Is it true the Big 3 kids are getting hammered this year- and by that I mean bad admissions results?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, parent of a "Big 3" here. I don't really believe you aren't a Maret parent, because only Maret parents count it as "big 3" (NCS St. Albans, Sidwell). It's a great school, but for a different kind of student and slightly different outcomes for college matriculation. In any event, my anecdotal experience is that the kids all got into the exact schools they should have. They all applied to more and, as usual, many who had not place to, reached for Ivies and top 10, kidding themselves that they were sure to get in. Instead, many are going to UVA, W&M, Michigan, which are great outcomes for those kids. The top kids are all going to Top 10, next tier down going to top 25. Bottom 50% going to Tulane, Elon, mid-tier LACS, SEC schools--again, all great options for kids who are well-prepared to do well wherever they go. My kid is one in the bottom half of the class. He is going to a top 25 because of a major connection, to be honest. Had that not worked out, he had great options. But I will say, he had no options after the EA round--deferred even from very safe safeties--most of which turned to acceptances in RD. As always, OP, the lesson learned is to be realistic. My kid's best friend got excellent grades in demanding classes, but just wasn't doing all the things that Ivy-bound students do--Regeneron, etc, and didn't realize just how long a long-shot Dartmouth and Princeton are, so he wound up disappointed, despite acceptances to great schools just one step down from those. The end results just weren't that different from other years.

Are Elon and Tulane that bad? Isn’t Tulane ranked about the same as W&M? Still top 50

Tulane has become a destination school at my kids private as well as in my close-in-suburbs neighborhood.

Elon is where Tulane was about 10 years ago and is rapidly moving up the ranks.

Just moved to a different list. Remains to be seen where it’ll go now that’s it’s in the big leagues. Everyone likes to think that this school or that is “rising rapidly and will soon...” but they usually just bounce around within five or ten spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, parent of a "Big 3" here. I don't really believe you aren't a Maret parent, because only Maret parents count it as "big 3" (NCS St. Albans, Sidwell). It's a great school, but for a different kind of student and slightly different outcomes for college matriculation. In any event, my anecdotal experience is that the kids all got into the exact schools they should have. They all applied to more and, as usual, many who had not place to, reached for Ivies and top 10, kidding themselves that they were sure to get in. Instead, many are going to UVA, W&M, Michigan, which are great outcomes for those kids. The top kids are all going to Top 10, next tier down going to top 25. Bottom 50% going to Tulane, Elon, mid-tier LACS, SEC schools--again, all great options for kids who are well-prepared to do well wherever they go. My kid is one in the bottom half of the class. He is going to a top 25 because of a major connection, to be honest. Had that not worked out, he had great options. But I will say, he had no options after the EA round--deferred even from very safe safeties--most of which turned to acceptances in RD. As always, OP, the lesson learned is to be realistic. My kid's best friend got excellent grades in demanding classes, but just wasn't doing all the things that Ivy-bound students do--Regeneron, etc, and didn't realize just how long a long-shot Dartmouth and Princeton are, so he wound up disappointed, despite acceptances to great schools just one step down from those. The end results just weren't that different from other years.

Are Elon and Tulane that bad? Isn’t Tulane ranked about the same as W&M? Still top 50

Tulane has become a destination school at my kids private as well as in my close-in-suburbs neighborhood.

Elon is where Tulane was about 10 years ago and is rapidly moving up the ranks.

Tulane is 41. Ranked right there in a cluster with with BC, GT, UCSD, UC Davis, W&M, Case Western, Wisconsin, UGA. It is a great school ranked in the same tier as schools people talk about on these boards all the time. My DC knows 6-7 kids heading to Tulane this year. It is extremely popular and not easy to get into. Just my 2 cents.

[Anonymous]

Popular with rich hard partying kids from this area with average grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Popular with rich hard partying kids from this area with average grades.

Meh. DD is going to Tulane on a full merit scholarship. She has a good friend who is a freshman this year and, although they are social, they aren’t partiers. Tulane seems to be doing a good job attracting more serious students as time goes on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Popular with rich hard partying kids from this area with average grades.

Meh. DD is going to Tulane on a full merit scholarship. She has a good friend who is a freshman this year and, although they are social, they aren’t partiers. Tulane seems to be doing a good job attracting more serious students as time goes on.

yeah, those they convince with massive aid. They aren't competing for those students without the aid packages though and there are far more students without them than with

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Popular with rich hard partying kids from this area with average grades.

