Most famous DC Private

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was thinking about this. What DC Private would people say is most famous on a national level.

I think top three are: St Alban’s, Sidwell, and Prep. Any other rankings?

only Sidwell because of the Presidential children.

I agree. You have to really care about pedigrees to have absorbed that Gore went to St. Albans. I wouldn't have been able to name another.

Pop quiz: who knows the name of Mitt Romney's high school?

Easier: George W Bush?

My personal test for Beltway proximity is to ask people how many Cabinet Secretaries they can name. A fun game to play with people who don't live in DC...

[Anonymous]

DC Correctional

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Was thinking about this. What DC Private would people say is most famous on a national level.

I think top three are: St Alban’s, Sidwell, and Prep. Any other rankings?

Cathedral schools - always knew of them and saw the campus on tv for all state events and broadcasters would often mention the campus etc.... Plus I knew Bush, Kennedys, Gores, etc.. had sent kids to the Cathedral schools plus a lot of top business people we knew of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

The Daily Mail is basically a tabloid rag. That's a pretty weak flex, Sidwell booster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

Get over yourself. I had a kid graduate from Sidwell. Many of my west coast family have never heard of the school. Sidwell has a graduating class of what 100-125? Dematha a lot more. Who cares that you seek out papers written about your school? And yes, national newspapers write about Dematha, St John's, and Gonzaga all the time.

Why can't people in this forum be objective about anything? Nobody is saying top ranked, most successful alumna, or best college placements. The OP asked about fame.

Sidwell has 2k IG followers. Dematha has 11k. Yes Sidwell bball has helped in recent years, but as a sports establishment, they are not even close. Even St Frances is more famous than Sidwell in sports and whether you like it or not, sports > more famous than politics in this country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html[/quote

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/education/13sidwell.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

The Daily Mail is basically a tabloid rag. That's a pretty weak flex, Sidwell booster.

No one said that the Daily Mail is The NY Times. The thread is about fame, and articles are being written about Sidwell in the UK. Point made. Case closed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

Get over yourself. I had a kid graduate from Sidwell. Many of my west coast family have never heard of the school. Sidwell has a graduating class of what 100-125? Dematha a lot more. Who cares that you seek out papers written about your school? And yes, national newspapers write about Dematha, St John's, and Gonzaga all the time.

Why can't people in this forum be objective about anything? Nobody is saying top ranked, most successful alumna, or best college placements. The OP asked about fame.

Sidwell has 2k IG followers. Dematha has 11k. Yes Sidwell bball has helped in recent years, but as a sports establishment, they are not even close. Even St Frances is more famous than Sidwell in sports and whether you like it or not, sports > more famous than politics in this country.

You’re counting IG followers?!? 😂

You don’t have any children that graduated from Sidwell. You sound bitter and angry. Stop lying on Al Gore’s internet and get some sleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's DeMatha or Gonzaga. More people know sports than academics.

Most people know neither. The only reason you know or care that those schools produce good athletes is because they are local schools. Lots of places have a local school or two that is known for some sports program or another, and can tell you "oh such and such athlete went there." But you or I would never recognize the name of the school because it's in Dallas or Denver or Atlanta or something.

People know Sidwell because it made the news a lot as the place that Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls went. It has nothing to do with academics. It has to do with fame. People care about where very famous people go.

This is just completely wrong. Just because you don’t follow football or basketball doesn’t mean that millions and millions of people do. Sidwell is fairly well known because the Clintons and Obamas but you grossly underestimate how many people could name more than a handful of the high school football powers.

I do follow pro football and basketball. I could not tell you where most football players attended high school. I might be able to tell you "they're from Texas" or something. Basketball is a bit different but honestly, once they are in the NBA who cares. There are lots of basketball programs in the country that have produced well known basketball players. I only notice the ones who went to DeMatha because DeMatha is local to me. My brother is also a big basketball fan but he lives in California and when I mentioned DeMatha to him he was like "that sounds kind of familiar" but he would not have been able to produce the name on his own.

