What was your UNHOOKED Big3 senior's GPA and what type of school are they attending in the fall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our Big 3 did not get rid of APs, as they had planned. I think having APs actually hurts the kids. For example, the science AP my DD took did not stick to the AP curriculum and went deeper and wider. They did not practice the actual AP questions (which is what is done in public schools starting very early in the school year). As a result, it is hard to do well on the AP tests. Then those AP scores get compared to AP scores of public school kids who started drilling for those AP tests early on. And the comparison is not in the Big 3 kids favor. Having APs only hurts the kids if teachers do not stick to the AP curriculum.

No, public schools don't drill kids on AP questions. The only case I saw of this happening was in Calc BC where the drilling was on speed, because the only way you'll get through that AP is to know how to answer questions both correctly and speedily.

-- parent of kids in public and private

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:re the Big 3 /State school debate..Our Big 3 college counselor admitted to us that this year was really bad for us at Michigan and Wisconsin (and other big state schools) partially due to the common app and the deluge of applications , grad deflation and "a changing landscape". We did not have a ton of kids get into some of the popular state schools. Case in point a kid at our school got into an Ivy and was rejected at Michigan and Wisconsin. That's just one anecdote but there were a lot of similar examples.

I think the Big 3 are arrogant to cling to the assumption that the schools ALL know how "rigorous" they are. Also, it was a huge mistake to get rid of AP's. I think colleges do not have the time or energy to parse out the difference between upper level classes at Sidwell or Gds vs AP English at Wilson. This is a mistake that our kids are paying for in this new landscape.

It isn't arrogance, it is fact, the schools have regional representatives who actually know the high schools in their regions. I think the issue is that when schools like Michigan and Wisconsin had 50,000 applications for 10,000 acceptances and 8,000 matriculations, it was a lot easier to simply take 15-25 kids from schools like Sidwell, but now that they have closer to 100,000 applications for the same number of slots, they have to be more judicious.

The top private schools have regional reps. The big state schools you cite, however, focus more on stats.

[Anonymous]

The bottom line is that your unhooked kid at either private or public needs national level achievements to get into the very top universities. That's how my unhooked kid got into a USNWR top 5 (from public).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Middle of the pack at big 3 and excited to go to Tulane (ED)!

You kid will love Tulane. My beautiful alma mater!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:re the Big 3 /State school debate..Our Big 3 college counselor admitted to us that this year was really bad for us at Michigan and Wisconsin (and other big state schools) partially due to the common app and the deluge of applications , grad deflation and "a changing landscape". We did not have a ton of kids get into some of the popular state schools. Case in point a kid at our school got into an Ivy and was rejected at Michigan and Wisconsin. That's just one anecdote but there were a lot of similar examples.

I think the Big 3 are arrogant to cling to the assumption that the schools ALL know how "rigorous" they are. Also, it was a huge mistake to get rid of AP's. I think colleges do not have the time or energy to parse out the difference between upper level classes at Sidwell or Gds vs AP English at Wilson. This is a mistake that our kids are paying for in this new landscape.

+100

Getting rid of APs isn’t a problem. Schools like Trinity, Collegiate, Brearley, etc. haven’t offered AP classes in years. Those schools still send 30-40% of their graduates to the Ivy League.

https://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/list-detail?pk=48902

We are at one of those schools and the vast majority of parents are wealthy Ivy legacies.
Of course their hooked children will help keep up that 30-40% stat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cornell loves public school kids. Applied from both public and private. Public school kid less impressive academically at Jackson Reed vs. my private school kid. Cornell took the JR one Potomac. This happens too often.

Cornell took a lot of JR kids this year.

It will be interesting to see how the JR kids do in general at college (not specifically this cohort but the grade at large). there are some true rockstars but also lots of kids who got straight As for not doing much of anything. they were the benefactors of Covid grading (no grades given less than a B for kids who turned in anything during those 18 months) and those standards have not really returned to normal since. grades remain crazily inflated. This mostly just hurts the high achievers at JR because the pool of top students is diluted with kids who don't belong there. It will be interesting to see if their performance at college impacts future admissions.
Signed, JR and private school parent

Oh please - we can all say the same about our private school and covid and the insane amount of outside "help" these kids got from parents and tutors. In my son's class at Sidwell, every project done is part parent's effort. Wonder if these kids are brining their parents to college. We refuse to play that game and complained once to teachers and they said they can't stop it but the do know it happens.