The rich hard partying kids will also be the rich hard partying adults (i.e., likely your future boss).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, parent of a "Big 3" here. I don't really believe you aren't a Maret parent, because only Maret parents count it as "big 3" (NCS St. Albans, Sidwell). It's a great school, but for a different kind of student and slightly different outcomes for college matriculation. In any event, my anecdotal experience is that the kids all got into the exact schools they should have. They all applied to more and, as usual, many who had not place to, reached for Ivies and top 10, kidding themselves that they were sure to get in. Instead, many are going to UVA, W&M, Michigan, which are great outcomes for those kids. The top kids are all going to Top 10, next tier down going to top 25. Bottom 50% going to Tulane, Elon, mid-tier LACS, SEC schools--again, all great options for kids who are well-prepared to do well wherever they go. My kid is one in the bottom half of the class. He is going to a top 25 because of a major connection, to be honest. Had that not worked out, he had great options. But I will say, he had no options after the EA round--deferred even from very safe safeties--most of which turned to acceptances in RD. As always, OP, the lesson learned is to be realistic. My kid's best friend got excellent grades in demanding classes, but just wasn't doing all the things that Ivy-bound students do--Regeneron, etc, and didn't realize just how long a long-shot Dartmouth and Princeton are, so he wound up disappointed, despite acceptances to great schools just one step down from those. The end results just weren't that different from other years.

Are Elon and Tulane that bad? Isn’t Tulane ranked about the same as W&M? Still top 50

Tulane has become a destination school at my kids private as well as in my close-in-suburbs neighborhood.

Elon is where Tulane was about 10 years ago and is rapidly moving up the ranks.

Tulane is 41. Ranked right there in a cluster with with BC, GT, UCSD, UC Davis, W&M, Case Western, Wisconsin, UGA. It is a great school ranked in the same tier as schools people talk about on these boards all the time. My DC knows 6-7 kids heading to Tulane this year. It is extremely popular and not easy to get into. Just my 2 cents.

I have not been able to figure it out. Tulane's place on that US News rankings and its acceptance rate would make it appear to be quite competitive, but I am telling you, the kids in the bottom half of these private school classes go to Tulane. Not the very bottom--they go to High Point and Elon--but around 75th percent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid who is a sophomore at a Big 3 and by that let's say I mean St Albans/NCS, GDS, Sidwell or Maret. I have heard through my school grapevine that this year the kids at the elite privates are having terrible results-
especially the unhooked kids. I have heard that they are negatively affected by test-optional, the elimination of AP's and grade deflation.

Ok please tell me your experiences- Big 3 parents only please...I am not interested in hearing how well your W school kid did, or how stupid you think I am for paying private school tuition.

I would simply say to consider the self-interest of the people making these assessments. It can’t possibly be that this was an insanely competitive admissions year and their kids just didn’t make the cut; it has to be that less-worthy kids, whose parents didn’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for private school, somehow had an advantage. Come on.

A test optional public school candidate with a GPA that is higher than 4.0 (because of weighting and the fact that the took AP classes) looks really great compared to a big 3 GPA of 3.4 with no APs and a 33 ACT.

That is SO wrong. Hopefully PP has no stake in this but if they do, feel sorry for the kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, parent of a "Big 3" here. I don't really believe you aren't a Maret parent, because only Maret parents count it as "big 3" (NCS St. Albans, Sidwell). It's a great school, but for a different kind of student and slightly different outcomes for college matriculation. In any event, my anecdotal experience is that the kids all got into the exact schools they should have. They all applied to more and, as usual, many who had not place to, reached for Ivies and top 10, kidding themselves that they were sure to get in. Instead, many are going to UVA, W&M, Michigan, which are great outcomes for those kids. The top kids are all going to Top 10, next tier down going to top 25. Bottom 50% going to Tulane, Elon, mid-tier LACS, SEC schools--again, all great options for kids who are well-prepared to do well wherever they go. My kid is one in the bottom half of the class. He is going to a top 25 because of a major connection, to be honest. Had that not worked out, he had great options. But I will say, he had no options after the EA round--deferred even from very safe safeties--most of which turned to acceptances in RD. As always, OP, the lesson learned is to be realistic. My kid's best friend got excellent grades in demanding classes, but just wasn't doing all the things that Ivy-bound students do--Regeneron, etc, and didn't realize just how long a long-shot Dartmouth and Princeton are, so he wound up disappointed, despite acceptances to great schools just one step down from those. The end results just weren't that different from other years.

