Sidwell College Admissions This Year

[Anonymous]

LET'S GET THIS THREAD TO 100 PAGES!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is the same everywhere in 2022.
My daughter is at NCS and to my knowledge there is ONE Ivy admit this year who is not legacy/minority/recruited athlete. A SINGLE admit without a hook. I'm not sure STA has any to be honest.
My good friends at kids at Wilson and School without Walls and they are the same this year. Walls is sending quite a few kids to the Ivies (maybe 10?) and all but 1 or 2 are legacy or minorities.
Same with Wilson. The Ivy admits are almost all URM.
It used to be (even 2 years ago) that you could reliably get into the Ivy league from DCPS (Walls/Wilson) as an unconnected non-minority (simply as a very smart, accomplished kid). Not anymore.
Now you need a hook.

I would agree with the previous posters that the kids getting in ARE worthy of the admits. They'll do great in college. So this is not meant to disparage them.

These extreme outcomes have been seriously dispiriting for unhooked students. Meritocracy in the traditional sense is basically dead. But, I suppose, we all knew that anyway.

You are mssing the point. The "hooked" kids are also worthy of the spot. They are not lesser students. They just offer something more.

Any reasonable system should not consider legacy as the "something more" that the student offers. It is appalling that legacy advantages are offered in admissions today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is the same everywhere in 2022.
My daughter is at NCS and to my knowledge there is ONE Ivy admit this year who is not legacy/minority/recruited athlete. A SINGLE admit without a hook. I'm not sure STA has any to be honest.
My good friends at kids at Wilson and School without Walls and they are the same this year. Walls is sending quite a few kids to the Ivies (maybe 10?) and all but 1 or 2 are legacy or minorities.
Same with Wilson. The Ivy admits are almost all URM.
It used to be (even 2 years ago) that you could reliably get into the Ivy league from DCPS (Walls/Wilson) as an unconnected non-minority (simply as a very smart, accomplished kid). Not anymore.
Now you need a hook.

I would agree with the previous posters that the kids getting in ARE worthy of the admits. They'll do great in college. So this is not meant to disparage them.

These extreme outcomes have been seriously dispiriting for unhooked students. Meritocracy in the traditional sense is basically dead. But, I suppose, we all knew that anyway.

You are mssing the point. The "hooked" kids are also worthy of the spot. They are not lesser students. They just offer something more.

Any reasonable system should not consider legacy as the "something more" that the student offers. It is appalling that legacy advantages are offered in admissions today.

If you have two applicants that are in every way equal, and one is a legacy, is there a reason not to take them over the one that is not? What else is a determining factor?

[Anonymous]

From The Atlantic Magazine:

"In the U.S., the history of legacy preferences is the other way around. Elite colleges adopted legacy preferences in the early part of the 20th century, largely to keep down the number of Jews filling the lecture halls. In the 1960s, the dean of admissions at Yale, R. Inslee Clark, reduced the weight of legacy status and halved the proportion of legacies in the freshman class, from 24 to 12 percent. Outrage ensued. The conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. complained that without legacy preference, “a Mexican-American from El Paso High with identical scores on the achievement test … has a better chance of being admitted to Yale than Jonathan Edwards the Sixteenth from Saint Paul’s School.” Clark lost his fight, and today legacy preferences are treated as business as usual."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is the same everywhere in 2022.
My daughter is at NCS and to my knowledge there is ONE Ivy admit this year who is not legacy/minority/recruited athlete. A SINGLE admit without a hook. I'm not sure STA has any to be honest.
My good friends at kids at Wilson and School without Walls and they are the same this year. Walls is sending quite a few kids to the Ivies (maybe 10?) and all but 1 or 2 are legacy or minorities.
Same with Wilson. The Ivy admits are almost all URM.
It used to be (even 2 years ago) that you could reliably get into the Ivy league from DCPS (Walls/Wilson) as an unconnected non-minority (simply as a very smart, accomplished kid). Not anymore.
Now you need a hook.

I would agree with the previous posters that the kids getting in ARE worthy of the admits. They'll do great in college. So this is not meant to disparage them.

These extreme outcomes have been seriously dispiriting for unhooked students. Meritocracy in the traditional sense is basically dead. But, I suppose, we all knew that anyway.

You are mssing the point. The "hooked" kids are also worthy of the spot. They are not lesser students. They just offer something more.

Any reasonable system should not consider legacy as the "something more" that the student offers. It is appalling that legacy advantages are offered in admissions today.

No two applicants are in "every way equal". Set legacy aside and decide which student you prefer. It is really not that complicated.

If you have two applicants that are in every way equal, and one is a legacy, is there a reason not to take them over the one that is not? What else is a determining factor?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is the same everywhere in 2022.
My daughter is at NCS and to my knowledge there is ONE Ivy admit this year who is not legacy/minority/recruited athlete. A SINGLE admit without a hook. I'm not sure STA has any to be honest.
My good friends at kids at Wilson and School without Walls and they are the same this year. Walls is sending quite a few kids to the Ivies (maybe 10?) and all but 1 or 2 are legacy or minorities.
Same with Wilson. The Ivy admits are almost all URM.
It used to be (even 2 years ago) that you could reliably get into the Ivy league from DCPS (Walls/Wilson) as an unconnected non-minority (simply as a very smart, accomplished kid). Not anymore.
Now you need a hook.

I would agree with the previous posters that the kids getting in ARE worthy of the admits. They'll do great in college. So this is not meant to disparage them.

