I'd love to be a fly on the wall during admissions decision meetings

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if the original admissions folks are still around, I wonder how having two children apply (siblings but not twins, if that matters) in the same year affects the chances of admission for either child. Does the answer differ if our family seeks some FA? thanks.

I've never served on an admissions committee, but a friend who does advised me that applying both our kids at the same time would increase our chances (we had originally just planned on applying for K for the older and having our younger one do pre-K at our nice, but much less expensive, preschool). I would guess whether this holds true for a family seeking FA would depend largely on the school, and perhaps how much FA you'd need.

Bumping this informative thread as it's still relevant. Hopefully the admissions committee contributors are still around to answer as the quoted is our situation. Thanks.

What you need to do is to understand the environment at these schools and be able to put yourself in the position of these Admissions committee members. They must satisfy, as best they can, all the competing interests on campus.

[Anonymous]

How has this changed during covid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread was dead and buried, as it should be because its turgid.

What a sad, myopic life some folks lead.

Yet you find time in your brilliant sojourn on this earth to carefully peruse DCUM. You are an inspiration to us all!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parent here, but former educator that sat on admissions committees at several of the DC independent schools frequently mentioned on these forums within the last decade or so (I won't give more info for fear of giving away my superhero secret identity!). As a parent, I sympathize with being nervous about people in a room discussing my child without me there to defend him/her like a mother bear! But, remember that people who are in education are there because they like and understand kids. The discussions were not mean-spirited in tone, and at both institutions I was impressed with the care taken by my colleagues to thoroughly read the files and to make these decisions in a way that is sensitive to the feelings of the parents and kids involved. The content of the discussions was different at each institution, more I think because one focused on 9th grade admissions and the other on elementary age admissions. For the 9th grade admissions, the opening discussion was always academic -- could the child do the work? Within that threshhold discussion, it ranged from being excited about a potential academic superstar (teachers get excited about that) to making judgments as to whether the child by working hard and with support could have a positive academic experience. For "special talents," unless the child was national level in something like dance or music (which occasionally happens), the biggest focus was athletics. A very good athlete will have an edge at many schools if all other things are equal, and a superstar athlete may have that edge even if all things are not equal. Like it or not, parents and alums in this town do seem to care about athletics and schools get criticized if they lose regularly in high profile sports UNLESS the schools have made it clear that they are not going to play the sports "game." Elementary admissions -- which is I think where most of the interest on this board is (saying that as a fairly new parent myself who reads this board!) -- was trickier. While the committees wanted to make academics the first focus, they know from experience that it is so much harder to project academic performance for a Kindergartener than for an 8th grader applying to 9th grade. So yes, more attention is paid to play dates and interactions with the other kids -- did they seem eager to learn? Articulate? Excited about any kinds of ideas, whether books they've read, things about science, etc.? And yes, the child's behavior matters -- hitting or bullying other kids, for example, will come up. Procedurally, my experience at both places is that every folder was discussed, but that clear-cut "yes" or "no" decisions got less time. The middle pile got a lot of time. Mostly the schools focused more on individuals with less of a worry about creating a Frankensteinianly perfect "class," but there is no question diversity (ethnic and racial and to some extent geographic, e.g. interesting international family) is a plus during the process. Not that many comments about parents--generally it only came up if the prior school had tipped someone off that the parents were very difficult, or if someone was spectacularly awful (and think Michael Scott on the TV show "The office" level of awful) during the interview. Even there, it wasn't a disqualifier -- if we wanted the kid we'd admit them and hope to educate the parents (or hope they had an off day based on anxiety). Numbers of meetings? Lots and lots during the big decision times, and lots of individual late nights of people reading folders and making their comments. Sometimes some pretty civil but impassioned arguments on the committee whether or not to admit someone, but generally it was not a counting heads/voting situation as an attempt to come to consensus on each child (which happened most of the time).