Are Elon and Tulane that bad? Isn’t Tulane ranked about the same as W&M? Still top 50

Tulane has become a destination school at my kids private as well as in my close-in-suburbs neighborhood.

Elon is where Tulane was about 10 years ago and is rapidly moving up the ranks.

Tulane is 41. Ranked right there in a cluster with with BC, GT, UCSD, UC Davis, W&M, Case Western, Wisconsin, UGA. It is a great school ranked in the same tier as schools people talk about on these boards all the time. My DC knows 6-7 kids heading to Tulane this year. It is extremely popular and not easy to get into. Just my 2 cents.

I have not been able to figure it out. Tulane's place on that US News rankings and its acceptance rate would make it appear to be quite competitive, but I am telling you, the kids in the bottom half of these private school classes go to Tulane. Not the very bottom--they go to High Point and Elon--but around 75th percent.

This year, Tulane is highest ranked school to accept my Big 3 DC. I would guess my kid falls around average in the class, not the bottom. But what do I know? Maybe DC is at the bottom. Lots of unexpected WL and rejections from schools in the 25-50 range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This year, Tulane is highest ranked school to accept my Big 3 DC. I would guess my kid falls around average in the class, not the bottom. But what do I know? Maybe DC is at the bottom. Lots of unexpected WL and rejections from schools in the 25-50 range. [/quote]

I don't understand the entitlement that schools with a less than 10% admission rate would be unexpected in terms of getting denied, deferred or waitlisted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Popular with rich hard partying kids from this area with average grades.

The rich hard partying kids will also be the rich hard partying adults (i.e., likely your future boss).

Nice. What a peach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W school parent and longtime Ivy interviewer here. I haven’t noticed a significant drop in admissions to the very top schools (mainly hypsm). For the big 3 parents, I’d imagine that the increasing access for applicabts from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds and weaker public is creating a lot of pressure for slots at roughly T30 but not T10 schools. So for the parents of kids who did ok and thought being a Sidwell grad was a kind of insurance policy, they are seeing kids slide further down. It’s also the case that as you get out of T10 you start looking more at admissions policies that downweight the soft parts of the application, where those big 3 kids tend to shine.

For those who think the public kids are all racking up the 4.5w by cheating, that’s offensive and totally untrue. As someone with a degree from an Honor Code university, I won’t tolerate those types of accusations. Trust goes both ways.

My DC has friends who opening admit to cheating! Obviously not everyone is doing it, but you can't be serious that you think it's not happening to a moderate extent.

Pp is naive. My very much the rule follower kid told me that cheating was pervasive during distance learning, and she goes to a private with a strictly enforced honor code.

I’m the OP in this sub thread. I’m not naive. Big 3 students cheat too. (Plenty of public news on this, Google is your friend.)

The upthread implication was that the public school kids were taking slots at top schools by cheating their way to a 4.5w. Saying that is a bad look, at a minimum, and might be worse.

Having an Honor Code also means no accusations without proof AND no or no excessive monitoring during testing. If your DDs “honor code” means you signed something acknowledging you would only turn in your own work and the school proceeded to treat all the kids like they had zero ethics, that’s not an Honor Code, it’s just a piece of paper acknowledging you already know the consequences for getting caught.

WTAH!

So, no biggie if a Big 3 student cheats because in your mind their cheating won't affect college admission, unlike the multitude of malicious, conniving public school kids who cheated all the way to a 4.5. And, in effect willfully depriving the mildly cheating Big 3 students their rightful college admissions. I've heard everything now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W school parent and longtime Ivy interviewer here. I haven’t noticed a significant drop in admissions to the very top schools (mainly hypsm). For the big 3 parents, I’d imagine that the increasing access for applicabts from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds and weaker public is creating a lot of pressure for slots at roughly T30 but not T10 schools. So for the parents of kids who did ok and thought being a Sidwell grad was a kind of insurance policy, they are seeing kids slide further down. It’s also the case that as you get out of T10 you start looking more at admissions policies that downweight the soft parts of the application, where those big 3 kids tend to shine.

