools made even friendships feel competitive, noting that while MVHS friendships aren’t entirely free of such toxicity, people tend to be relatively easygoing.
“MVHS was a lot more welcoming,” Jain said. “Even though technically, at BASIS, everyone was new and people came from all cities and all backgrounds, they still weren’t welcoming towards each other. There was still a barrier between people who had already been there and new people. Whereas at MVHS, even though everyone knew each other already, it was really easy to branch out and find people.”