What topics should be avoided when writing essays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent here, but former educator that sat on admissions committees at several of the DC independent schools frequently mentioned on these forums within the last decade or so (I won't give more info for fear of giving away my superhero secret identity!). As a parent, I sympathize with being nervous about people in a room discussing my child without me there to defend him/her like a mother bear! But, remember that people who are in education are there because they like and understand kids. The discussions were not mean-spirited in tone, and at both institutions I was impressed with the care taken by my colleagues to thoroughly read the files and to make these decisions in a way that is sensitive to the feelings of the parents and kids involved. The content of the discussions was different at each institution, more I think because one focused on 9th grade admissions and the other on elementary age admissions. For the 9th grade admissions, the opening discussion was always academic -- could the child do the work? Within that threshhold discussion, it ranged from being excited about a potential academic superstar (teachers get excited about that) to making judgments as to whether the child by working hard and with support could have a positive academic experience. For "special talents," unless the child was national level in something like dance or music (which occasionally happens), the biggest focus was athletics. A very good athlete will have an edge at many schools if all other things are equal, and a superstar athlete may have that edge even if all things are not equal. Like it or not, parents and alums in this town do seem to care about athletics and schools get criticized if they lose regularly in high profile sports UNLESS the schools have made it clear that they are not going to play the sports "game." Elementary admissions -- which is I think where most of the interest on this board is (saying that as a fairly new parent myself who reads this board!) -- was trickier. While the committees wanted to make academics the first focus, they know from experience that it is so much harder to project academic performance for a Kindergartener than for an 8th grader applying to 9th grade. So yes, more attention is paid to play dates and interactions with the other kids -- did they seem eager to learn? Articulate? Excited about any kinds of ideas, whether books they've read, things about science, etc.? And yes, the child's behavior matters -- hitting or bullying other kids, for example, will come up. Procedurally, my experience at both places is that every folder was discussed, but that clear-cut "yes" or "no" decisions got less time. The middle pile got a lot of time. Mostly the schools focused more on individuals with less of a worry about creating a Frankensteinianly perfect "class," but there is no question diversity (ethnic and racial and to some extent geographic, e.g. interesting international family) is a plus during the process. Not that many comments about parents--generally it only came up if the prior school had tipped someone off that the parents were very difficult, or if someone was spectacularly awful (and think Michael Scott on the TV show "The office" level of awful) during the interview. Even there, it wasn't a disqualifier -- if we wanted the kid we'd admit them and hope to educate the parents (or hope they had an off day based on anxiety). Numbers of meetings? Lots and lots during the big decision times, and lots of individual late nights of people reading folders and making their comments. Sometimes some pretty civil but impassioned arguments on the committee whether or not to admit someone, but generally it was not a counting heads/voting situation as an attempt to come to consensus on each child (which happened most of the time).

What topics should be avoided when writing essays?

The post you quoted is pretty accurate in my experience. For essays, don’t over think it. Present a positive yet realistic/balanced picture of your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, all, it is 12:02 back again. I will try to answer the additional questions while reiterating that practices might differ from school to school, and that I am no longer currently working in schools. In other words, take everything I say with a large grain of salt!

16:24 -- Race and ethnicity does come up in the admissions discussions (I would think this is the case with every school that as part of its mission statement states a commitment to diversity, which I assume applies to pretty much every DC independent school), but it is often at the macro level rather than applicant-specific. For example, admissions committees will discuss and strategize about outreach efforts (e.g., building relationships with charter schools; working with the Black Student Fund and Latino Student Fund; school visits). Where it comes up explicitly may be as a discussion of an interesting international background (e.g., student was schooled in Hong Kong), or as part of a discussion of what the school believes that student will be able to contribute to the community. My sense has also been that over time, the DC independent schools are beginning to go in the same direction as, for example, the Ivy League Schools in college admissions, and put more weight on socio-economic factors than race per se. So a student coming out of a difficult background with respect to income and prior education will get more of a boost in admissions than a student with all the prior advantages. Nevertheless, I think for most schools race on its own can still be a factor for groups historically underrepresented in private or collegiate education -- in practice this generally means African-American and Latino students -- but it is less of a factor than it used to be and more part of a larger discussion of socio-economic factors.

17:01 -- For third and fourth grade applicants, yes, there is significant attention paid to the ERB and WISC, as those tests are viewed as starting to be relatively good predictors of academic performance. There's still a recognition that tests don't capture everything, though, so schools still rely heavily on other material (teacher recommendations and comments and their discussions with the prior school attended by the student). And there's no question that a child who has an engaging interview can sway things as well. Hard to really give a good example of what would put a child in the "NO" pile--most often it is a sense that the child is just not academically the right fit (say it appears that the child has great difficulty reading, which will be more and more of an impediment as the grade levels increase). Sometimes a child makes it very clear in the interview that they do not want to go to the school -- this isn't the end of the discussion, as people realize that we don't generally ask 8 or 9 year olds to make major life decisions for themselves, but if you are trying to decide if a child would be happy at the school it can be seen as significant.

NP. I have a question - with some schools become notorious for having an unkind parent community and unkind culture - I am curious why admissions would not know about red flags of certain families before admitting them - especially when their reputation is well known? Did a letter from one vip help get their child admitted - will that supersede what is actually best for the community? Asking because one or two bad apples can really affect a private school class and dynamic.

[Anonymous]

This thread started in 2010. I don't think 14 year old advice is necessarily useful.