I once heard somebody report status-confusion; they were admitted to The University of Chicago; a classmate thought that that was The University of Illinois at Chicago and remarked “But I thought you were smart?!”
Aside from that one anecdote, which I mention because it seems situationally appropriate and it did happen, I’d be shocked if reputation loss through misunderstanding is much of a factor with anything below the college level.
I’t sort of a jerkass thing to do; but some people do preen about what college they went to for their entire lives; but even those people typically go to ‘the right school’ in order to get in to The Right College and then brag about it forever.
Especially given that both schools are pretty tiny(though Commonwealth has a decent reputation in the MA independent school circuit) on a national scale; and the people who are mostly going to care are college admissions counselors(who sort of professionally know about different high schools and judging students thereof), I’m just not seeing much scope for confusion.
That’s honestly why I find this so weird: I’d be the last to deny that “Independent Schools” don’t have a serious elitist edge to them; but (at least in my experience with them) the demands of education-crazed middle to upper-middle class parents and the existence of some pretty good public schools(not all MA public schools are any good; but there are enough of them that your college admissions numbers would be embarrassing if you just tried to coast on hereditary privilege) do drive them to offer a genuinely good product in addition to the reputation and the fancy college counseling and so on.
Unfair that it’s pay-to-play? Yes. A bunch of idle rich kids receiving As as long as daddy’s money is good? Not really. The tuition pretty much closes the door on the poor-and-dedicated students who sometimes emerge through sheer intelligence and grit at public schools; but within the population who could afford it, they weren’t kidding about getting real work out of you.(the one major concession to privilege was the tradition that instead of being ‘expelled’ or ‘not invited back’ for academic inadequacy; the washouts would typically be told that the handwriting was on the wall; but they had the opportunity to ‘withdraw’ and avoid further unpleasantness.)