This is interesting. We are Sidwell parents and we have never participated in our child's work. We don't even know or see what they do. The go to school, they get their grades, we see no homework, no written work (not even AFTER), no tests - EVER.

NP. Unclear if you’re in upper school yet but my PhD IMF coworker basically relived high school with his two sFS kids, who did very well there.
But he did so much of their math and science and then taught them it, it was the office joke.
The dumber thing was all the sfs peer parents were in awe that the older kid “never had any tutors” like everyone else did.

FYI the tutoring was because too much work was assigned and the student was responsible for considerably more material than was ever covered in class.

And fyi, one went Ivy for ugrad and grad; did very well. Other went T25
Dad was bored out of his mind then and played more iMf racquetball at lunch.

Does Sdiwell not have ann honor code? NCS has a astrong honor code and there is no way I would have let my dad do this because I would have known it was cheating.

[Anonymous]

I mean I wouldn’t do it but it’s not cheating for a parent to learn a topic like math or science and teach it to the kid. It’s not like writing their paper or something like that

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean I wouldn’t do it but it’s not cheating for a parent to learn a topic like math or science and teach it to the kid. It’s not like writing their paper or something like that

I suspect that a parent who is this involved was also writing (or heavily influencing and heavily editing) papers.

[Anonymous]

My DC at Sidwell never let me anywhere close to their assignments, even when I was curious to see how they wrote or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:re the Big 3 /State school debate..Our Big 3 college counselor admitted to us that this year was really bad for us at Michigan and Wisconsin (and other big state schools) partially due to the common app and the deluge of applications , grad deflation and "a changing landscape". We did not have a ton of kids get into some of the popular state schools. Case in point a kid at our school got into an Ivy and was rejected at Michigan and Wisconsin. That's just one anecdote but there were a lot of similar examples.

I think the Big 3 are arrogant to cling to the assumption that the schools ALL know how "rigorous" they are. Also, it was a huge mistake to get rid of AP's. I think colleges do not have the time or energy to parse out the difference between upper level classes at Sidwell or Gds vs AP English at Wilson. This is a mistake that our kids are paying for in this new landscape.

+100

Getting rid of APs isn’t a problem. Schools like Trinity, Collegiate, Brearley, etc. haven’t offered AP classes in years. Those schools still send 30-40% of their graduates to the Ivy League.

https://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/list-detail?pk=48902

We are at one of those schools and the vast majority of parents are wealthy Ivy legacies.
Of course their hooked children will help keep up that 30-40% stat.

Legacy isn’t a guarantee. I know an URM girl who just graduated from a local Catholic school. She is a double double (quadruple?) Harvard legacy (both parents graduated from Harvard College and HLS). She had top grades, but unsure about test scores. At any rate, Harvard said no. She will attend an out of state flagship university in the fall.

Btw, let’s give Trinity some respect. If a school is STILL sending ~40% of its graduates to eight of the most selective universities in the world (in this post-COVID test optional environment); then the school is doing something right (or illegal—lol).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:re the Big 3 /State school debate..Our Big 3 college counselor admitted to us that this year was really bad for us at Michigan and Wisconsin (and other big state schools) partially due to the common app and the deluge of applications , grad deflation and "a changing landscape". We did not have a ton of kids get into some of the popular state schools. Case in point a kid at our school got into an Ivy and was rejected at Michigan and Wisconsin. That's just one anecdote but there were a lot of similar examples.

I think the Big 3 are arrogant to cling to the assumption that the schools ALL know how "rigorous" they are. Also, it was a huge mistake to get rid of AP's. I think colleges do not have the time or energy to parse out the difference between upper level classes at Sidwell or Gds vs AP English at Wilson. This is a mistake that our kids are paying for in this new landscape.

+100

Getting rid of APs isn’t a problem. Schools like Trinity, Collegiate, Brearley, etc. haven’t offered AP classes in years. Those schools still send 30-40% of their graduates to the Ivy League.

https://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/list-detail?pk=48902

We are at one of those schools and the vast majority of parents are wealthy Ivy legacies.
Of course their hooked children will help keep up that 30-40% stat.

