I'm not so sure the "top 3" are actually the top 3....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As far as I am concerned its a totally "nouveau /wanna-be" school


Totally. Founded in 1883. Older than St. Albans, NCS, and Maret. Tres noveau.


Has nothing to do with when it was established. Has to do with history and attitude and choices and school culture, etc... if you don't get it, you just don't get it.

What, exactly, do you think it wants to be? Episcopalian? All-girls? All-boys? A Jewish day school? Wait, no, a boarding school with a horse paddock!

I do get what you're saying. You just happen to be incorrect. Sidwell doesn't wanna be anything, it's the other way around.

[Anonymous]

Different poster here. I don't know about the "nouveau" thing either. Maybe that poster really meant something different, like it's an "in" school ever since the Clintons chose it? Nothing wrong with that, although it shouldn't blind you to comparing values across lesser-known schools either.

I just didn't get a good "Quaker" vibe from it, what with walking barefoot through the dollar bills during the tour. As my husband said to me afterwards, it's easy to be "green" when you have limitless money, but the challenge is to buy the solar plates when money is actually an object. And couldn't some of the money that's going to sports fields and gyms and exchanges in China go to, I don't know, a sister school in Haiti. The money just seemed very in-your-face. On the values issue (only) we are considering Sandy Spring Friends instead, but we'll probably decide we can't handle the commute to Olney.

[Anonymous]

I thought the "wanna be" comment was directed at the people who opted to go there ... people with new money who wanted to use the name recognition of the school as part of their social climber efforts. The school itself is obviously not nouveau or wanna be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree that talk of the "Big 3" is misleading. It is tough to even identify the top three. We chose to send our children to Sidwell (though the admissions process was awful at that time!) because of the rich upper school curriculum, the Quaker philosophy, and frankly, the resources. Established schools like Sidwell can offer a little more in terms of resources for the same tuition because they have endowments, etc....

We are just thrilled with the education our children are getting at Sidwell for middle and upper school. Lower school was also very nice, but I sometimes wish I had saved the money and sent to public. My children do not have any special needs, so they would have done very well in public school and could have moved to Sidwell later.

Don't fret if your children are not accepted to a top choice for PK or K. There are plenty more years to apply.

What special needs would Sidwell address?

[Anonymous]

A story about Sidwell that has influenced me forever, even though my kids are still pre-school age:

Last year, a good friend of mine for whom I sometimes do office work sponsored/ hired/ hosted a Sidwell senior on his internship, or whatever they call that program. (Apparently, seniors work for a time at community businesses.) This 17 year old had been at Sidwell for most of his school career.

We were all stunned, quite frankly, at how dumb this kid appeared to be. He was very cute and very charming and had learned well how to name-drop his daddy's law firm whenever it was necessary. I once asked him to organize some papers for me and he responded that he was "on the phone" and would get to it "when he could." We all laughed at him behind his back as he feigned angst over his heavy class load and numerous college choices. My friend the biz owner ended up calling the school and complaining; he was often late/ left early and treated the whole experience like it was completely beneath him.

[Anonymous]

I hear this from other sources as well, including my DD's friend who recently entered the place and feels like a genius. There are probably a number of explanations. For one, it's pretty clear that some kids are chosen because of connections or ability to donate to the capital fund. Or, you hear that private school kids are more used to having things spoon-fed to them. But probably the most obvious explanation is that schools just aren't very good at identifying the potential in a 3-year-old, and their mistakes linger on. This last would be true at any school, not just Sidwell.

[Anonymous]

I am quite amused reading all these posts. I could bet a great deal of $$ that if any of your kids are accepted at Sidwell or any of the other "top 3/4" you'd send them there like a shot. No one is deceived!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A story about Sidwell that has influenced me forever.

What a portentous set-up for a pedestrian punchline: the slack, gormless intern.

Make your judgments as you see fit, especially those that are so stunning as to "influence [you] forever", but, really this person sounds like 80 percent or more of the interns we have where I work, and these are college kids, and, given, the firm, pretty "well connected" ones. Ditto for half of the employees under the age of 25 or so. I think all that screen time must've had some effect on the younger generation... they're not exactly "roll up your sleeves" types.

But maybe people have always thought that kind of thing.

