Is it true that Sidwell students don't graduate with a GPA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP - we just went through this process last year and my son applied to a variety of schools and actually got accepted everywhere (very bizarre). He's also not an athlete or a class president or a brilliant writer, just a good kid who works hard and knows who he is as a person.

A few thoughts:

1) Teacher recs - it's very important that the teachers who write your child's recommendations really "get" your kid and that they genuinely like them. Just b/c a child gets a good grade in a class doesn't mean the teacher will be able to say anything memorable about them.

2) Essay - your child needs to write about something they're passionate about and have a point and anecdote. It doesn't have to be about saving the environment, it can be about a spiritual moment alone, a reaction to a moving poem or why she hates the color pink. Once again, something that shows their personality, soul and passion.

3) Apply to a few private liberal arts colleges. Yes, they're more expensive but they also have wonderful financial aid that sometimes make them a great deal.

4) Most people know this but she needs to show the college that's she's interested by visiting, building a relationship with the admissions person she meets, check in, email, ask questions of them, etc.

I know this is terribly off topic but thought it might help

Why isn't there a Forum for College Bound Kids?

Or at the very least, parenting teens in this area!! Off topic, I know, but I'd love such a forum.

[Anonymous]

Not to continue to be a Williams booster since I didn't go there...in fact coming from the middle of the Sidwell class as I did years ago I didn't even apply there because it was too much of a stretch. I honestly can't believe anyone applying today considers Williams to be a safety school. And despite the earlier stats, they report that they admitted 16.9% of applicants this year. Sure that's higher than Princeton and Harvard, but it is still long odds for most applicants. 42% of the incoming class applied early decision so obviously not a safety school for them. But really Williams is not the issue, it is just an example of a school that was always at the top of the liberal arts colleges and has become out of reach for many college bound kids. As I think of the kids who went to Harvard from my Sidwell class (there were many) they would likely be quite ordinary by today's standards. Might not even be able to get into Williams!

[Anonymous]

Wow -- I hadn't paid attention to the early decision stat. It's interesting but, for me, it cuts the other way. FWIW, 37% of the early decision applicants were admitted -- I don't know whether that's high or not.

But here's where it gets interesting. Given that early decision applicants made up 42% of the entering class, that means Williams had to admit 1051 other kids to fill its remaining 310 spots. In other words, only 29% of the non-early-decision admits who were accepted chose to enroll -- more than 2/3 turned Williams down (it could be closer to 3/4 if some who accepted were ED applicants who got in but not through ED). That sounds like a Common Application/safety school scenario to me.

One thing I do wonder about with the Common App is whether it means that kids who really want to go to a particular school get displaced by kids who are shopping for the most prestigious school they can get into. I do think colleges have personalities and that fit is a better model than ranks/tiers. But if a college wants to improve its prestige, scooping up disappointed valedictorians might be the way to do it. As we see here all the time, some parents assume that the way you judge a school is by how hard it is to get into.

[Anonymous]

Maybe prestige for everyone is not measured by # of valedictorians. Shoot, U Va said a few years ago they could fill their entire freshman class with valedictorians, and even they chose to branch out a little.

[Anonymous]

Yes, UVa's attitude is what I'm used to. (Maybe that's why there's enough valedictorians left to go around!) But I've also seen situations where faculty push admissions to admit more highly qualified students and I can certainly imagine a situation where a heavy emphasis on upping the GPA of admittees helps the school establish a better (or different kind of) reputation. (I think I've seen that with test scores).

All of these factors -- quality of students, quality of faculty, quality of programs, reputation of school -- can be inter-related. Admission to certain schools may give students prestige, but admission of certain students may also give schools prestige.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe prestige for everyone is not measured by # of valedictorians. Shoot, U Va said a few years ago they could fill their entire freshman class with valedictorians, and even they chose to branch out a little.

Funny -- I heard that same line from my college too (not UVA). I suspect a little bit of BS when colleges make that claim. It just doesn't make much sense from a pure mathematical perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe prestige for everyone is not measured by # of valedictorians. Shoot, U Va said a few years ago they could fill their entire freshman class with valedictorians, and even they chose to branch out a little.

Funny -- I heard that same line from my college too (not UVA). I suspect a little bit of BS when colleges make that claim. It just doesn't make much sense from a pure mathematical perspective.

I am not so sure about that. In recent years many of the local better public high schools have chosen not to name a valedictorian -- there are just too many kids who meet the criteria (we have done both public and private high schools for our children). So if this is not just a local thing, there are a lot of "valedictorians" out there.

The competition in Virginia is so thick for the good Virginia public universities (UVA, William & Mary) that a lot of kids are somewhat "forced" to attend public universities in other states as opposed to attending the "so so" Virginia universities. And I am sure that the economic downturn has added another facet to this scenario. My DC has put together a list of public universities and SLA schools from various states. It is going to be an interesting couple of years. <sigh>

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe prestige for everyone is not measured by # of valedictorians. Shoot, U Va said a few years ago they could fill their entire freshman class with valedictorians, and even they chose to branch out a little.

Funny -- I heard that same line from my college too (not UVA). I suspect a little bit of BS when colleges make that claim. It just doesn't make much sense from a pure mathematical perspective.

I am not so sure about that. In recent years many of the local better public high schools have chosen not to name a valedictorian -- there are just too many kids who meet the criteria (we have done both public and private high schools for our children). So if this is not just a local thing, there are a lot of "valedictorians" out there.

My point was that if several colleges, each with freshman classes of 1500-2500 students, are claiming that they could fill their entire freshman class with nothing but valedictorians, then that's a whole mess o' valedictorians. There are at least a dozen colleges in the US that are just as strong as UVA, so I would assume they each could make the same claim. If those assumptions are correct, and the colleges aren't fibbing a little, then we're talking 24,000 valedictorians at those 12 colleges (12 colleges x 2000 valadictorians at each). And that's assuming no valedictorians go anywhere else. I'm not sure how many high schools there are in the US, but the claim starts to become mathematically impossible if many colleges start making it. And your point about some high schools not naming valedictorians just makes the math less likely.

I'm not criticizing UVA, and I'm not trying to poke you. I just think some of those colleges engage in a little exaggeration about their students.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps each of these valedictorians is applying to multiple schools, which would make complete sense from their points of view. Which means that a given school probably couldn't fill the whole class with them, because some of them got accepted into other schools that they preferred.

[Anonymous]

You guys must be so much fun at parties.

[Anonymous]

Which is why they have these conversations here on DCUM instead of at parties. Duh....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys must be so much fun at parties.

Isn't that the beauty of the internet? You might think I'm just a really funny mom at your son's school, but on DCUM I'm a boring stat-geek.

"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog)