Sidwell college guidance office

[Anonymous]

I think most parents are looking for more strategic counseling. The Sidwell counselors do not help much in terms of why school A might have better odds than school B or why ED might be advisable. In a tough market, kids need that strategic advice.

[Anonymous]

Wow you people are catty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There will always be kids who decide to transfer, and that does not mean that the college counselor's have not done their job. The bigger concern is that so many Sidwell kids end up at their safeties, and those schools are not michigan and Tufts.

Exactly. Not sure if my kid would get into Sidwell but this is what concerns me about the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most parents are looking for more strategic counseling. The Sidwell counselors do not help much in terms of why school A might have better odds than school B or why ED might be advisable. In a tough market, kids need that strategic advice.

The reason they can't say that is that Sidwell, for all of it's Quaker values of hard work and humility, is placing many of its' students into top schools based on the kids family connections. They do not want to say, "Look Joseph, we think you are a pretty good candidate for Brown and if litttle Larla whose father/mother is uber connected to the administration were not applying we would say take a shot."

[Anonymous]

Maybe both families and counselors need a reality check, and "safety schools" are the new "target" schools in the application process. Times have changed since we went through this process. It's very naive to think that Michigan is a safety for anyone, especially if (a) you seem overqualified and they're not sure you would come if accepted, and (b) you're competing against 25 of your classmates.

The schools that were safeties in our day (Tufts, Michigan, Wesleyan) are targets today and even places like Swarthmore are reaches for almost anyone.

[Anonymous]

I think you are overestimating the number of people who get accepted to colleges based on connections.

[Anonymous]

Having gone through the college process twice in the past several years with my kids at Sidwell, much of what is being purported in this thread is completely wrong in our experience. Maybe we were just lucky, but the counselor (who is the one still remaining at the school) knew my kids well, helped our kids (and us) think strategically, ensured my kids were focusing on a realistic range of schools once they had seen places and set parameters based on their own interests in terms of the size, location and philosophy of the colleges. And her predictions about admissions outcomes were just about 100% spot-on. Never did anyone at Sidwell, including the counselor, ever make us or the kids feel that the application strategy would be or should be dictated by anything outside each kids individual situation (ie no issue at all with where other kids in the class were applying, and really our experience was that it just didn't matter, one kid was in a class which was very strong and many many kids got into the HYP de jour despite about 30 applying early, the kids did not seem to be preventing each other from getting in, and other class not as academically fantastic clearly based on numbers of NMSFs etc and did not have the incredible results). Yes, the issue of where a kid might be a legacy certainly came up and was part of the planning process, but whether the kid was somehow the child of a Sidwell major donor or trustee or anything else really didn't seem to have any impact we could discern. In those terms we were nobodies, but the counselor reached out to us to ask if we wanted any sort of special push to get off the waitlist at a top school, we said no since kid was already into what was her first choice. And I did not hear of any kid in either class who got in nowhere or even close to nowhere. Given how incredibly competitive it is right now even at schools, at PP says, that were not considered super selective in our youth, such as Tufts or Vanderbilt. Once at college, kids have been super well-prepared and thriving academically. A few classmates of both have transferred, generally due to social issues (wanting a larger or smaller place) or focusing on a completely new area (moving to an arts school or to somewhere with a better computer science department for instance).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having gone through the college process twice in the past several years with my kids at Sidwell, much of what is being purported in this thread is completely wrong in our experience. Maybe we were just lucky, but the counselor (who is the one still remaining at the school) knew my kids well, helped our kids (and us) think strategically, ensured my kids were focusing on a realistic range of schools once they had seen places and set parameters based on their own interests in terms of the size, location and philosophy of the colleges. And her predictions about admissions outcomes were just about 100% spot-on. Never did anyone at Sidwell, including the counselor, ever make us or the kids feel that the application strategy would be or should be dictated by anything outside each kids individual situation (ie no issue at all with where other kids in the class were applying, and really our experience was that it just didn't matter, one kid was in a class which was very strong and many many kids got into the HYP de jour despite about 30 applying early, the kids did not seem to be preventing each other from getting in, and other class not as academically fantastic clearly based on numbers of NMSFs etc and did not have the incredible results). Yes, the issue of where a kid might be a legacy certainly came up and was part of the planning process, but whether the kid was somehow the child of a Sidwell major donor or trustee or anything else really didn't seem to have any impact we could discern. In those terms we were nobodies, but the counselor reached out to us to ask if we wanted any sort of special push to get off the waitlist at a top school, we said no since kid was already into what was her first choice. And I did not hear of any kid in either class who got in nowhere or even close to nowhere. Given how incredibly competitive it is right now even at schools, at PP says, that were not considered super selective in our youth, such as Tufts or Vanderbilt. Once at college, kids have been super well-prepared and thriving academically. A few classmates of both have transferred, generally due to social issues (wanting a larger or smaller place) or focusing on a completely new area (moving to an arts school or to somewhere with a better computer science department for instance).