Meanwhile if you asked people in podunk Iowa what Sidwell is, more of them could tell you "didn't the Obama kids go to school there?" than tell you about DeMatha or Gonzaga. Except that most people would assume you were talking about the Gonzaga college basketball program.

Not every school on this list is recognizable to the casual basketball fan, but many hardcore hoops fans are familiar with teams in the top ten, including #5.

https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/greatest-high-school-basketball-teams-de1f0baf83734149

Right, hardcore basketball fans. NOT the average person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably the most well known schools are:

Sierra Canyon (Kardashians/jenners/bronny)
Crossroads (so many celebs)
Beverly Hills High School (same; shout out to West Beverly too )
Andover
Exeter
Permian (Friday Night Lights)
IMG Academy (sports factory across multiple sports)
St. Vincent-St. Mary (lebron; because he didn’t play college this one has a higher profile)
Lower Merion (Kobe; same)
Laguna Hills (Hills, Laguna, etc. this is fading but still a fairly broad demo)
Sidwell (Clintons/Obamas). Nothing else in DC is on this level of name ID.
Not sure what from NYC breaks through — could see a case for Dalton, Spence, Bronx Science, Stuyvesant but none seem that famous to like an average person in the Midwest.

This is macabre but the most famous are probably actually the ones with major tragedies like Columbine and the like.

Agree with this list except hilariously didn't know the first because I've never followed the Kardashians. I would replace it on the list with Harvard-Westlake, which I know because many celebs send kids there, it gets mentioned in a lot of media talking about elite privates, and using "Harvard" in the name really ups the recognition.

Which just goes to show that which "famous" high school someone knows can be super subjective, and truthfully very few schools will have name recognition across the country the way colleges do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's Sidwell and nothing else. Maybe some of the schools with big football feeders are famous among sports fans who pay attention to stuff like where NFL players went to high school. But your average person has heard of Sidwell because presidents' kids go there and that's it.

People don't remember the name of the schools involved in the Kavanaugh hearings, just that the people involved went to some hoity private Catholic schools.

If you ranked all private schools in the country in terms of fame, Sidwell might crack the top 10 (might) and no other DC school would rank. It would mostly be schools like Harvard-Westlake, Phillips Exeter, Choate, Exeter, Spence -- places they've heard of because famous people send their kids there or people write books about them or lots of well known politicians, writers and celebrities attended. This is not the case with any DC school except Sidwell.

This is completely stupid. If you think more people have heard of Choate or Spence than the big sports schools you need to get out more. That’s an insane opinion.

Gwyneth Paltrow went to Spence. Many, many people know this. Choate gets mentioned in lots of stories as kind of a classic "rich kid private" -- it's been in Gilmore Girls and the Catcher in the Rye (yeah, yeah, no one reads -- but people over the age of 35 were probably required to read CitR in high school and forced to discuss it in class, thus more likely to know the reference).

Most sports fans do not track where players went to high school. College yes, but not high school (especially for football). Here I can prove it -- name 10 other schools outside the DMV that are well known NBA feeders. You can't. They exist, but you don't know their names because they are not local to you.

I could name a whole lot more than 10.

Do it and see how many people on the thread have heard of. Most people do not care about the high school sports programs of schools outside their own community unless they are super obsessed with that sport. Typical fan of a pro sport? Nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

Get over yourself. I had a kid graduate from Sidwell. Many of my west coast family have never heard of the school. Sidwell has a graduating class of what 100-125? Dematha a lot more. Who cares that you seek out papers written about your school? And yes, national newspapers write about Dematha, St John's, and Gonzaga all the time.

Why can't people in this forum be objective about anything? Nobody is saying top ranked, most successful alumna, or best college placements. The OP asked about fame.

Sidwell has 2k IG followers. Dematha has 11k. Yes Sidwell bball has helped in recent years, but as a sports establishment, they are not even close. Even St Frances is more famous than Sidwell in sports and whether you like it or not, sports > more famous than politics in this country.

