Best traction at the Ivies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GDS parent here: there are 30 plus kids not accounted for on the GDS Insta college posting site since the kids decide of they want to post At least 5 who decided not to post got into top Ivy League schools (one Harvard one Yale and 3 other Ivies I know of (nice they didn't want to brag but I am sharing this for purposes if the discussion,) . The total to Ivies plus stanford and MIT is abput 25-30 people which is about 20-25 percent of the class. I think this is pretty typical for GDS. I have heard anecdotally that Sidwell had a tough year- no one early into Brown etc. And St Albans had a typical year similar to GDS.

Sounds about right. Remember STA is much smaller with about 80-85 max per class. They and NCS both have high percentages as well going to ivies, Stanford, etc and 13 going to univ of Chicago which ranks higher than half the ivies.

[Anonymous]

GDS has a pretty amazing Ivy record, particularly with Harvard. People joke that Harvard practically could have a “GDS House” alongside Eliot or Winthrop!

UGH this is the GDS troll again. I am a GDS parent and NO ONE brags or even talks about a "Harvard Connection" the only time you hear about it is on DCUM where some troll pretends to be an obnoxious braggy GDS parent. The truth is 4 kids are going to Harvard this year. That's it. Not sure if more than that were accepted. One of those kids is the child of a Supreme Court justice and an alum. So please understand no one actually at GDS thinks there is some Harvard magic going on....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

GDS has a pretty amazing Ivy record, particularly with Harvard. People joke that Harvard practically could have a “GDS House” alongside Eliot or Winthrop!

UGH this is the GDS troll again. I am a GDS parent and NO ONE brags or even talks about a "Harvard Connection" the only time you hear about it is on DCUM where some troll pretends to be an obnoxious braggy GDS parent. The truth is 4 kids are going to Harvard this year. That's it. Not sure if more than that were accepted. One of those kids is the child of a Supreme Court justice and an alum. So please understand no one actually at GDS thinks there is some Harvard magic going on....

Right, and another is a double legacy and a third is an URM and a legacy.
I don't know who #4 is but these admit have nothing to do with GDS. These kids would have been accepted from any high school they attended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GDS parent here: there are 30 plus kids not accounted for on the GDS Insta college posting site since the kids decide of they want to post At least 5 who decided not to post got into top Ivy League schools (one Harvard one Yale and 3 other Ivies I know of (nice they didn't want to brag but I am sharing this for purposes if the discussion,) . The total to Ivies plus stanford and MIT is abput 25-30 people which is about 20-25 percent of the class. I think this is pretty typical for GDS. I have heard anecdotally that Sidwell had a tough year- no one early into Brown etc. And St Albans had a typical year similar to GDS.

It's amusing that the GDS parents who post here fixate on that Brown-Sidwell situation from '2022 and neglect to think about the other 7 Ivies or the other 14 top schools. Sidwell '22 had a great year. Amazing, if you have insider knowledge about legacy and realize that a ton of these admits aren't legacies or athletes. Or BIPOC

Most (all?) of the Harvard kids and most of the Yale kids didn't post on this year's IG. It was student created/driven and some abstained.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GDS parent here: there are 30 plus kids not accounted for on the GDS Insta college posting site since the kids decide of they want to post At least 5 who decided not to post got into top Ivy League schools (one Harvard one Yale and 3 other Ivies I know of (nice they didn't want to brag but I am sharing this for purposes if the discussion,) . The total to Ivies plus stanford and MIT is abput 25-30 people which is about 20-25 percent of the class. I think this is pretty typical for GDS. I have heard anecdotally that Sidwell had a tough year- no one early into Brown etc. And St Albans had a typical year similar to GDS.

You neeed to breakdown: recruited athletes, legacies and URMs + see if anyone outside those categories were accepted.

NP here but this breakdown will never happen: no one knows all of that info. But the narrative that each of these kids are legacies, athletes or minorities is false. Some are but way fewer than the DCUM mafia claim.

I did not write that. I am saying people need a breakdown to see if they even have a chance at Ivy entry if they are not a VIP legacy, , recruited legacy or top performing URM. (TBH, mine was a recruited atlete at HYP and the only one from their private here to be accepted their year.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Public schools, and not necessarily great ones. Times have changed.

