Sidwell College Admissions This Year

[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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

"Ivy Legacy" is not the same as "elite," anymore. That perception is left over from when kids were admitted to the Ivy League based upon their family connections, not their GPA. Now, an Ivy Legacy is much more likely to be the kid of a mid-level non-profit administrator. If the kid truly has connections in the financial world, they'll know that already.

This is the dilemma face by the Ivy League. In the old days, their grads were elite because most of their students were born on third base. Their aura of prestige's a remnant of when they educated the children of the elite, and their current method of selecting students is taking them away from that. If you look at the NYT "outcomes" measurement, only 11% of graduates move up more than two income quartiles and only 1.8% move up from the bottom to the top income quartile. As these colleges admit more students from lower income levels, it will be interesting to see what happens to the income, etc stats of graduates from these colleges. Were their prior results caused by the education & connections they provided or the result of admitting kids that were rich and connected to begin with?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/harvard-university

[Anonymous]

Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

You guys act like the stats of legacies are much lower than non legacies. We're talking about 1450 vs 1500 here. I can see why these firms aren't ethnically diverse.

[Anonymous]

No, the stats of legacies are generally strong. So 1500 v 1500. Everyopne has A's, everyone has varsity letters and other EC's.

They are not taking lessor legaices at the expense of grade points or other stats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

Brainpower and intellect don't value wall street. It wants to do its own start up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

You guys act like the stats of legacies are much lower than non legacies. We're talking about 1450 vs 1500 here. I can see why these firms aren't ethnically diverse.

"Wall Street values brainpower and intellect above all else...." I couldn't read any further without thinking about the subprime mortgage market crisis, brought to you by the geniuses on Wall Street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

Really? Because it took me about 5 seconds to think of three different multi-generation Penn grads that fit your description.

Lots of fact-free BS being shoveled in comments on this thread at this point...

[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.

This is why URMs really aren’t interested in TJHSST. They have more appealing opportunities to attend privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

I had an internship with Morgan Stanley in NYC the summer after junior year. Every single kid in the program bar one (29 of 30) was from the Ivy league or MIT; fully half were from Wharton. I can't tell you whether they were screening out legacy preferences as where our parents went to school was thankfully not a big topic of conversation, but it seems very unlikely & several people were clearly from old money. What I can tell you is that there was only 1 kid not from an Ivy league school, so they clearly weren't screening in anyone else...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Yes, the remaining 75 percent (Ok, 70 percent) are legacies and athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

I had an internship with Morgan Stanley in NYC the summer after junior year. Every single kid in the program bar one (29 of 30) was from the Ivy league or MIT; fully half were from Wharton. I can't tell you whether they were screening out legacy preferences as where our parents went to school was thankfully not a big topic of conversation, but it seems very unlikely & several people were clearly from old money. What I can tell you is that there was only 1 kid not from an Ivy league school, so they clearly weren't screening in anyone else...

I believe you. Not that it matters that much, but where did the non-Ivy intern go to school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

I had an internship with Morgan Stanley in NYC the summer after junior year. Every single kid in the program bar one (29 of 30) was from the Ivy league or MIT; fully half were from Wharton. I can't tell you whether they were screening out legacy preferences as where our parents went to school was thankfully not a big topic of conversation, but it seems very unlikely & several people were clearly from old money. What I can tell you is that there was only 1 kid not from an Ivy league school, so they clearly weren't screening in anyone else...

I believe you. Not that it matters that much, but where did the non-Ivy intern go to school?

Not the OP, but had a nearly identical experience.All but one from Ivy/Stanford/MIT. The one non-Ivy was an engineering undergrad (non-US) with an MBA from Penn State.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walk Street values brainpower and intellect above all else because that alone gives the firm “the edge” to make money. If a mediocre, over-prepped and over-tutored legacy from, say Yale, even makes it past the first interview, he will definitely not get past the second. They will sniff him out and see that there is no there there. Wall Street likes super smart, ambitious and often scrappy. These days they recruit engineering, math and cs majors way more than history and econ majors from Ivy/top schools. I can think of no successful hedge fund, private equity or investment bank head who is an Ivy legacy. Ivy definitely yes, Ivy legacy no. Your frame of reference is way out of date.

You guys act like the stats of legacies are much lower than non legacies. We're talking about 1450 vs 1500 here. I can see why these firms aren't ethnically diverse.

"Wall Street values brainpower and intellect above all else...." I couldn't read any further without thinking about the subprime mortgage market crisis, brought to you by the geniuses on Wall Street.

+1000
I almost choked when I read the thing about "brainpower and intellect"....Wall Street actually values ruthlessness and greed above all else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I find this hard to believe this. Wall Street lives and thrives on connections to the elite.

I had an internship with Morgan Stanley in NYC the summer after junior year. Every single kid in the program bar one (29 of 30) was from the Ivy league or MIT; fully half were from Wharton. I can't tell you whether they were screening out legacy preferences as where our parents went to school was thankfully not a big topic of conversation, but it seems very unlikely & several people were clearly from old money. What I can tell you is that there was only 1 kid not from an Ivy league school, so they clearly weren't screening in anyone else...

When was this?