According to Huffington Post, in the United States today, about 10 percent of students are enrolled in private schools, and about 90 percent are enrolled in public. 33 students at Blue Valley have recently transferred from private school to BV.

Sophomore Grace Solomon transferred to BV from Notre Dame de Sion, an all-girls private school.

“Sion really wasn’t a good fit for me,” Solomon said. “I just thought since I had been in private school my whole life, I didn’t really have a choice since that’s what I was put in. It wasn’t necessarily what was best for me and it didn’t offer the best things for me. The electives were extremely limited and the school in general is super small so you meet everyone in the first two weeks. There aren’t many options for friends, and it is really hard to meet new people.”

For freshman Lauren O’Donnell, coming from a private middle school — St. Michael’s — was a different story.

“I just came here because my sister goes here, so I just wanted to be at the same school since she’s been coming here for the last three years,” O’Donnell said.

Solomon said thoughts consume student’s minds while transferring to another school especially while going from private to public. Some things about public school actually were surprising to new students.

“At first I thought it would be really hard to choose outfits, but it’s not at all,” Solomon said. “Honestly, I expected it to be more chill, since it’s public school. But, it’s actually better academically, which really surprised me. At Sion, it was way too chill and relaxed, so it was harder for me. Here, it’s so much more structured, which is a lot better.”

O’Donnell said differences between private and public schools vary from dress codes to homework, but all transfer students have a different perspective.

“The biggest difference would be technology,” Solomon said. “At Sion, everyone brought their Macbooks to school and carried them to every class and had all their material for classes on the laptops. You could take notes and do assignments and things like that. But here you can’t do that. The WiFi was [also] a lot better at Sion since we had Google Fiber.”

Even though these students transferred schools, Solomon and O’donnell both said they have no regrets or second thoughts.

“I really like it here at BV, everyone here is super nice and easy to get to know,” O’donnell said. “I’m really looking forward to the rest of my high school experience.”