Early Decision Results at DS or DD school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of the information that people are looking for is available directly from Yale. The majority of students they admit are non-URM, non-athletic recruits who are not legacies. Something like 65-70% are not hooked. That is a fact. People just don't want to hear the message that they were denied on their own merits or due to a highly idiosyncratic process. Further, any attempt to project reasons or advantages onto a sample as small as 10 students is spurious. In other words, the is no information of any value derived from speculating about this group, especially without any knowledge of academic qualifications of the students.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the information that people are looking for is available directly from Yale. The majority of students they admit are non-URM, non-athletic recruits who are not legacies. Something like 65-70% are not hooked. That is a fact. People just don't want to hear the message that they were denied on their own merits or due to a highly idiosyncratic process. Further, any attempt to project reasons or advantages onto a sample as small as 10 students is spurious. In other words, the is no information of any value derived from speculating about this group, especially without any knowledge of academic qualifications of the students.

No one is speculating about this group of students, beyond the initial factual observation that 10 admits from one class this size seems unusual. Parents have a legitimate interest in understanding this - parents at SFS, potential applicants, and parents of children in other schools. If 10 kids won an Intel price in one class that would be a fair question. If 10 kids dropped out senior year that would be a fair question. A further reasonable question was raised regarding the role of privates in locating qualified URM students in general. Your post is the only attack in this sequence.

What "attack" are you talking about? Attack against your narrative?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of the information that people are looking for is available directly from Yale. The majority of students they admit are non-URM, non-athletic recruits who are not legacies. Something like 65-70% are not hooked. That is a fact. People just don't want to hear the message that they were denied on their own merits or due to a highly idiosyncratic process. Further, any attempt to project reasons or advantages onto a sample as small as 10 students is spurious. In other words, the is no information of any value derived from speculating about this group, especially without any knowledge of academic qualifications of the students.

No one is speculating about this group of students, beyond the initial factual observation that 10 admits from one class this size seems unusual. Parents have a legitimate interest in understanding this - parents at SFS, potential applicants, and parents of children in other schools. If 10 kids won an Intel price in one class that would be a fair question. If 10 kids dropped out senior year that would be a fair question. A further reasonable question was raised regarding the role of privates in locating qualified URM students in general. Your post is the only attack in this sequence.

Speculating is EXACTLY what folks are doing in this thread. Should we believe you or our own eyes?

[Anonymous]

1) To clarify, no one is speculating that any of the accepted students are not qualified. That is made explicit in several posts. I would call it curiosity to understand how 10 students from one class were accepted, but if you want to call that speculation that's fine. But as noted above, these are reasonable questions for many other families. As some prior posters noted, there are far more qualified slots than candidates not just from this one school, but throughout the country and the globe. Hence, a fascination with 10 admits from one school.


2) "People just don't want to hear the message that they were denied on their own merits or due to a highly idiosyncratic process" --that is more of an attack than anything previously posted in this thread. It is also quite presumptuous. It may very well be that some of the people posing the questions are themselves alum or have children attending the same universities being discussed.

[Anonymous]

If there's no speculation that any of the admitted students are not fully qualified, then why does it matter how many are minorities, athletes, legacies, etc? Why isn't it enough to say they're all impressive students who merited admission? Why the effort to classify them into such categories?

[Anonymous]

The information is relevant to this thread because if it is not explored the implication is that SFS -- as an institution -- has done something beyond its peer schools to land 10 acceptances. If that is true, it is relevant to know what it has done to achieve this -- better academics, better athletic coaching, better recruiting of stronger students of particular backgrounds, or all of the above. An alternative hypothesis is that SFS has done nothing beyond its peer schools and this was a fluke. There may be other hypotheses. An assumption in this thread is that the schools are relevant to the college exmissions. If that is not true, then the thread has no meaning. If that is true -- but the cause of the successes is not explored -- the thread has no meaning beyond a list of statistics. Again, H/Y/P/S are generally quite direct that they have too many qualified applicants for slots, so other factors beyond basic qualifications are necessarily part of the admissions process. If people don't want these things explored on DCUM, then there is no reason to post the numbers of admissions to given schools from certain schools on DCUM other than misguided,blind exuberance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: The information is relevant to this thread because if it is not explored the implication is that SFS -- as an institution -- has done something beyond its peer schools to land 10 acceptances. If that is true, it is relevant to know what it has done to achieve this -- better academics, better athletic coaching, better recruiting of stronger students of particular backgrounds, or all of the above. An alternative hypothesis is that SFS has done nothing beyond its peer schools and this was a fluke. There may be other hypotheses. An assumption in this thread is that the schools are relevant to the college exmissions. If that is not true, then the thread has no meaning. If that is true -- but the cause of the successes is not explored -- the thread has no meaning beyond a list of statistics. Again, H/Y/P/S are generally quite direct that they have too many qualified applicants for slots, so other factors beyond basic qualifications are necessarily part of the admissions process. If people don't want these things explored on DCUM, then there is no reason to post the numbers of admissions to given schools from certain schools on DCUM other than misguided,blind exuberance.

