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College Counseling at Sidwell - One Year Later
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Anonymous
| I hear things arent much better. One new hire seems dispassionate about the students. The head doesnt seem to have things organized. Hear complaints abound, just not the craziness of last year. |
Anonymous
| That's just great. |
Anonymous
| A dispassionate counselor is a good thing. Do you mean uninterested? |
Anonymous
| Wow...this is going to take couple of years to sort out. Then you have to picture the admissions at the university level trying to see what caliber students are Sidwell producing after last year’s debacle. |
Anonymous
| Strange. We have one of the new counselors and find her to be engaged and enthusistic and has been more than on top of things as it relates to our senior. Bonus: her writing is grammatically correct! |
Anonymous
Will also add, I am an engaged parent with the cohort of other parents and have not heard anyone grumbling or complaining. |
Anonymous
|
Ditto.
Competency and communication are better. Morale is improved. And parents seem to act appropriately. |
Anonymous
| Parent of Sidwell 10th grader. Despite all the drama of last year, how did college admissions actually turn out in the final analysis? Were results materially different vs. prior years? My sense is that despite a really awful experience process-wise, results were actually fairly good. Is this correct? What specific steps does Sidwell need to take to achieve excellence in college counseling? How can the school become a paragon of excellence in this area? This is a serious question. |
Anonymous
The results reflected the abilities of the Class of 2019. There is no magic formula, though it would probably be nice for the office to have one more counselor on staff. |
Anonymous
|
More counselors.
More aggressive advocacy with colleges. Better intro to process and laying out a timeline beginning freshman year. More transparency and management of expectations. This applies to all the local privates. |
Anonymous
| Stop pretending like "college isn't a big deal" but then have a rigorous academic workload with a lot of homework and tests. SFS expects much from its students but then wants to diminish their desires to go to a competitive university. Yes, "fit is important", but Sidwell has this strange dichotomy that is disingenuous. |
Anonymous
Wake up. The days are long gone where Sidwell alone is going to get your kid into an ivy league (or even a high selective school), and the counseling office is trying to communicate this to parents. Are you or your husband alumni? Are you full pay? Do you have some other hook? They are discussing fit with you to try and manage expectations. |
Anonymous
I am not sure what you expect the role is with respect to "advocacy" but they are not there to hound their colleagues into taking your kids. They are there to provide realistic guidance based on the record at hand. They lay out the process in 10th grade, there is no reason to do it any earlier. What "transparency" would you like to see. You are not entitled to the records of your kids classmates or what their evaluations or recommendations are, so what does this even mean? |
Anonymous
|
How about hiring counselors who love to advise students. They still havent nailed that...
Also, I would expect for you to advocate. |
Anonymous
If businesses were required to only hire people who love the job, most jobs (especially this one) would go forever unfulfilled. Just look at the attitude from SFS parents... who would want to deal with all that for the modest salary on offer? |