Does this sound like Maret?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.maret.org/news/article/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=4784&ModuleID=104

How so? Given the class size is really small, I see Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Princeton on there...

Sure, but you'll see a few admits to those schools from every high school in this area -- it's just the demographics. The Maret list is noteworthy for including so many 3rd-tier schools.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, but someone posted a St. Albans list a while ago and there were a handful of third tier schools on there as well. If you look at the schools people actually matriculated to, there are only a couple people going to the third tier schools, so perhaps a lot on the list were safety schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks, all. I will certainly suggest that they take a look at SAES. I'm somewhat surprised at the characterization of Maret, however. While I've always perceived it as quite selective due to its small size and the number of sibling applicants, my impressions has been that the school is not an academic powerhouse/pressure-cooker.

My impression is that it is academically rigorous but lighter on the pressure-cooker aspect than other DC privates -- a nice combination, actually.

+1 (Maret parent)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks, all. I will certainly suggest that they take a look at SAES. I'm somewhat surprised at the characterization of Maret, however. While I've always perceived it as quite selective due to its small size and the number of sibling applicants, my impressions has been that the school is not an academic powerhouse/pressure-cooker.

My impression is that it is academically rigorous but lighter on the pressure-cooker aspect than other DC privates -- a nice combination, actually.

+1 (Maret parent)

+2 (another Maret parent)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.maret.org/news/article/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=4784&ModuleID=104

How so? Given the class size is really small, I see Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Princeton on there...

This is a list of "acceptances" not matriculation. One or two top students can account for every elite school listed. The lower tier schools are more revealing.

[Anonymous]

Serious drug culture at that school.

[Anonymous]

My daughter has not seen any drugs. She spends way to much time doing homework to get involved in drugs.

[Anonymous]

Too much time. Too early on a Sunday morning!

[Anonymous]

Matriculation is denoted by a star...so it was not the same one kid

[Anonymous]

Maret is a good school. Much lower percentage of National Merit Semifinalists (an imperfect metric but one of the only ones to exist) than Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools. Maybe because they let in a higher % of the ultimate graduating class at the lower grades and don't have as many 9th grade admits with very strong test scores? Not sure. But, again, a very nice place with good teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maret is a good school. Much lower percentage of National Merit Semifinalists (an imperfect metric but one of the only ones to exist) than Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools. Maybe because they let in a higher % of the ultimate graduating class at the lower grades and don't have as many 9th grade admits with very strong test scores? Not sure. But, again, a very nice place with good teaching.

National Merit Semifinalist is metric that measures the ability of students who are admitted to a school, not the impact of the school on those students. There is a strong correlation between entrance exam performance and PSAT performance. Even for students who attend a school a full four years, the PSAT is administered just after the halfway point if the school experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maret is a good school. Much lower percentage of National Merit Semifinalists (an imperfect metric but one of the only ones to exist) than Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools. Maybe because they let in a higher % of the ultimate graduating class at the lower grades and don't have as many 9th grade admits with very strong test scores? Not sure. But, again, a very nice place with good teaching.

National Merit Semifinalist is metric that measures the ability of students who are admitted to a school, not the impact of the school on those students. There is a strong correlation between entrance exam performance and PSAT performance. Even for students who attend a school a full four years, the PSAT is administered just after the halfway point if the school experience.

There is absolutely NO correlation between PSAT performance and entrance exam performance which is based on more an "achievement test" than the PSAT which is a reasoning based exam preapring the student for the upcoming SAT exam. This is all part of the raging controversy over the value of the PSAT and SAT. No colleges ever see the PSAT and is only a guide for students to focus on in preparatin for the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maret is a good school. Much lower percentage of National Merit Semifinalists (an imperfect metric but one of the only ones to exist) than Sidwell/GDS/Cathedral schools. Maybe because they let in a higher % of the ultimate graduating class at the lower grades and don't have as many 9th grade admits with very strong test scores? Not sure. But, again, a very nice place with good teaching.

National Merit Semifinalist is metric that measures the ability of students who are admitted to a school, not the impact of the school on those students. There is a strong correlation between entrance exam performance and PSAT performance. Even for students who attend a school a full four years, the PSAT is administered just after the halfway point if the school experience.

There is absolutely NO correlation between PSAT performance and entrance exam performance which is based on more an "achievement test" than the PSAT which is a reasoning based exam preapring the student for the upcoming SAT exam. This is all part of the raging controversy over the value of the PSAT and SAT. No colleges ever see the PSAT and is only a guide for students to focus on in preparatin for the SAT.

This is so wrong it's not even worth trying to parse it out - suffice it say that juniors can take the SAT before the PSAT.

[Anonymous]

If your child takes the SSAT for high school, they provide an estimate of how the child would be expected to perform on the SAT. So it's a bit hard to argue no correlation. The ISEE is a different type of test, so that may be different.

I am not a Maret parent, but I would also note it is a much smaller school than GDS, Sidwell, and some others. And I believe Maret does still have a broader range of students. So if you are counting NMSF's on a per student basis, I think you have to first adjust for class size overall, and then again for class objective -- meaning that there are plenty of students there who no one expects to be NMSFs. If you do that, I suspect the differences shrink quite a bit. Of course, I think that is also the case for some other schools like Maret. And admittedly, that is arguably also true to a lesser extent for GDS, Sidwell, etc., but no one likes to talk about that.

[Anonymous]

Below is the list distilled down to matriculation (the colleges with a star)


Barnard College*
Boston College*
Boston University*
Bowdoin College*
?Brown University*
Case Western Reserve University*
Colby College*
Colorado College*
Cornell College*
?Cornell University*?
Emory University*
Eugene Lang College*
Franklin & Marshall College* (6)?
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering*
George Washington University*
Georgetown University*
?Hamilton College*
Harvard University*
Haverford College*
Hobart and William Smith Colleges*
Kenyon College*
?McGill University*
Muhlenberg College*
New York University*
Northwestern University*
?Oberlin College*
?Occidental College*
Pomona College*
?Pratt Institute*
Princeton University*
Samford University*
Sarah Lawrence College*
Skidmore College*
Stanford University*
Swarthmore College*
Syracuse University*
?Tulane University*
University of Maryland - College Park*
University of Pittsburgh*
University of Toronto*
Virginia Polytechnic Institute*
Washington University in St. Louis*
Wesleyan University?*
Williams College*
Wittenberg University*
Wofford College*
?Yale University*

Since there are people attending Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, no, it was not just one student who got those spots. It seems to me that mostly people attend top universities and liberal arts schools. There are only a handful of second tier schools in this list, and it doesn't look all that different from lists people have been discussing of NCS/STA. A lot of the acceptances seem to be safety schools.