For those who think the public kids are all racking up the 4.5w by cheating, that’s offensive and totally untrue. As someone with a degree from an Honor Code university, I won’t tolerate those types of accusations. Trust goes both ways.

My DC has friends who opening admit to cheating! Obviously not everyone is doing it, but you can't be serious that you think it's not happening to a moderate extent.

Pp is naive. My very much the rule follower kid told me that cheating was pervasive during distance learning, and she goes to a private with a strictly enforced honor code.

I’m the OP in this sub thread. I’m not naive. Big 3 students cheat too. (Plenty of public news on this, Google is your friend.)

The upthread implication was that the public school kids were taking slots at top schools by cheating their way to a 4.5w. Saying that is a bad look, at a minimum, and might be worse.

Having an Honor Code also means no accusations without proof AND no or no excessive monitoring during testing. If your DDs “honor code” means you signed something acknowledging you would only turn in your own work and the school proceeded to treat all the kids like they had zero ethics, that’s not an Honor Code, it’s just a piece of paper acknowledging you already know the consequences for getting caught.

WTAH!

So, no biggie if a Big 3 student cheats because in your mind their cheating won't affect college admission, unlike the multitude of malicious, conniving public school kids who cheated all the way to a 4.5. And, in effect willfully depriving the mildly cheating Big 3 students their rightful college admissions. I've heard everything now.

These are deeply privileged people who believe they have a right to convey their success to their children, whether the kids are smart/motivated/good students or not. When it doesn’t happen they attack the “regular” kids.

[Anonymous]

You call do know that distance learning has only been going on for a year so not really going to affect college admissions all that much, especially if you applied ED in the fall? I have heard of kids cheating, my kids swear they don't but who knows. I will say, they both applied ED in Oct and their GPAs were already in the neighborhood of 4.5W when they did so, not from this distance year but from all the previous years. Quit your whining private school people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W school parent and longtime Ivy interviewer here. I haven’t noticed a significant drop in admissions to the very top schools (mainly hypsm). For the big 3 parents, I’d imagine that the increasing access for applicabts from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds and weaker public is creating a lot of pressure for slots at roughly T30 but not T10 schools. So for the parents of kids who did ok and thought being a Sidwell grad was a kind of insurance policy, they are seeing kids slide further down. It’s also the case that as you get out of T10 you start looking more at admissions policies that downweight the soft parts of the application, where those big 3 kids tend to shine.

For those who think the public kids are all racking up the 4.5w by cheating, that’s offensive and totally untrue. As someone with a degree from an Honor Code university, I won’t tolerate those types of accusations. Trust goes both ways.

My DC has friends who opening admit to cheating! Obviously not everyone is doing it, but you can't be serious that you think it's not happening to a moderate extent.

Pp is naive. My very much the rule follower kid told me that cheating was pervasive during distance learning, and she goes to a private with a strictly enforced honor code.

I’m the OP in this sub thread. I’m not naive. Big 3 students cheat too. (Plenty of public news on this, Google is your friend.)

The upthread implication was that the public school kids were taking slots at top schools by cheating their way to a 4.5w. Saying that is a bad look, at a minimum, and might be worse.

Having an Honor Code also means no accusations without proof AND no or no excessive monitoring during testing. If your DDs “honor code” means you signed something acknowledging you would only turn in your own work and the school proceeded to treat all the kids like they had zero ethics, that’s not an Honor Code, it’s just a piece of paper acknowledging you already know the consequences for getting caught.

WTAH!

So, no biggie if a Big 3 student cheats because in your mind their cheating won't affect college admission, unlike the multitude of malicious, conniving public school kids who cheated all the way to a 4.5. And, in effect willfully depriving the mildly cheating Big 3 students their rightful college admissions. I've heard everything now.

These are deeply privileged people who believe they have a right to convey their success to their children, whether the kids are smart/motivated/good students or not. When it doesn’t happen they attack the “regular” kids.

As the PP of the bolded quote, you’ve read it exactly the opposite as intended. The previous poster (who is a troll) was saying literally what you are saying critically. I was trying to avoid saying what you’re saying in so many words because it rapidly becomes an accusation of racism, but I agree with you.