[Anonymous]

My child started at Sidwell in 7th grade and the caliber of the incoming students was excellent. For middle school and above, the applicants have to take the SSAT -- not a fuzzy test like the WISC -- and they have actual grades. Not all the kids at Sidwell are academic superstars to be sure, but there is a core group of really smart kids. My child is bright and motivated, so it is a good fit. I'm not sure I would have picked Sidwell for a less-motivated child or one with special needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am quite amused reading all these posts. I could bet a great deal of $$ that if any of your kids are accepted at Sidwell or any of the other "top 3/4" you'd send them there like a shot. No one is deceived!

That's part of the problem! We're all kicking ourselves that we're buying into this @#$ system.

DC was in fact accepted at a "top 3/4", by the way.

[Anonymous]

It's not a secret that the kids who enter Sidwell at 7th and 9th are, as a group, smarter and more ambitious than the lifers. It's been that way for decades, literally.

I have no idea, but I surmise this might also be true at Maret/GDS/NCS (?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A story about Sidwell that has influenced me forever, even though my kids are still pre-school age:

Last year, a good friend of mine for whom I sometimes do office work sponsored/ hired/ hosted a Sidwell senior on his internship, or whatever they call that program. (Apparently, seniors work for a time at community businesses.) This 17 year old had been at Sidwell for most of his school career.

We were all stunned, quite frankly, at how dumb this kid appeared to be. He was very cute and very charming and had learned well how to name-drop his daddy's law firm whenever it was necessary. I once asked him to organize some papers for me and he responded that he was "on the phone" and would get to it "when he could." We all laughed at him behind his back as he feigned angst over his heavy class load and numerous college choices. My friend the biz owner ended up calling the school and complaining; he was often late/ left early and treated the whole experience like it was completely beneath him.

Oh please, this is hardly a "Sidwell" characteristic. I would say about 3/4 of the interns in our firm meet this description (sans the name-dropping and adding in lots of chat on IM). And these are college-aged young adults, not adolescents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A story about Sidwell that has influenced me forever, even though my kids are still pre-school age:

Last year, a good friend of mine for whom I sometimes do office work sponsored/ hired/ hosted a Sidwell senior on his internship, or whatever they call that program. (Apparently, seniors work for a time at community businesses.) This 17 year old had been at Sidwell for most of his school career.

We were all stunned, quite frankly, at how dumb this kid appeared to be. He was very cute and very charming and had learned well how to name-drop his daddy's law firm whenever it was necessary. I once asked him to organize some papers for me and he responded that he was "on the phone" and would get to it "when he could." We all laughed at him behind his back as he feigned angst over his heavy class load and numerous college choices. My friend the biz owner ended up calling the school and complaining; he was often late/ left early and treated the whole experience like it was completely beneath him.

Oh please, this is hardly a "Sidwell" characteristic. I would say about 3/4 of the interns in our firm meet this description (sans the name-dropping and adding in lots of chat on IM). And these are college-aged young adults, not adolescents.

17:10 again - and, fwiw, I forgot to mention that I'm not invested in Sidwell one way or the other. My dc too is still preschool aged. It's just ridiculous to draw such a generalization from one person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child started at Sidwell in 7th grade and the caliber of the incoming students was excellent. For middle school and above, the applicants have to take the SSAT -- not a fuzzy test like the WISC -- and they have actual grades. Not all the kids at Sidwell are academic superstars to be sure, but there is a core group of really smart kids. My child is bright and motivated, so it is a good fit. I'm not sure I would have picked Sidwell for a less-motivated child or one with special needs.

I am a longtime high school teacher. I taught for many years at a school that was the equivalent of Sidwell/GDS in a different city. It was a PreK-12 school. Much of what posters here are noting is accurate: specifically, at any school that has entry years for youngsters as well as middle and high-schoolers, the academic slouches typically turn out to be those who were admitted young: it is very difficult to tell the academic potential of a four- or five-year-old. Like PPs have said, when kids applied as middle and high-schoolers, it was clear who the intellectual standouts were. In addition, a lot of the academic slouches came when younger siblings were admitted under a strong sibling policy. (Obviously I'm not saying that all siblings or kids admitted young were slouches, but many were.)

[Anonymous]

Yup, I've always heard that the kids who come in at 6th and 7th do much better academically than the "lifers."