GDS HS question

[Anonymous]

How competitive is the culture in the GDS high school? How do the kids who are not at the top of the class do? My kid is a hard worker but not particularly competitive and we are trying to decide if it would be a good fit.

[Anonymous]

Competitive school.

"Big 3" for a reason.

[Anonymous]

Really depends on the kid and how externally-internally motivated the kid is. The classes are very challenging and depending on the choice of classes each year, the workload can be quite daunting, depending on the efficiency and extracurricular schedules of the individual student. But the teaching overall is fantastic, the sense of community very strong, and most of the kids competing more with themselves and their own or their families expectations rather than their classmates in a direct way. Lots of studying is done in groups, with the encouragement of the faculty and helped by the school's physical set up (the forum, open campus so kids sit in coffee shops or outside to study), and quite a few assignments are cooperative. The vast majority of these kids are going to get into great colleges and be really well-prepared, and the school does all they practically can to try and decrease the pressure at school in terms of discussing college applications all the time in the fall of senior year, my DD literally did not know where many of her even closest friends had applied. They see from the class above them that 6-7 kids go to each of 10 very competitive colleges, so a friend getting into Yale doesn't mean they won't. There is no class rank. And kids really seem to value and respect all sorts of different interests and types of achievement, whether classroom academic achievements, sports, theater, really weird hobbies, just asking weird articulate questions of visiting speakers.
For high school, if the kid is admitted, at that point via testing and prior academic record the school can be pretty certain the kid can keep up and succeed with the academic side of things. Compared to direct family/extended family experience with the other schools of a similar academic level (Sidwell, St Albans, Maret) really no different in terms of competition.

[Anonymous]

we have a child in the gds HS. it is fantastic and the atmo is competitive in the sense that there are a lot of bright, motivated kids, but it's not cutthroat. I cannot say the same for many of the parents, who are in the main neither as bright, nor as well mannered as their kids. But, it's a small price to pay for a world-class education.

[Anonymous]

I thought GDS was not a big three?

[Anonymous]

Academically it certainly is.

[Anonymous]

22:25 is spot on re atmosphere.

(College stats seem off, though -- there aren't 60-70 kids going to the same ten highly competitive schools. More diversity than that. But ITA with the more general claim that most kids, regardless of where they are in the class, end up at good colleges and are well-prepared to succeed.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Academically it certainly is.

Funny how a perso would describe a school as being down to earth and just focused on learning and "sharing ideas" with one breath , saying "not cut throat" , but then in very next breath insist on " oh yes we are a Big 3!" in the next breath. LOL

[Anonymous]

Who knows, but if you measure "big 3 or 5" or whatever simply by the average percentage of National Merit Semifinalists or Presidential Scholars over a 3-5 year period, the big 4 are Sidwell, GDS, NCS and STA in the region, with Maret only a bit lower. These are all fantastic high schools academically that will be a different fit in terms of style, politics/values and extracurriculars, but really academically they are all equivalent and have similar college matriculation profiles, having had kids and step kids at three of these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Who knows, but if you measure "big 3 or 5" or whatever simply by the average percentage of National Merit Semifinalists or Presidential Scholars over a 3-5 year period, the big 4 are Sidwell, GDS, NCS and STA in the region, with Maret only a bit lower. These are all fantastic high schools academically that will be a different fit in terms of style, politics/values and extracurriculars, but really academically they are all equivalent and have similar college matriculation profiles, having had kids and step kids at three of these schools.

What a contradiction that so soon after posting that GDS is a good school for those who are" intrinsically, not primarily extrinsically motivated, you rush to boost the school's rep by listing their matric stats at "top univ" and number of National Merit Scholars.

Correction , the privates ARE all the same , including the culture. The rest is just the clothes, hardly a " defining" characteristic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who knows, but if you measure "big 3 or 5" or whatever simply by the average percentage of National Merit Semifinalists or Presidential Scholars over a 3-5 year period, the big 4 are Sidwell, GDS, NCS and STA in the region, with Maret only a bit lower. These are all fantastic high schools academically that will be a different fit in terms of style, politics/values and extracurriculars, but really academically they are all equivalent and have similar college matriculation profiles, having had kids and step kids at three of these schools.

What a contradiction that so soon after posting that GDS is a good school for those who are" intrinsically, not primarily extrinsically motivated, you rush to boost the school's rep by listing their matric stats at "top univ" and number of National Merit Scholars.