You’re counting IG followers?!? 😂

You don’t have any children that graduated from Sidwell. You sound bitter and angry. Stop lying on Al Gore’s internet and get some sleep.

And how do you think people measure fame these days? Catch up. Social media is a better indicator of fame these days. I can assure you we are a former Sidwell family and can attest I think it's the top school in the DMV. Our DC graduated with one of the Obama girls. I will not say it's the most famous. However, my crowd tends to be more sports leaning than politics. Your average American in Oklahoma can't name a school that Sasha Obama attended but can tell you Caleb Williams went to Gonzaga. Believe me if you want, we can agree to disagree without resorting to name calling. DC folks have a warped sense of Americans knowing about politics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm also from LA. People over estimate that anyone can even name Obama's daughters yet alone can name who the current VP is. I'm a politically active upper middle class person. People are far more likely to follow sports than politics. It's a fact. You all are forgetting that hardly like than 1/3 Americans can name 3 branches of govt or anyone in Supreme Court. Sidwell is not more famous than Dematha, Gonzaga, or St John's. I'd also now add in PVI in the last 2 years.

WCAC is the most dominant basketball league in the country. They also are very strong in many other sports including football.

Wrong! I’ve read articles about Sidwell in the LA Times, The NY Times, and cities across the country. I’ve even seen several articles about Sidwell in the Daily Mail! I certain little to no ink has been spent on Dematha, Gonzaga, SJC and PVI in the British press.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7111939/amp/Inside-DCs-elite-Sidwell-school-pushy-parents-obsessed-getting-kids-college.html

Get over yourself. I had a kid graduate from Sidwell. Many of my west coast family have never heard of the school. Sidwell has a graduating class of what 100-125? Dematha a lot more. Who cares that you seek out papers written about your school? And yes, national newspapers write about Dematha, St John's, and Gonzaga all the time.

Why can't people in this forum be objective about anything? Nobody is saying top ranked, most successful alumna, or best college placements. The OP asked about fame.

Sidwell has 2k IG followers. Dematha has 11k. Yes Sidwell bball has helped in recent years, but as a sports establishment, they are not even close. Even St Frances is more famous than Sidwell in sports and whether you like it or not, sports > more famous than politics in this country.

You’re counting IG followers?!? 😂

You don’t have any children that graduated from Sidwell. You sound bitter and angry. Stop lying on Al Gore’s internet and get some sleep.

And how do you think people measure fame these days? Catch up. Social media is a better indicator of fame these days. I can assure you we are a former Sidwell family and can attest I think it's the top school in the DMV. Our DC graduated with one of the Obama girls. I will not say it's the most famous. However, my crowd tends to be more sports leaning than politics. Your average American in Oklahoma can't name a school that Sasha Obama attended but can tell you Caleb Williams went to Gonzaga. Believe me if you want, we can agree to disagree without resorting to name calling. DC folks have a warped sense of Americans knowing about politics.

I don’t believe you. However, I know that you need to pick up a book and stop using IG followers as a measure of fame and/or reputation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably the most well known schools are:

Sierra Canyon (Kardashians/jenners/bronny)
Crossroads (so many celebs)
Beverly Hills High School (same; shout out to West Beverly too )
Andover
Exeter
Permian (Friday Night Lights)
IMG Academy (sports factory across multiple sports)
St. Vincent-St. Mary (lebron; because he didn’t play college this one has a higher profile)
Lower Merion (Kobe; same)
Laguna Hills (Hills, Laguna, etc. this is fading but still a fairly broad demo)
Sidwell (Clintons/Obamas). Nothing else in DC is on this level of name ID.
Not sure what from NYC breaks through — could see a case for Dalton, Spence, Bronx Science, Stuyvesant but none seem that famous to like an average person in the Midwest.

This is macabre but the most famous are probably actually the ones with major tragedies like Columbine and the like.

Laguna Hills? Kardashians? Friday Night Lights? Lol! When is the last time you read a book? Only reality tv watchers know those schools or people.

Further more OP said DC schools.