is grade deflation really hurting college admissions this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check back on this board come March/April, when regular admits are announced. I think you'll find that students at schools such as NCS did absolutely fine. What you're witnessing here is a bunch of posts from a few handwringing parents who are upset that Larlo didn't get admitted to MIT EA/ED.

I agree that it will be interesting to see how this all turns out but if you were paying attention you would know that we're not talking about MIT or the Ivies.
Less than 10% of the NCS ED apps were successful and many rejections were from schools ranked 50-150. THAT is why parents are concerned.

Curious as to where you got this 10% figure. My kid at a different private and college office would never release. Sure I could speculate (and do some napkin math) but I have no way of knowing who was accepted where, let alone who was rejected. I know kids talk so everyone hears some but it can’t be the full picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check back on this board come March/April, when regular admits are announced. I think you'll find that students at schools such as NCS did absolutely fine. What you're witnessing here is a bunch of posts from a few handwringing parents who are upset that Larlo didn't get admitted to MIT EA/ED.

I agree that it will be interesting to see how this all turns out but if you were paying attention you would know that we're not talking about MIT or the Ivies.
Less than 10% of the NCS ED apps were successful and many rejections were from schools ranked 50-150. THAT is why parents are concerned.

Curious as to where you got this 10% figure. My kid at a different private and college office would never release. Sure I could speculate (and do some napkin math) but I have no way of knowing who was accepted where, let alone who was rejected. I know kids talk so everyone hears some but it can’t be the full picture.

It's just napkin math but the kids talk and there are only 70 of them. Sure, there are a few who fly under the social radar but not many. These schools are all about the community. Also, the kids know who the top students are. I know some parent will come on here and say that their kid never talked to anyone during their 4 years of high school and matriculated to Princeton completely under the radar but this wound be highly unusual in 2022.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

Lol—too bad white fragility and scapegoating (due to your own mediocrity) isn’t a hook. You would be THE MOST hooked.

[Anonymous]

So you agree with the premise of lower standards!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

Lol—too bad white fragility and scapegoating (due to your own mediocrity) isn’t a hook. You would be THE MOST hooked.

The mediocre of any type should never prevail. Period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check back on this board come March/April, when regular admits are announced. I think you'll find that students at schools such as NCS did absolutely fine. What you're witnessing here is a bunch of posts from a few handwringing parents who are upset that Larlo didn't get admitted to MIT EA/ED.

I agree that it will be interesting to see how this all turns out but if you were paying attention you would know that we're not talking about MIT or the Ivies.
Less than 10% of the NCS ED apps were successful and many rejections were from schools ranked 50-150. THAT is why parents are concerned.

I’m not sure your post makes sense. Why would NCS students be applying ED to schools ranked between 50-100? That sounds like bad college advising.
Maybe these were EA schools and not ED and in that case, maybe they were rejected because the schools felt that the NCS students would not attend so they were rejected because of yield protection.
Perhaps NCS college advising is not particularly strong? Is that the case? If yes, then no big deal. Just hire a private college counselor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check back on this board come March/April, when regular admits are announced. I think you'll find that students at schools such as NCS did absolutely fine. What you're witnessing here is a bunch of posts from a few handwringing parents who are upset that Larlo didn't get admitted to MIT EA/ED.

I agree that it will be interesting to see how this all turns out but if you were paying attention you would know that we're not talking about MIT or the Ivies.
Less than 10% of the NCS ED apps were successful and many rejections were from schools ranked 50-150. THAT is why parents are concerned.

I’m not sure your post makes sense. Why would NCS students be applying ED to schools ranked between 50-100? That sounds like bad college advising.
Maybe these were EA schools and not ED and in that case, maybe they were rejected because the schools felt that the NCS students would not attend so they were rejected because of yield protection.
Perhaps NCS college advising is not particularly strong? Is that the case? If yes, then no big deal. Just hire a private college counselor.