These extreme outcomes have been seriously dispiriting for unhooked students. Meritocracy in the traditional sense is basically dead. But, I suppose, we all knew that anyway.

You are mssing the point. The "hooked" kids are also worthy of the spot. They are not lesser students. They just offer something more.

Any reasonable system should not consider legacy as the "something more" that the student offers. It is appalling that legacy advantages are offered in admissions today.

If you have two applicants that are in every way equal, and one is a legacy, is there a reason not to take them over the one that is not? What else is a determining factor?

No two applicants are in "every way equal". Set legacy aside and decide which student you prefer. It is really not that complicated. Fairness should be the deterring factor.

[Anonymous]

Legacy will be gone within 5 years at all Ivies. It is indefensible. Students themselves are demanding it on several campuses, notably Princeton.

[Anonymous]

Legacy these days actually backfires in interviews with Wall Street investment banks and private equity when they discover the candidate got into, say Yale, via legacy preference. It sort of delegitimizes the candidate. Very different from even 10 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Legacy will be gone within 5 years at all Ivies. It is indefensible. Students themselves are demanding it on several campuses, notably Princeton.

As it very well should. Between two 'equal" candidates, one with legacy and another without, tossing a coin would be arguably fairer than consistently favoring the legacy. Shocking that elite institutions in the US preach fairness and equality on the one hand while systematically pushing for legacy candidates. As this year's outcomes in Dc suggest, legacy admissions are often the decisive factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Legacy these days actually backfires in interviews with Wall Street investment banks and private equity when they discover the candidate got into, say Yale, via legacy preference. It sort of delegitimizes the candidate. Very different from even 10 years ago.

Interesting. But, how can interviewers figure this out?

[Anonymous]

1. Explicitly asking the question, which they now often do; 2. LinkedIn; 3. A generalized question about factors behind your choice of college. It is relatively easy to figure this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent of a Sidwell senior going to an Ivy. My DC is definitely unhooked. Zero legacy, not a recruited athlete and not an URM. Certainly not a VIP. I would agree that many Sidwell seniors headed to Ivies are hooked, but a handful are unambiguously unhooked. The nuance is that many of the hooked kids are in fact very strong students. The tension, however, is that the slight edge given to those with hooks probably did “steal” or at least lower the probability of a spot going to a very strong unhooked kid applying at the same Ivy at the same time, given two similarly strong applicants, one hooked and one not. Not a value statement about the “relative worthiness” of one hooked vs. an unhooked one. I can understand both points of view — why an unhooked kid might feel incredibly frustrated by disappointing outcomes and why a hooked kid might feel unjustifiably maligned given significant accomplishments. My takeaway as a parent of an unhooked kid who ultimately had several very good admits to Ivies is you need to fully accept and embrace the fact that that ED/SCEA/EA is NOT about your kid. Period. RD is for your kid who is unhooked and a very strong applicant. In hindsight, I wish I had understood this going into the process.

Not a Sidwell parent, my kid is a senior in MCPS with similar outcome, and I completely agree about early admissions. Only did will with umd in early. The kids who got in early seemed to be largely lefacy. It was RD where they were looking for non legacy kids. While mine is unhooked by these standards, she did have a fair amount of awards, one national, which is another way to stand out.

I will say that at admitted students day, there really weren't many urms that we've seen. So legacy and athletics seem to be the stronger hooks.

It's different at the DC private schools because they have sizable populations of wealthy, highly educated URMs (many highly educated URMs in the DMV use private school due to historical stereotyping, etc in public). Something like 50% of the kids are URM at some of the elite high schools and they are very smart kids: top grades, top SATs. They are an elite college's dream!! Many of them go on to apply to the Ivys and they get the spots.

Where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's different at the DC private schools because they have sizable populations of wealthy, highly educated URMs (many highly educated URMs in the DMV use private school due to historical stereotyping, etc in public). Something like 50% of the kids are URM at some of the elite high schools and they are very smart kids: top grades, top SATs. They are an elite college's dream!! Many of them go on to apply to the Ivys and they get the spots.

Agree. There are truly excellent URM students at the elite high schools. Great on the one hand but also a challenge for equally good non-URMs at the same schools since top colleges seem to be interested in no more than 1-2 admits per school and are quite happy to take the URMs instead of the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Legacy will be gone within 5 years at all Ivies. It is indefensible. Students themselves are demanding it on several campuses, notably Princeton.

As it very well should. Between two 'equal" candidates, one with legacy and another without, tossing a coin would be arguably fairer than consistently favoring the legacy. Shocking that elite institutions in the US preach fairness and equality on the one hand while systematically pushing for legacy candidates. As this year's outcomes in Dc suggest, legacy admissions are often the decisive factor.

You and pp don't understand Ivy League universities and their priorities and values very well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's different at the DC private schools because they have sizable populations of wealthy, highly educated URMs (many highly educated URMs in the DMV use private school due to historical stereotyping, etc in public). Something like 50% of the kids are URM at some of the elite high schools and they are very smart kids: top grades, top SATs. They are an elite college's dream!! Many of them go on to apply to the Ivys and they get the spots.

Agree. There are truly excellent URM students at the elite high schools. Great on the one hand but also a challenge for equally good non-URMs at the same schools since top colleges seem to be interested in no more than 1-2 admits per school and are quite happy to take the URMs instead of the rest.

Seriously? URMs make up something around 25% at most of an incoming college class. That other 75% is coming from somewhere. Plenty of non-URMs are getting into schools from Sidwell or another other local private school you want to name.