Which of the "top 3" or "top 5" private schools has the best track record at the Ivies?
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Anonymous
| My colleague told me that Georgetown Day School consistently beats its rivals in Ivy League admissions. Is this correct? |
Anonymous
| It seems so - but if you exclude Penn, then I think STA leads the pack. Talking only about DC schools here. |
Anonymous
| Thank God I don't have friends who talk about crap like this. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
+2 |
Anonymous
+500 |
Anonymous
+501 |
Anonymous
Wayulllllll . . . I'll bite. Nope. They have 125 kids in a graduating class and percentage wise they don't beat STA or Sidwell. (STA had 25% go Ivy this year in an average year; GDS does not send 30 students to the Ivies.) If you look at the NMSF semifinalists, GDS has had some excellent years but generally finishes behind St. Albans and Sidwell when it comes to percentages as well. GDS has an excellent record of college admissions, better every year, but no need to overreach. |
Anonymous
We actually don't have much of a clue about Sidwell, which doesn't publish stats. I've heard very different things from different Sidwell families. Trolls will come on DCUM to say 1/3 of the class is going to ivies next year, but that's obviously BS. |
Anonymous
| Why is that obviously BS? If you stoop so low as to include Stanford, Duke and MIT types of colleges 1/3 isn't uncommon in top schools. |
Anonymous
| GDS has amazing students and a very high percentage of the parents have multiple (college, law, etc). Ivy degrees. It makes for a turbocharged applicant pool in most years. |
Anonymous
The childish writing style screamed "14-year-old in the cafeteria playing a prank." Whatever the truth is, that particular poster didn't possess any actual facts. |
Anonymous
I would not assume 1/3 of the class at Sidwell going to Ivies/MIT/Stanford is necessarily BS. Last year St. Albans had over 30% of their class (23 out of 76) going Ivy/Stanford, from a class with 11 National Merit Semifinalists (http://www.stalbansschool.org/page.aspx?pid=2307) This year's NMSF totals for Sidwell were very good, with 17 Semifinalists (almost double the total for GDS, for example -- see link http://georgetown.patch.com/articles/area-schools-students-national-merit-semifinalists). If you throw in some legacies, and some other kids with hooks, 30+ kids at Ivies is actually believable. |
Anonymous
GDS had 9 National Merit Semifinalists in this current senior class -- that's about 7% of this senior class -- compared to Sidwell (approximately 14%), NCS (approximately 10%), St. Albans (approximately 10%). http://georgetown.patch.com/articles/area-schools-students-national-merit-semifinalists They're in the mix from year to year but not head or shoulders above these peer schools in DC, nor could you make the argument that somehow the GDS parent body is so much more connected that they will pad out their admissions with more Ivy legacies than Sidwell/STA/NCS, or that GDS is so much more athletic that they will pad out their Ivy admissions with more athletic recruits. On diversity, Sidwell equally diverse by percentage and more diverse socioeconomically if measured by extent of financial aid, and STA is more diverse socio-economically when measured by financial aid, so you can't assume GDS is lapping the field with admissions of URMs either. The original post was probably a troll, but, to answer the question if sincerely posed? No, that is not correct. I would say it is fair to say that GDS college admissions are on par with its peer DC schools -- and that all of these numbers are small enough that there are big changes from year to year (for example, a year or two ago GDS had 15 National Merit Semifinalists), so that any one of the top academic independent schools in DC could have a better year in this extremely narrow metric of Ivy admissions in any given year. |
Anonymous
The 25% St. Albans-to-Ivies figure is correct from what I am told. You also must not have read a lot of writing from 14-year-olds if you think that post was written by a teenager. |