So in a nutshell, you're saying people don't focus on characteristics like race, legacy, athlete,etc to discount the students' successes, but rather to discount the school. The students are just collateral damage.

[Anonymous]

1) Either the entire thread is a self-serving invitation for DCUM'rs to advertise their schools without basis, or it is a meaningful invitation to tout the strengths of their schools which necessarily invites inquiry into the basis.

2) If the thread is to tout how happy parents are about their child's admission to college, then there is no reason to state what high school was attended. I believe those threads exist in some other forums from time to time.

3) By focussing on the school rather than the students' accomplishments (as is done, for example, on College Confidential), the issue is what has the school done, if anything, to further its emissions, and it is no secret that many DC area privates handicap their emissions by screening their admissions in the first place in various ways. There is no collateral damage contrary to the above poster's unfortunate suggestion otherwise which continues to undermine students.

[Anonymous]

Well, judging from OP's opening question ...

Where are students getting Early Decision (or EA) admissions in your independent school? How are admissions to the Ivy League, Stanford, Amherst, etc.? Is the class of 2015 shaping up so far to be better, on par, or worse than last year's results?

... I think this thread was meant to solicit info about college destinations of EA/ED students from various local schools and to get a handle on numbers. I don't see much invitation to follow either path you suggest (eg, discussion of school strengths or simple expression of happiness).

I think the only reason people cite to student characteristics like race, legacy, athlete, etc is because some don't want to count those students as "true" admits when talking about the college admission records of high schools like Sidwell or NCS.

I agree with you a discussion about the relative underlying strengths of different schools might be useful. Perhaps you should start that discussion in a new thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: The information is relevant to this thread because if it is not explored the implication is that SFS -- as an institution -- has done something beyond its peer schools to land 10 acceptances. If that is true, it is relevant to know what it has done to achieve this -- better academics, better athletic coaching, better recruiting of stronger students of particular backgrounds, or all of the above. An alternative hypothesis is that SFS has done nothing beyond its peer schools and this was a fluke. There may be other hypotheses. An assumption in this thread is that the schools are relevant to the college exmissions. If that is not true, then the thread has no meaning. If that is true -- but the cause of the successes is not explored -- the thread has no meaning beyond a list of statistics. Again, H/Y/P/S are generally quite direct that they have too many qualified applicants for slots, so other factors beyond basic qualifications are necessarily part of the admissions process. If people don't want these things explored on DCUM, then there is no reason to post the numbers of admissions to given schools from certain schools on DCUM other than misguided,blind exuberance.

But, to me, the issue is that we have no real knowledge about whether these numbers are accurate or not. Assuming they are accurate, none of the other parents for other highly discussed schools are discussing their school results, so what are we comparing? And since Sidwell and a lot of these other schools never publicly declare where their kids go to school, we will never know.

[Anonymous]

I understand 7:59, but as 8:58 notes for one reason and I have noted for others, it just can't work that way. I suspect OP was just trying to start a light positive thread, but as soon as you start identifying specific schools' numbers, it is inevitable that people will want to understand the meaning of those numbers. I have no pony in this race at this point. so I will leave to others if they want to start the thread 7:59 suggests. The problem is that those usually break down into praise or complaints about the college counseling offices, and if anyone wanted to do a meaningful comparison of what sort of jobs the schools do in preparing kids for competitive schools that is only the tip of the iceberg of a much richer discussion. I'd love to see it, but doubt it can be played out on this forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe 3 of the Yale admits were legacy, 4 were legacy, leaving 3 with neither connection

This is something that I always wonder about in admissions. Did any of the students have parents of some exceptional or notable professional stature, that could be seen to benefit a university's community? Perhaps a very accomplished government official, or a respected academic, or a well-known media figure?

Yup

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Previous posters stated 10 SFS students were accepted early at Yale. How many were recruited for sorts teams or other specific talents? Ten students seems like an unusually high number these days coming from any day school unless something else is at play (14 would be about one percent of the freshman class). Thanks.

None were athletic recruits. My child was one of the accepted, so I know from my child all the kids accepted. This senior class had 23 or 24 kids accepted at Ivies for just the early round, plus a few at Stanford, Chicago, Duke and other top schools. But I think this class is unusual. Certainly the parents all were shocked at the acceptance numbers from Yale and Penn. Wouldn't expect any regular decisions to those schools though. That's a lot for one school, and there are so many good schools just in this area. FWIW, no Penn accepted students were athletic recruits either.

20% of the class accepted at Ivies for Early Decision is good, but not unheard of for this area (there are several other schools that not infrequently will hit the 20% mark for Ivy ED). The fact that 10 students are going to Yale is pretty amazing, though. Congrats to the kids, Sidwell has a long and excellent history at Yale and it's obviously continuing.

I think that GDS and STA regularly exceed this percentage.

[Anonymous]

I'm a little curious why Maret is never mentioned on this thread. Why is it mentioned as one of the "elite" schools if the college admissions don't match up with its peers schools? Or do they and they just don't mention it much?

[Anonymous]

No argument here, but 20% of a class accepted at one of 8 ivies is very different than 10 students accepted to one of H/Y/P/S.