How/Has DCUM shaped your impression of local private schools?

[Anonymous]

What I don't get is why the cathedral schools are always the target of these crass send-ups, while Sidwell and GDS usually get off scott-free. I know lots of families at both schools, and I know more normal families (in terms of income level and job description) at the cathedral schools than at Sidwell.

(I don't have a kid at either, FWIW. Just something I've noticed about who gets bullied on DCUM, and who doesn't.)

[Anonymous]

It's actually because Sidwell is the "hot" school now for social climbers, with everybody trying to get in there. Who wouldn't want to drop into conversation that "my kid goes to school with the Obama kids". Plus single-sex education is out in some circles (single-sex education is still OK in my book, for those who want it, but I think I'm in the minority).

So you get the stars-in-your-eyes treatment from people who still think their kids can get into Sidwell.

[Anonymous]

I think 12:57 is an hilarious satirist! Hysterical.

[Anonymous]

The social climber parody wouldn't work for GDS -- not credible. But every couple of weeks there's some comment about sex and drugs and the rampant and widespread use of first names.

[Anonymous]

And then a comment about the lack of discipline at GDS, which is obviously too "crunchy".

But seriously, why doesn't Sidwell, which is the social climber school par excellence, ever come under attack for blatant social climbing?

[Anonymous]

I blame Beauvoir, LOL! Seriously, this board is very PreK/K-oriented and admission in the youngest grades focuses more on the family and less on the student's achievement (there is none yet).

By contrast, most Sidwell kids come to the school later. So when I think of Sidwell students, I think of kids who are very high-performing academically and whose parents are willing to put them in an environment where most other kids are too.

If the logic of social climbing is you'll get to the top based primarily on who you know rather than what you know, then Sidwell looks like a bad choice.

I don't have a kid at any of these schools -- just reflecting on the school choices of friends, neighbors, colleagues, kids I know from sports, etc.

[Anonymous]

Just an aside, but doesn't the whole notion of "social-climbing" seem to sort of share the same values it critiques?

Honestly, I either don't think of people as being on a "higher" level than I am socially (vs. having different friends, interests) or believe that I could somehow elevate my own level through association.

I feel the same way about "nouveau riche" -- it's like the people throwing around these terms are looking down on others as "not to the manor born" (as if the speaker herself was!) rather than insecure/envious/fucked-up re social relationships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I blame Beauvoir, LOL! Seriously, this board is very PreK/K-oriented and admission in the youngest grades focuses more on the family and less on the student's achievement (there is none yet).

By contrast, most Sidwell kids come to the school later. So when I think of Sidwell students, I think of kids who are very high-performing academically and whose parents are willing to put them in an environment where most other kids are too.

If the logic of social climbing is you'll get to the top based primarily on who you know rather than what you know, then Sidwell looks like a bad choice.

I don't have a kid at any of these schools -- just reflecting on the school choices of friends, neighbors, colleagues, kids I know from sports, etc.

Actually, we know two kids who got into higher grades at Sidwell because of who their parents were.

[Anonymous]

Then they wouldn't be the climbers, LOL!

[Anonymous]

I am always pleased b/c my child goes to a private school that is NEVER mentioned. Thank God for small favors...

[Anonymous]

.... most Sidwell kids come to the school later. So when I think of Sidwell students, I think of kids who are very high-performing academically and whose parents are willing to put them in an environment where most other kids are too.

This isn't exactly true. There are plenty of preK and Kers at Sidwell of course!

Anecdotally, every single Sidwell kid I know who entered at preK or K has parents who are "DC-famous"-household names, or rich. Not affluent, but rich.

That is not the case with the kids I know personally who entered at MS. Those kids are all over the map, and their parents are not necessarily a Washington Post columnist or on the House Ways and Means Committee.

[Anonymous]

We're nobodies, and our kids got into Sidwell at middle school. But , sure, there are kids who get in at both MS and US largely on parents' status. Sigh. How dreary to be somebody.

[Anonymous]

Reading these blogs where everybody trashes everybody else's school reminds me of the Freudian expression (thank you Christopher Hitchens who referred to it recently) of the "narcissism of the small difference." An out-of-towner would find us all virtually indistinguishable one from the other; indeed, a kid who goes to one school might easily have gone to another had he gotten in, had his friends chosen to go there, given any number of variables. And yet St. Alban's trashes Landon, Prep trashes Gonzaga, Sidwell trashes Landon, etc. ad nauseam. As Holden Caulfield used to say, "it's kind of funny when you think of it."

[Anonymous]

To embroider on the above posting--a study was done a few years ago where kids were randomly divided into groups--say, the blue group and the green group, for the purposes of the study. The division was absolutely arbitrary--but after a period of time, the groups had formed "impressions" of the other group--eg., Blue Group would say: that Green Group is so (substitute any adjective) whereas Green Group was convinced that Blue Group was so----whatever--substitute an adjective. Proves the "naricissism of the small difference." Humans are the craziest species...The study extrapolated from the findings to explain war and other such stuff if memory serves. Kinda reminds you of Landon and Prep, don't it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

.... most Sidwell kids come to the school later. So when I think of Sidwell students, I think of kids who are very high-performing academically and whose parents are willing to put them in an environment where most other kids are too.

This isn't exactly true. There are plenty of preK and Kers at Sidwell of course!

yes, but 100% of the Beauvoir kids get in before 3rd grade vs. about about 1/2 of the Sidwell kids. And if you take 3rd grade out of the mix (major entry year for Sidwell; unlikely entry year for Beauvoir), the difference is even more striking. In absolute terms, Beauvoir enrolls 84 PreK/K kids each year; Sidwell enrolls 48.

Basically, Beauvoir chooses almost all of its students when they are preschoolers, which is an age at which they have no real academic track record and at which intelligence testing is especially unreliable. So, sure, they choose families (on what basis is a separate question). By contrast, lots of the Sidwell students are admitted at ages where various measures of academic performance (grades, standardized test scores) are available for consideration by admissions officers.