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Sidwell "pop quiz"
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Anonymous
| Does anyone know what kinds of questions they ask for this? |
Anonymous
|
Why are you interested in Sidwell?
What quality has helped you most as a parent? Tell us something about your child that may not be revealed in the playdate. What is your net worth? (Just kidding.) But someone on another thread said the pop quiz is no longer being administered. |
Anonymous
|
What other schools are you looking at?
Note - if your answer includes "Beauvoir," look for the interviewer to quickly scribble something down. |
Anonymous
| So it's not really a pop quiz. It's more like an open book exam? |
Anonymous
| People on this board used to characterize it as a pop quiz because up until last year they gave this essay out during the play visit "so parents would have something to do". Since then the new AD has changed the policy and it is now available online. |
Anonymous
Wow. I would have hated the old way. But the new way just results in some cookie-cutter, hyper-polished, and perhaps even ghost written workproduct. |
Anonymous
I think that is the "beauty" of the parent statement - it all in yours hands. You can obsess about it for weeks and treat it like a phd thesis or you can just write what come to mind about your child. Since this was once used a filler during the playdate, I doubt that Sidwell take it that seriously. In response to #4, I wrote one word, #7 was hard since it is so open ended, but the entire form took less than 1 hour with an extra 30 minutes for proofing - my spelling sucks! |
Anonymous
| Some parents complained. They felt as if they were ambushed and that the essays were designed to test them. They were right on both counts. Sidwell wants smart parents, because smart parents beget smark children. The pop quiz reflected a parent's thought process, writing ability, and ability to work well under pressure. But enough rich, powerful parents who were embarassed at their woefully inept work product complained loudly enough. And hence, now an open book exam which only elicits drivel. Polished drivel. But drivel nonetheless. |
Anonymous
Oh, please, this is hardly the best way to measure parental intelligence. And the schools have plenty of ways of other, more direct ways to measure children's school aptitude. (Not to mention they all, including Sidwell, reject plenty of smart children.) |
Anonymous
Yes, that's why they ask where you went to school and what you do for a living. Even simply telling them that you live in Bethesda, rather than say Rockville or Germantown is something they use to divine success/intelligence. I know of someone who "borrowed" their sister's address in Potomac for application purposes, because she did not want to admit that she lived in Upper Marlboro, thinking it would somehow be held against the family. But especially in this day and age when so much can be packaged and programmed, such a pop quiz isn't such bad way to help in such an intelligence assessment. |
Anonymous
| ...if you don't mind ending up with lots of U.S-born lawyers and not so many foreign-born physicists! |
Anonymous
This has to be one of the most ridiculous posts in terms of innuendo, speculation and mis-information I have seen in this forum. |
Anonymous
I've seen much more innuendo and speculation on DCUM than this! Try the Beauvoir Scandal thread for starters. It what makes DCUM such a good and entertaining read. But seriously, if you think you know the real story behind the pop quiz, put up or shut up! |
Anonymous
| Let's just be glad it's history. |