GDS admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Terrrible experience with last years interviewer. No warmth. Showed no interest in our kid. We figured she was signaling that our kid wasn’t the right fit. We didn’t apply.

How did you get an interview without applying? No snark.

[Anonymous]

Our kids interview in K was meh. He got into GDS & Sidwell and we choose Sidwell & haven't looked back but I remember it being strange compared to the others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Applied pre-Covid. DC is a quiet kid so we were somewhat worried about the interview, but the admissions person was patient and kind. DC really hit it off with the student tour guide and ended up choosing GDS over Sidwell and Potomac for 9th grade, and has had a great HS experience.

+1
DC also had a very patient and kind interviewer. Really left a great impression of GDS on our family.
How many people do interviews? It sounds like we're talking about different people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrrible experience with last years interviewer. No warmth. Showed no interest in our kid. We figured she was signaling that our kid wasn’t the right fit. We didn’t apply.

How did you get an interview without applying? No snark.

They used to let you schedule an interview before submitting an application. Not sure if that's still the case. I'm not the PP but we did that last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell me about your experience with the US admissions team. My experience when my DS applied for 9th grade was not good and the person conducted the virtual interview was clearly not interested and not able to establish a rapport. But perhaps that was an exception.

We had the same experience with the US admission team. Granted, it was a virtual interview, but she clearly knew nothing about my kid and hadn't read his file.

I know you asked about US but this feels exactly like our LS interview. She was really impersonal and acted like we were wasting her time, hadn’t even looked at the initial application etc. it really changed my mind in terms of how we see GDS. we’ll finish the application process but on the whole, GDS seems to be riding high on the number of apps they get and that’s coming across in these interviews.

Dame. LS admissions person had zero knowledge of our child and asked what grade are you applying for?

Our interview for LS didn't go well when DH started referencing our application and mentioned a few times that we had written this information in the application. She looked annoyed but the questions she was asking were on the application. You would think they would really want to get to know the applicant.

Exactly this, we had the same experience. Sounds like the LS interviewer is the same for everyone. You’d think GDS would pay more attention to this but then again she noted they have hundreds of applicants so maybe they don’t care? We had the exact opposite experience at Sidwell where I had prepared myself for it to be tough or not as warm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applied pre-Covid. DC is a quiet kid so we were somewhat worried about the interview, but the admissions person was patient and kind. DC really hit it off with the student tour guide and ended up choosing GDS over Sidwell and Potomac for 9th grade, and has had a great HS experience.

+1
DC also had a very patient and kind interviewer. Really left a great impression of GDS on our family.
How many people do interviews? It sounds like we're talking about different people.

Yes sounds like US has a better interviewer than LS.

[Anonymous]

There are many people who do interviews at each level. At least 4 for upper school.

This is typical for all schools. We had interviews with athletic directors, heads of the upper school, admissions staffers, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrrible experience with last years interviewer. No warmth. Showed no interest in our kid. We figured she was signaling that our kid wasn’t the right fit. We didn’t apply.

How did you get an interview without applying? No snark.

I'm not the PP - but you can set up the tour/interview after doing the preliminary GDS application step in Ravenna. This step is basic information and does not involve the application fee.
It is also before formally submitting essays, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applied pre-Covid. DC is a quiet kid so we were somewhat worried about the interview, but the admissions person was patient and kind. DC really hit it off with the student tour guide and ended up choosing GDS over Sidwell and Potomac for 9th grade, and has had a great HS experience.

+1
DC also had a very patient and kind interviewer. Really left a great impression of GDS on our family.
How many people do interviews? It sounds like we're talking about different people.

Yes sounds like US has a better interviewer than LS.

Nope - I'm the PP from (10/26/2022 14:11) and I was referring to US. Our experience was for 9th grade admissions, in person, pre-COVID. That US interviewer is still in same position and from what we've seen so far this year, she has not changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell me about your experience with the US admissions team. My experience when my DS applied for 9th grade was not good and the person conducted the virtual interview was clearly not interested and not able to establish a rapport. But perhaps that was an exception.

We had the same experience with the US admission team. Granted, it was a virtual interview, but she clearly knew nothing about my kid and hadn't read his file.

I know you asked about US but this feels exactly like our LS interview. She was really impersonal and acted like we were wasting her time, hadn’t even looked at the initial application etc. it really changed my mind in terms of how we see GDS. we’ll finish the application process but on the whole, GDS seems to be riding high on the number of apps they get and that’s coming across in these interviews.

Similar experience for us when our kid applied to K. Was waitlisted for GDS but got into the 2 other "Big 3" schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applied pre-Covid. DC is a quiet kid so we were somewhat worried about the interview, but the admissions person was patient and kind. DC really hit it off with the student tour guide and ended up choosing GDS over Sidwell and Potomac for 9th grade, and has had a great HS experience.

+1
DC also had a very patient and kind interviewer. Really left a great impression of GDS on our family.
How many people do interviews? It sounds like we're talking about different people.

Yes sounds like US has a better interviewer than LS.

Nope - I'm the PP from (10/26/2022 14:11) and I was referring to US. Our experience was for 9th grade admissions, in person, pre-COVID. That US interviewer is still in same position and from what we've seen so far this year, she has not changed.

Yep we had the same thing last year for 9th grade. After interview DD crossed it off and stopped the application process. Accepted at Maret, Sidwell, Potomac and two others. She said the interviewer gave her the impression that the school had a lot of applications and really did not care about her or her application.

[Anonymous]

I just want to say, as a current GDS parent who was in your shoes last year, don't let one bad interview scare you off from a truly amazing school. They have hundreds of applications for each entry grade and it's extremely difficult to get in. The weight of that workload may have come across to you from your particular interviewer.

[Anonymous]

We had a very warm interview last year for MS and child is now attending.

[Anonymous]

My child's interview for Kindergarten last year was wonderful -- we had two people from GDS on the Zoom....they really connected with my child! (We ended up at GDS.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just want to say, as a current GDS parent who was in your shoes last year, don't let one bad interview scare you off from a truly amazing school. They have hundreds of applications for each entry grade and it's extremely difficult to get in. The weight of that workload may have come across to you from your particular interviewer.

On this note - our child still applied and was accepted for 9th to GDS (pre-COVID) - but it was evident through the entire process that this admissions person never bothered to learn the basic interests of our child. In the end, this meant our child didn't ever get a good feel for how they might fit into the GDS community. GDS was a big question-mark to our DC when compared to other schools they were accepted to. Those schools had allowed Fall Shadow visits and had paired them with like-interested students and then again did this in the Spring after acceptances went out. GDS did not have a Fall Shadow that admissions cycle and the student they were paired with in the Spring seemed completely random. Furthermore, even though GDS had admissions related events for sports/theatre/arts - our child was not invited to any of these (even though they were clearly VERY interested in a particular activity that she kept ignoring). Despite all of this, DC still tried their best to understand whether GDS would be a good place for them - but in the end - they chose somewhere else because they couldn't fill in all the missing pieces. I think if this admissions person had paid just a small amount of attention, my DC would have had a much better feel for GDS. They are happy where they landed and it is most likely the better choice for my DC. So, no hard feelings but that admissions person totally dropped the ball and based on prior PP posts it sounds like our DC isn't the only one falling into this category with her. (this is the only reason we are weighing in on this topic).