Not an NCS parent, but can you recommend a private college counselor? Our private all girls has two but not sure if we should have a private one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

What standards are lower? The ones you can buy? College admissions teams can see through so called achievement bought by privilege, such as thousands of dollars spent on tutoring beginning in lower school and then of course SAT prep later on. They’re hip to the game and are no longer buying what you’re selling. Throwing around your money to give your kid a leg up in college admissions and then calling it merit is delusional. Admissions departments who care about equity are judging kids on their potential. What have they done with the cards they’ve been dealt? As much as you may not realize it in your privileged bubble, it takes a lot more to be top of the class in an inner city public b/c those kids are having to overcome a lot more environmental obstacles to achieve. It shows character and perseverance. That’s a much better indicator of success than grades inflated by years of tutoring and stacking the deck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

What standards are lower? The ones you can buy? College admissions teams can see through so called achievement bought by privilege, such as thousands of dollars spent on tutoring beginning in lower school and then of course SAT prep later on. They’re hip to the game and are no longer buying what you’re selling. Throwing around your money to give your kid a leg up in college admissions and then calling it merit is delusional. Admissions departments who care about equity are judging kids on their potential. What have they done with the cards they’ve been dealt? As much as you may not realize it in your privileged bubble, it takes a lot more to be top of the class in an inner city public b/c those kids are having to overcome a lot more environmental obstacles to achieve. It shows character and perseverance. That’s a much better indicator of success than grades inflated by years of tutoring and stacking the deck.

And PP above just made my point further. Don’t like the two college counselors at your 50k school? No problem. Just hire a private one. Hook hook hook…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

What standards are lower? The ones you can buy? College admissions teams can see through so called achievement bought by privilege, such as thousands of dollars spent on tutoring beginning in lower school and then of course SAT prep later on. They’re hip to the game and are no longer buying what you’re selling. Throwing around your money to give your kid a leg up in college admissions and then calling it merit is delusional. Admissions departments who care about equity are judging kids on their potential. What have they done with the cards they’ve been dealt? As much as you may not realize it in your privileged bubble, it takes a lot more to be top of the class in an inner city public b/c those kids are having to overcome a lot more environmental obstacles to achieve. It shows character and perseverance. That’s a much better indicator of success than grades inflated by years of tutoring and stacking the deck.

And the kids whose folks own a small business, work 90 hours a week at it to pull 60k per year (and make the kids throw in 15 hrs) yet the kids pull 4.0/1600/36, play a sport and and instrument and don’t get in? Your target audience is the easy one to go after. What about mine?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell seems to get the most impressive college acceptance results out of any DMV private school.
So if that is very important to you, you are better off sending your kids to Sidwell for HS rather than NCS

Just not true. Not to say they are not fine results but they don’t really stand out against the other great schools.

All they almost all had hooks,
3 Northwestern admits but all URM.
most Ivy admits had 2 hooks: legacy plus child of a VIP, URM plus legacy.
These kids were born on third base--Ivy is in their DNA; it didn't take Sidwell to get them there.

Too bad for the unhooked non URMs. Their ancestors (and parents) should have used their hook (white skin) when non URMs couldn’t. Then their children would also be legacies at these schools (shrug).

Being an urm minority is not a hook. Stop this narrative. If it were such a hook, these groups wouldn’t be underrepresented. Find someone else to blame and start with yourself.

It's a hook in that the standards are lower.

What standards are lower? The ones you can buy? College admissions teams can see through so called achievement bought by privilege, such as thousands of dollars spent on tutoring beginning in lower school and then of course SAT prep later on. They’re hip to the game and are no longer buying what you’re selling. Throwing around your money to give your kid a leg up in college admissions and then calling it merit is delusional. Admissions departments who care about equity are judging kids on their potential. What have they done with the cards they’ve been dealt? As much as you may not realize it in your privileged bubble, it takes a lot more to be top of the class in an inner city public b/c those kids are having to overcome a lot more environmental obstacles to achieve. It shows character and perseverance. That’s a much better indicator of success than grades inflated by years of tutoring and stacking the deck.

And the kids whose folks own a small business, work 90 hours a week at it to pull 60k per year (and make the kids throw in 15 hrs) yet the kids pull 4.0/1600/36, play a sport and and instrument and don’t get in? Your target audience is the easy one to go after. What about mine?

Step one would be to close down the business b/c 60k a year earned from 90 hrs a week is less than the minimum wage in dc. But, exaggerated story aside, I’d say dig deeper. Your kid needs to figure out what sets them apart. It’s not all about stats. It’s not a checklist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you agree with the premise of lower standards!

No, but it’s clear that you attempt to scapegoat URMs in order to avoid the truth that you (and your children) are simply mediocre. Your ancestors were mediocre too because they didn’t use their white skin privilege to gain admission to Ivy/highly selective universities when those institutions actively and openly discriminated against qualified URMs. It sucks to suck.