Article on Maret in Washington Post
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Anonymous
Lol. You all are very defensive given that the slow track exists, and that National Merit Semifinalist data is a matter of public record. NMSF Totals 2010 - 2013 Sidwell: 51 ( St. Albans: 39 GDS: 36 NCS: 24 Maret: 12 As they used to say on Sesame Street, "one of these things is not like the other . . . " |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Not the PP but if 98% of Maret students stay at the school and they only add a few kids in 9th grade ... Are you saying these 3 recruited athletes made the other kids dumber? That is why the Maret lifers are not NMSF? (Which is much different than NMS, btw) |
Anonymous
It's nice that the girls are supportive of each other, because the school's admissions is not supportive. They turn down applications from female athletes who are far stronger than male athletes they have accepted. Maret is in the bottom half of the ISL (the lower division) in virtually every girls' sport, including basketball. Traditionally volleyball was the marquee girls' sports but they've fallen out of contention in that as well. Yes, it's a small co-ed school. But for the boys, they go out and recruit the entire club team of the baseball coach and let the basketball coach bring in whomever he pleases. It is absolutely NOT an even playing field when it comes to gender equity for Maret Athletics. |
Anonymous
| To do an apples-to-apples comparison, a NMSF/Student Body % provides is better. |
Anonymous
Those numbers show that (1) the school is overrated; and (2) that yes, they choose to bring in male athletes in 9th grade as opposed to top academic students. The other DC schools all have very competitive admissions in 9th grade and get some star students, including National Merit Semifinalists, and Maret chases athletic success in a couple of boys' sports. |
Anonymous
Hahahah. HAHAHAHAHAH! |
Anonymous
There's a good chart like that in the FAQs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnukIDABt_JKdDdZYXlQbnFUQ0VfMHRpTFp1SUIxS2c&pli=1&hl=en_US#gid=0 % for the period from 2009 - 2013: Maret: 3.59% GDS: 7.73% Sidwell: 11.24% St. Albans: 11.53% NCS: 6.97% St. Anselm's: 9.41% Maret does come in at the low end of the most competitive DC schools. If you include schools outside DC (you can see the chart), the Maret percentage is close to, but below, Potomac and Holton, and close to, but just above, Landon. As others have said, where schools have lifers it can be hard to predict how they'll do academically with pre-K or K admissions. It may be that Sidwell (true pre-K - 12) and St. Albans (modified pre-K - 12 if you include the Beauvoir feeder system) put a higher premium on high test scorers with their 9th grade admits than Maret does. On the other hand, people do often say on DCUM that the environment is less fast-paced/stressful at Maret (although other posters have said it is plenty competitive). |
Anonymous
So the #15 next to Maret is more impressive than an article in the paper? Sorry but you are clueless how the whole NMSf thing works. Hey did you read in the paper Maret had 15 NMSF students? Crickets.... Hey did your read in the paper about the 3 boys that play basketball at Maret? Oh yea, that was a really nice article, Maret seems like a great school. |
Anonymous
What's the number 15 reference? Moving on to what seems to be the substance of your argument, the reason people care about NMSF totals is that they are a proxy for how academically strong the cohort is -- it's not by accident that 33% of the student body at TJ are National Merit Semifinalists. Not everybody wants a strong academic cohort, but plenty of people do, so that their child is being challenged and stretched intellectually by fellow students as well as by faculty. Are the PSATs a perfect metric? No, of course not. For example, your average Northwest DC kid has lots of test prep before taking the PSAT, and other kids are coming in cold. And kids at DC schools have the highest NMSF cut-off in the country (which is why it's helpful to compare Maret to the other DC independent schools, which have the same hurdle.) But generally, at the college level schools with high average SATs (Harvard, MIT) have very bright student bodies, and at the high school level schools with lots of kids with high PSAT scores have very bright student bodies. |
Anonymous
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15 would be the number of NMSF if the basketball players were not recruited. It's the number people would use to decide if their child would go to Maret or not.
But most people wouldn't even know Maret existed without the newspaper article. |
Anonymous
I don't know -- I think most NW DC private school parents were aware of Maret before this week! Which is honestly why this latest athletics push is sort of odd. The school is thriving and admissions are highly competitive. I guess it is just more evidence that no school is immune to the "athletic success" virus (see also Harvard, 2012 Cheating Scandal at, for example). |
Anonymous
That is the problem. Most NW DC parents know but Maret really needs to reach out further than just NW DC. Many kids commute an hour to go to a DC private school from the exburbs. You are not going to get the quality until kids actually want to commute. |
Anonymous
| When I went to Maret it was the lifers and the basketball players who were in the slow track classes. Anyone who came after 7th grade were usually the really smart, NMSF types. |
Anonymous
42% of Maret's student population comes from outside of DC. |