That's the in vogue answer these days, but the publicly available numbers and the Naviance data I've seen for a few well-regarded public schools just don't bear that out (TJ notwithstanding).

Even TJ only sends the top kids to top colleges. There are many qualified students who probably would have matriculated to better colleges had they not attended TJ, but all public schools are capped and thus have raised standards. It’s a scam.

TJ likely will send fewer students to the Ivys now that wokeness and “equity” have replaced academic achievement in TJ’s application process.

Yep, that leaves the privates to sweep in and take all the good marticulation spots. However St. albans marticulation will also unfortunately likely be at odds, as that school historically has not arrived for “equity”.

Ivy presidents and their admissions deans are quite familiar with the fact that unlike other top DC privates, GDS was founded on social justice principles and has been a national DEI leader from its inception.

And they still have worse college marticulation than STA when accounting class size

GDS sets the pace in the “Big 3” in Harvard admissions. It’s been that way for some time.

Is that true even when adjusted for the size of the graduating class?

It very well may be, but STA takes the cake certainly with Yale and most other Ivy colleges. Not to mention Chicago, which is a T5 school and no school sends anything close to STA.

Except for Sidwell. Especially this year.

GDS has a pretty amazing Ivy record, particularly with Harvard. People joke that Harvard practically could have a “GDS House” alongside Eliot or Winthrop!

We are considering GDS in part based on what seems to be an amazing Ivy placement record. Has GDS maintained this trajectory in the past two years?

[Anonymous]

How does this work with the grade deflation at some of big 3.
What gpa do big 3 kids need to be in the top 20 percent of the class?

[Anonymous]

If one’s uncle/aunt/grandfather went to HYP, but not their parents (T10/15 SLAC), would the applicant be considered legacy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If one’s uncle/aunt/grandfather went to HYP, but not their parents (T10/15 SLAC), would the applicant be considered legacy?

I think it’s better than nothing, but it’s not legacy.

[Anonymous]

Do top private schools ask or take into account where parents went to school in their admissions processes?
It would be fairly easy to use that info to continue to make a matriculation list look good with legacies if those parents have strong child applicants for high school (I hope they don't ask for 3rd grade).

[Anonymous]

GDS admits last two classes (complete for 22, mostly complete for 21). All publicly sourced

Not an “Ivy factory” but very solid when considering competitiveness and relative to other top 5 private in DC

Reality is top performing kids will do as good or better on admits coming out of public high schools or public high schools with IB. Or moving to Mississippi as another poster put it. It’s quite competitive with hyper smart, hyper overachieving, legacied kids at all of the top DC privates. On balance given how hard this list of schools has gotten everywhere, DC private kids are getting into lower tier schools than their parents did 30 years ago.

I think all 4 Harvard were legacy, double legacy, or legacy/VIP

University of Michigan 8
Tufts 7
Wash U 7
Brown 6
NYU 6
Duke 5
Cornell 4
Harvard 4
Macalaster 4
Tulane 4
University of Toronto 4
University of Wisconsin 4
Boston College 3
Georgetown 3
UPenn 3
University of Chicago 3
Wesleyan 3
Yale 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does this work with the grade deflation at some of big 3.
What gpa do big 3 kids need to be in the top 20 percent of the class?

That is rarely the primary factor in Ivy admissions from these schools. Good enough grades and scores is enough. It's the hooks that get you in.

[Anonymous]

That is rarely the primary factor in Ivy admissions from these schools. Good enough grades and scores is enough. It's the hooks that get you in.

What grades are 'good enough"

[Anonymous]

I think there were also 2 at MIT. One of the Harvard was not legacy.

I think all 4 Harvard were legacy, double legacy, or legacy/VIP

University of Michigan 8
Tufts 7
Wash U 7
Brown 6
NYU 6
Duke 5
Cornell 4
Harvard 4
Macalaster 4
Tulane 4
University of Toronto 4
University of Wisconsin 4
Boston College 3
Georgetown 3
UPenn 3
University of Chicago 3
Wesleyan 3
Yale 3

[Anonymous]

Gds list is really helpful. Can you post 2021?

Thanks