1. Yes, you were lucky.

2. You didn't hear about the kids who didn't get in anywhere because your kids didn't know them or didn't tell you about them and/or because you're not friends with the parents of those kids. Even in a small school, nobody knows everything that goes on.

3. A student who transferred because of social issues may have benefitted from having a counselor discuss with him/her and parents the social climate at different schools. IME the counselor you describe seemed totally clueless about this aspect of selecting a college. She's a nice person, but, honest to God, she made some crazy suggestions to our kids.

4. ITA that some schools that were decidedly B list in our youth have become very selective. I think most Sidwell parents -- with a very few exceptions that I can think of -- appreciate this.

[Anonymous]

The Sidwell application asks where the parents went to college. This is not typical for private school applications and the feeling is that they ask because the more children of Ivy League grads they take, the more legacies they will have. And unusual number of Sidwell parents went to ivy league schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Sidwell application asks where the parents went to college. This is not typical for private school applications and the feeling is that they ask because the more children of Ivy League grads they take, the more legacies they will have. And unusual number of Sidwell parents went to ivy league schools.

I think you are repeating folklore. When we applied kids to private schools 4-5 years ago, all the schools except one asked for parents' colleges. No idea who asks now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Sidwell application asks where the parents went to college. This is not typical for private school applications and the feeling is that they ask because the more children of Ivy League grads they take, the more legacies they will have. And unusual number of Sidwell parents went to ivy league schools.

I think you are repeating folklore. When we applied kids to private schools 4-5 years ago, all the schools except one asked for parents' colleges. No idea who asks now.

Not that PP, but what is the folklore? It's folklore that Sidwell is the only school to ask for parents' colleges -- because in reality most schools do now?

I don't see how this makes the counselors look better. First, maybe a lot of schools are asking now, it's not obvious which schools are actually selecting for legacies. More important, it's one thing to take legacy status into consideration in advising college applicants, it's another thing if that's the whole game plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you are overestimating the number of people who get accepted to colleges based on connections.

Actually, it is called a hook and can be legacy, URM, connections, athletics, development or other talent ( arts science math accomplishment). Sidwell has many very well connected (media and political types) students. This is why they do not want you to see the naviance.

[Anonymous]

I am assuming Sidwell lets its own students see Naviance. I don't know of any school that makes naviance public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am assuming Sidwell lets its own students see Naviance. I don't know of any school that makes naviance public.

No, they act like Naviance is classified information; unlike every public high school in the area, Sidwell doesn't provide students and families with Naviance access. Instead, 11th-graders are required to submit a list of 30 schools they're interested in and counselors then provide Naviance data on Sidwell's admissions track record for those schools. My kids' counselor provided no interpretation of this data, nor any guidance in putting together the unwieldy list of 30 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am assuming Sidwell lets its own students see Naviance. I don't know of any school that makes naviance public.

No, they act like Naviance is classified information; unlike every public high school in the area, Sidwell doesn't provide students and families with Naviance access. Instead, 11th-graders are required to submit a list of 30 schools they're interested in and counselors then provide Naviance data on Sidwell's admissions track record for those schools. My kids' counselor provided no interpretation of this data, nor any guidance in putting together the unwieldy list of 30 schools.

DD's friend at Sidwell took a class junior year where everybody thought about what they would like in a college.