Bottom Half at Sidwell - How is college placement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Plenty of demand for full pay families.

LOL, no chance you have any proof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only a small number of colleges can have a Sidwell or St. Albans or GDS graduate.

Every college can have a public school graduate.

Bottom half as an impediment? Just do the math.

I think most competitive colleges would rather have interesting high achievers from public schools than yet another prep school grad. The math has been done. Bottom half of class matters but coming from a "top" private school can actually hurt.

This - Harvard will take only one or 2 from each of these kids of schools. All the spots are brokered out, so being in the bottom half, even if you would have been a straight A at a public school, means you won't be able to get into an Ivy League. That being said, not getting into an Ivy League isn't the end of the world.

pfft. i went to a public high school in a small town in a red state, and we *normally* had two people get into harvard

Geographic diversity helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Half of the in-school session in publics is taking the PSAT for juniors, or the practice PSAT for freshmen and sophomores. Then lunch, then an hour or two of pep talks or whatever.

Another difference may be the counselor's familiarity with your kid. Also, their Rolodex and familiarity with schools besides UMD. I say this as a parent who went through the process last year. We got some fairly bad advice from the counselor about what the most selective schools want. For example, DC was told that 2 years of foreign language was fine and there was no reason to take a third year.

+1. Another big chunk of the limited parental college counseling sessions is how to apply for FA.

Ours was a well-reputed MoCo HS, but a lot of the counseling effort is directed at first generation college families. Those aiming for top private universities are sort of on their own to do the research about what top colleges are looking for. Which is probably as it should be.

We too heard from the counselor that two years of language was ok, and fortunately we knew better from DC’s own research. Counselor also pushed hard for UMD for both kids. Oldest went to an ivy that’s stronger in the intended major, and second is at UMD doing comp sciences, which UMD is great at. Counselor seemed to think nobody at the high school could afford full pay at a private university, and we had to talk for a bit before we could persuade her we were good for the tuition.