Legacy isn’t a guarantee. I know an URM girl who just graduated from a local Catholic school. She is a double double (quadruple?) Harvard legacy (both parents graduated from Harvard College and HLS). She had top grades, but unsure about test scores. At any rate, Harvard said no. She will attend an out of state flagship university in the fall.

Btw, let’s give Trinity some respect. If a school is STILL sending ~40% of its graduates to eight of the most selective universities in the world (in this post-COVID test optional environment); then the school is doing something right (or illegal—lol).

Unrelated, but would be curious as to how you approached them about this and what their exact response was. If I was the parent of that kid, I would be too embarrassed to tell someone that both myself and my spouse went to a university that my kid was just rejected to. I would probably lie and say they didn’t want to go or got a full scholarship elsewhere or something.

[Anonymous]

its harvard - there's nothing to be emb

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very good GPA for rigorous Big3 (3.7), strong (but not tippy top) SATs at 1490 and strong ECs. Did not have a great college outcomes. Got into one Top 50 school and several Top 100s. Waitlisted at many places - very few rejections. Chose one of the Top 100s.

Similar scores from a good MCPS public. Got into 2 top 20, WL at a few, and chose Berkeley!

It’s funny how some people think Big 3 means a leg up when applying to elite universities
MCPS will have an edge on UC schools because of reliance on AP for rigor....private schools offer far few APs (some offer none). Even if you take an AP exam, the course will not be weighted as such by UC system.

Exactly my point. My kid with a similar profile was denied Berkely from GDS. His best friend with similar level grades/ecs from Wilson got into Yale. We are happy with our outcome right before covid but I can't say it didn't burn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:re the Big 3 /State school debate..Our Big 3 college counselor admitted to us that this year was really bad for us at Michigan and Wisconsin (and other big state schools) partially due to the common app and the deluge of applications , grad deflation and "a changing landscape". We did not have a ton of kids get into some of the popular state schools. Case in point a kid at our school got into an Ivy and was rejected at Michigan and Wisconsin. That's just one anecdote but there were a lot of similar examples.

I think the Big 3 are arrogant to cling to the assumption that the schools ALL know how "rigorous" they are. Also, it was a huge mistake to get rid of AP's. I think colleges do not have the time or energy to parse out the difference between upper level classes at Sidwell or Gds vs AP English at Wilson. This is a mistake that our kids are paying for in this new landscape.

+100

Getting rid of APs isn’t a problem. Schools like Trinity, Collegiate, Brearley, etc. haven’t offered AP classes in years. Those schools still send 30-40% of their graduates to the Ivy League.

https://www.trinityschoolnyc.org/list-detail?pk=48902

We are at one of those schools and the vast majority of parents are wealthy Ivy legacies.
Of course their hooked children will help keep up that 30-40% stat.

Legacy isn’t a guarantee. I know an URM girl who just graduated from a local Catholic school. She is a double double (quadruple?) Harvard legacy (both parents graduated from Harvard College and HLS). She had top grades, but unsure about test scores. At any rate, Harvard said no. She will attend an out of state flagship university in the fall.

Btw, let’s give Trinity some respect. If a school is STILL sending ~40% of its graduates to eight of the most selective universities in the world (in this post-COVID test optional environment); then the school is doing something right (or illegal—lol).

Unrelated, but would be curious as to how you approached them about this and what their exact response was. If I was the parent of that kid, I would be too embarrassed to tell someone that both myself and my spouse went to a university that my kid was just rejected to. I would probably lie and say they didn’t want to go or got a full scholarship elsewhere or something.

We live in the same neighborhood and we’ve known the family for many years (very friendly, but not super close). One of our kids is also pretty good friends with one of theirs, but not the child that just graduated. I didn’t really “approach” them on this topic, it just organically came up during a conversation—especially since this is graduation season. The parents didn’t seem embarrassed, nor should they be. Their daughter is attending a great university and I have no doubt that she will be happy and thrive in her new environment.

[Anonymous]

What do you think are odds for Michigan for an unhooked Big3 girl with a 4.0? Math post calculus, Language post AP (equiv), sports captain, head of multiple STEM clubs, healthcare internships and summer jobs. College office hasn't been that helpful.