Correction , the privates ARE all the same , including the culture. The rest is just the clothes, hardly a " defining" characteristic

It really isn't all just the clothes. Religious or secular; chapel or meeting for worship or no formal worship; single sex or co-Ed; required athletics or no; and yes, dress code -- all of that can add up to very different cultures even within the DC/upper middle class environment. I promise you that the cultural differences between a GDS and, say, a St. Albans, are very real.

[Anonymous]

# of NMSFs just gives you a sense of where the people with smart kids who test well chose to send those kids to school. Doesn't say much about how they're educated once they're there. My DC's at GDS. Plan B certainly would not have been Sidwell or NCS. I'm sure there are people with DCs at Sidwell and NCS who feel the same way about GDS. And that there are people who think you send your DC to the most prestigious school (however defined) that accepts him or her.

Some people have strong preferences about education; others just don't. The "big 3" label is a creation/fixation of the latter group.

[Anonymous]

I am a GDS HS parent. I like the school a lot, but I think some of the above is overstated about how well the kids do in college admissions. Some go to the very top schools. A lot go to competitive liberal arts schools. I am always surprised, though, how many go to schools that by reputation are not particularly notable. This is not to say a kid cannot get a great education at these places. But if you're concerned with "elite" schools, the record is not as strong as some of the above commentary implies.

Consistent with the above, the kids did not seem very competitive about college admissions, and indeed my son who graduated still doesn't know where a lot of the kids went beyond his close friends (vs. my niece, who knew where everyone in her large public HS went). Not much of an issue. The school tries to play down the competition over college applications and entry, and recommends kids not to talk with each other about, but it actually seems a little odd to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a GDS HS parent. I like the school a lot, but I think some of the above is overstated about how well the kids do in college admissions. Some go to the very top schools. A lot go to competitive liberal arts schools. I am always surprised, though, how many go to schools that by reputation are not particularly notable. This is not to say a kid cannot get a great education at these places. But if you're concerned with "elite" schools, the record is not as strong as some of the above commentary implies.

Consistent with the above, the kids did not seem very competitive about college admissions, and indeed my son who graduated still doesn't know where a lot of the kids went beyond his close friends (vs. my niece, who knew where everyone in her large public HS went). Not much of an issue. The school tries to play down the competition over college applications and entry, and recommends kids not to talk with each other about, but it actually seems a little odd to me.

I'm a Sidwell parent, but my kids (1 in HS and 2 in college) have a lot of friends who attend/ed GDS. They're great kids and I have a really good impression of the school. Based on what my kids' friends have said, last year's class at GDS rocked college admissions. By comparison, Sidwell didn't do as well, though it had a pretty good year. BTW, at Sidwell the counselors also urge the kids not to talk with one another about their applications. I think they believe this will minimize stress, but it actually has the opposite effect. By telling the kids to keep everything super-secret, the counselors create the impression that this is the biggest deal in the world and that your friends will become frenemies overnight if they find out you're applying to the same school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a GDS HS parent. I like the school a lot, but I think some of the above is overstated about how well the kids do in college admissions. Some go to the very top schools. A lot go to competitive liberal arts schools. I am always surprised, though, how many go to schools that by reputation are not particularly notable. This is not to say a kid cannot get a great education at these places. But if you're concerned with "elite" schools, the record is not as strong as some of the above commentary implies.

Consistent with the above, the kids did not seem very competitive about college admissions, and indeed my son who graduated still doesn't know where a lot of the kids went beyond his close friends (vs. my niece, who knew where everyone in her large public HS went). Not much of an issue. The school tries to play down the competition over college applications and entry, and recommends kids not to talk with each other about, but it actually seems a little odd to me.

I'm a Sidwell parent, but my kids (1 in HS and 2 in college) have a lot of friends who attend/ed GDS. They're great kids and I have a really good impression of the school. Based on what my kids' friends have said, last year's class at GDS rocked college admissions. By comparison, Sidwell didn't do as well, though it had a pretty good year. BTW, at Sidwell the counselors also urge the kids not to talk with one another about their applications. I think they believe this will minimize stress, but it actually has the opposite effect. By telling the kids to keep everything super-secret, the counselors create the impression that this is the biggest deal in the world and that your friends will become frenemies overnight if they find out you're applying to the same school.

Interesting observation. Have seen two approaches at the Cathedral schools. The STA boys tend to be pretty open about where they apply. They are competitive and definitely want to get into good schools, but they share successes and disappointments quite openly. At NCS, the students are very reserved to the point of secretive about the college process (not sure whether or not the school takes a position on whether or not they should discuss it -- I also think girls and boys just handle this kind of thing differently, regardless of what any school tells them). Although both groups seem stressed out -- as do college-bound juniors all over -- the process of keeping things close seems to ratchet up the sense of stress/competition for the girls.