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2009 Private School Admission Results - Share them as you get them!
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Anonymous
what kind of jobs do you/DH have? |
Anonymous
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Really, for those of you projecting some sort of conspiracy that it "takes" something to get into these schools, read the forum. They are taking normal, everyday people who seem to be a good fit for their respective institutions.
Sure, there are a few "names" at some of these place, but for the most part, they are the children of your neighbors with nothing "special" about them in terms of prestige, money or other intangibles. |
Anonymous
Sorry, not trying to be mysterious however also don't want to be identified based on our occupations. Both professionals. |
Anonymous
i think most of us are just trying to figure out what might distinguish the Chosen Few from the rest of us. |
Anonymous
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I think everyone needs to keep in mind that for the pre-k and k at these "top notch" schools even with the play date and "testing" this is not an exact science.
You are talking about 3 and 4 year olds. Plenty of kids with not great wpsii scores end up at Ivy Universities. I think there are a lot of great kids and in the end, deciding between those great kids comes down to PULL (CONNECTIONS), MONEY, ETHNICITY, PARENTAL JOBS, and BALANCE OF PERSONALTIES in the class. It is still something of a lottery even if you are a great family with all of those things going for you. Take heart, my husband coudl barely speak at 3 and certainly wouldn't have aced the standardized pe-school testing but he went to Yale and Yale again for grad school. It will ALL BE OK!!!!!! |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
I'm hoping you pick STA. Did your son enjoy his visit? It's a great school! |
Anonymous
• One of the skews here is that all of these schools have tiny graduating classes. So once you add up the "spoonfulls" of top SLACs and the dollops of Harvards and the pinch of Stanford and the couple of Yales (etc. etc.), you're talking about 25-30% of the graduating class, at least. Most of these schools are broadly comparable when you look across a sufficient number of years to get any real information. Partisans tend to cherry pick one or two years to make their cases. • But this is just the wrong way to think about it at so many levels. As another poster note, the rates of the schools are largely irrelevant. All of them have excellent college councilors. So, at this level, placement is more a function of the individual kids than the schools. • If you're worrying about your kid's college placement now, you need to do something to bring down your blood pressure. Some of the "most successful" students in my class at GDS did not attend a top-10 or even top-25 college. • The fit between student and school is much more important than the school's reputation. This goes for elementary, secondary, and college--although it is much less true of graduate and professional schools, where rankings really do (sometimes, at least) confer an advantage. Anyway, you want your kids to be happy, not to notch a spot on his/her (or your) belt. FWIW, DD will be headed to GDS for K. No diversity. Income in close to 5% nationally but much, much lower than your average poster on this thread. Did not apply for FA, and we'll definitely feel the pain next year. Extremely high scores on a test I consider worthless (how is identifying a cello an indicator of intelligence? Haven't these people gotten the message that there's no such thing as general intelligence, i.e., that it is an artifact of factor analysis). Buckets of connections to the school. Great recs. We couldn't be more pleased. We're big fans of progressive education and we love the *atmosphere* of the school. I could care less about college admissions. How the heck am I supposed to know what she'll be like at 18, what kind of a student she'll be, and what college (if any) she'll thrive at? |
Anonymous
| And I probably just identified myself to any of the parents I'll meet. Oh, well. |
Anonymous
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Congrats to you! do you know anything about the w/l there, is anyone rejected or all w/l.
I have connections as in sibs (my sibs) not DD and kids in the school now first degree relatives daughter's WIPPSI (and agree with you, does not matter) but for the process is in the mid 130's and great recs very well liked and engaging DD. What do they look for? i did apply for huge FA, rumor has it GDS is not need blind, meaning if they do not feel they can offer you FA when you apply then they do not accept your DC. You seem to be on my wavelength so very interested in your opinion to my questions! Do you know anything on MARET or Sidwell? got w/l for pre-K at Sidwell and flat out rejection this year, don't get it at all! Maret - w/l for K this year CONGRATS to you, you must have an amazing DD and a great FAM that they want 
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Anonymous
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32:43:
• I believe that GDS is not need blind. You might want to talk to the admissions people directly about this, though. There are even rumors that the schools that call themselves "need blind" aren't need blind in the same way that colleges and universities are, but that's just what I hear from parents, so caveat emptor. The recession is certainly having an impact on the FA pool, which probably is already being stressed at schools that have switched from tuition reductions for employees' children to providing them with FA. • I think all of these schools look for what they tell you they look for: they're trying to balance out the class in terms of skills, diversity, & parent background; they're trying to get parents who understand what the school is about and will be good members of the community; they give families with connections a leg up; and they'd also like a certain number of extremely wealthy and extremely influential parents (in DC, this is not terribly hard to accomplish), but, unless your name is Obama or a tier or two below, they're not going to take your kid if the other criteria aren't satisfied. • If they operate like the admissions settings I'm used to (here I am speculating), they also look for easy ways to "strike" files to simply reduce the overwhelming number of applicants. So I'm bombing a parent interview--something I've done in my time--is going to be very difficult to recover from. • I only know as much as you do beyond that. My DD also got some rejections and waitlistings, so it wasn't all big thick envelopes. I think the schools you mention are being very truthful when they say that these were difficult years with huge numbers of applicants for limited spaces. I know a *lot* of connected parents who were in the pool at a number of these schools, which must have further reduced the "actually available" slots. One AD said flat out (to another parent, but I was standing nearby) that it would be very difficult for anyone without a connection to get into his/her school that year. So when you're dealing with these kinds of admissions rate, I wouldn't take an acceptance as a badge of honor or a rejection as a scarlet letter. There's going to be some amount of randomness built into the outcome. Again, I would talk to the admissions officer. Make it clear you really want to go and try to find out what the w/l looks like. Whether anyone gets off or not can, I believe, be pretty variable from year to year. And thanks
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Anonymous
Not a rumor... If you can't pay full freight or need more than 50% in FA then u are SOL. Especially in this economy whe the value of endowments have dipped. |
Anonymous
| Apologies in advance for the typos. Need to go to bed. |
Anonymous
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Sorry, 00:13 was 00:11. I was trying to apologize for the number of typos and transpositions in my last post, but flubbed even that
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