Anonymous wrote:So what does it depend on? We make $200K, rent, and have never had to pay it. ?

I think PP is right. You can think of AMT as just a secondary way of calculating your taxes that uses a lower tax rate but disallows many of the deductions/credits most people get when calculating your taxes the standard way. You're most likely getting snagged by AMT if you have lots of deductions (eg, big mortgage deduction, state and local tax deductions, large charitable deductions, business expenses, etc).

It's not really an extra/additional tax (although it often feels that way), but rather just an alternative calculation to make sure some people aren't escaping a bare minimum tax because of many large deductions. I recall reading how politicians who wanted to champion tax cuts could cleverly rely on the AMT to protect them from actually having to cut taxes, while still getting credit for making cuts. In other words, they could claim credit for making big cuts to the primary tax rates, but they knew that the AMT would limit those tax cuts and mean that no one was actually paying much less in taxes, so the government budgets could be protected. So if you're feeling the pain of AMT, and you want to blame someone, you really should blame those politicians who promised you tax deductions. They were giving with one hand, and taking away with the other.

I'm probably in a minority on this, but ...

While that cleat-to-the-chest clearly was a foul and deserved the yellow card, it did not look intentional to me. I'm guessing that was why the referee did not give a red card. It really looked like the Dutch player was trying to play the ball. Also, he pulled his foot back very quickly rather than following through on the kick, and gave the my-bad signal immediately.

It still looked pretty gruesome though.

WoW backs down -- no real names: http://fwd4.me/WNt

I can continue to play as BunnyFuFu -- level 42 gnome mage.

Some of the local schools have started posting lists (GPrep, Landon, St Anselm's, etc). I've plugged numbers from a handful into the spreadsheet linked from the FAQ. If people find other schools that have posted lists, I'd really appreciate a link to them. Also, if anyone has a list that is not posted on a website (for example from a school newspaper), I'd love to give you an email address where you can send me a PDF copy.

Anonymous wrote:From some of the literature I've read, like the Price of Admission, I got the impression that there weren't all that many slots left after all the legacies (15-20% of the class), diversity, wealth, and athletics. Maybe 30-40% of the class was available to non-priority students .... How does this translate into a given non-priority kid's chances at an elite school?

It seems like the discussion on this thread has moved in a different direction. For anyone who is still interested in data on which priority groups get admitted to top colleges and how many slots are available for non-priority applicants, here are a few links I'd recommend.

Here are links to two excellent articles from Thomas Espenshade: http://fwd4.me/OFj and http://fwd4.me/P8d . If I recall correctly, "Price of Admission" relies pretty heavily on Espenshade's research for the sections that discuss data (as opposed to the sections where Golden relays dramatic anecdotes about particular students that bought their way into college). Espenshade's final conclusion in the second article is that although many people get very agitated about the fear that priority applicants (legacy/athlete/diversity) might be unfairly claiming a disproportionate share of admission slots at top colleges, the actual data shows that there really aren't very many of those priority applicants, so the admission preferences they get don't actually have much impact on non-priority applicants. The table at pages 299-300 does a nice job at showing what the impact of removing those priority preferences would be.

Here is a thread I've been using as a repository for this sort of info as I come across it: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/73599.page

Maybe some others will find this as interesting as I do. If anyone finds other good studies, I'd really appreciate it if you'd PM me a link.

Anonymous wrote:

SAM2 wrote:But my point is that the applicant from a top private school who is not legacy/athlete/diversity is not really directly competing for slots with the legacy/athlete/diversity applicants at her school. She's definitely competing, but that competition is far broader than just her private school.

It's not as if a college sets a quota of 4 slots from a particular high school, and then assigns those 4 slots to legacy/athlete/diversity applicants first, with leftover slots going to other applicants without such characteristics. Each applicant is competing on a nationwide (or at least city/region-wide) level. Indeed, if an applicant is relying on an athletic scholarship to get admitted, I suspect her real competition is with all the other athletes across the country playing that same sport, since I imagine each coach will only have a limited number of recruiting slots to award. (In other words, the womens crew coach cannot designate 300 women as priority admits because they happened to row in high school.)

SAM2, I'd really like to believe this, because my DC is at one of the most competitive high schools in the area. But from what we've seen in upper grades at school, and from what I've read in various places, unfortunately it does seem to work out this way. Do you have a source for this, or personal inside knowledge?

Which part? For some I can cite you authorities, and other parts are just my inferences.

Are you saying you see that most of the admits from your DC's school to top colleges seem to be legacy/diversity/athletes? If so, that makes sense because those groups need to clear a lower bar, so there will be more of them admitted. But it doesn't mean that non-priorities face a higher bar.

Actually, I can think of two likely exceptions to that last statement:
(1) In a general mathematical sense, if a college is planning to admit only X number of students nationwide, and some portion of X slots goes to legacy/athletes/diversity, then I suppose the other non-priority applicants face a marginally higher bar. But there are studies showing that bar really is raised only very slightly.
(2) If at a particular high school, some enormous number of priority applicants are admitted, then I suppose some college might truly cap out and refuse to admit more students. But given the very tiny number of people admitted to top colleges, I think that's probably a rarity.

Anonymous wrote:And, yes, Sam, schools will turn down the 4th (or xth -- maybe it's 6th, I don't know) fully-qualified GDS students. The schools with the most selective admissions routinely turn down hundreds of highly-qualified students. They want student bodies that are diverse/balanced in so many ways (regionally, economically, public vs. private) and wrt athletes, at a certain point (earlier in Ivies than in football-oriented school), each coach has met his/her quota. Basically, with a nationwide pool there's an overabundance of well-qualified kids and highly-coveted schools have to say "no" not just to some of them but to MOST of them who apply. Which is why you have various sorts of quotas -- admission is a scarce commodity which needs to be rationed in order to serve a variety of different goals.

My apologies -- I was not clear. I completely agree with you that very many highly-qualified applicants will be rejected. But my point is that the applicant from a top private school who is not legacy/athlete/diversity is not really directly competing for slots with the legacy/athlete/diversity applicants at her school. She's definitely competing, but that competition is far broader than just her private school.

It's not as if a college sets a quota of 4 slots from a particular high school, and then assigns those 4 slots to legacy/athlete/diversity applicants first, with leftover slots going to other applicants without such characteristics. Each applicant is competing on a nationwide (or at least city/region-wide) level. Indeed, if an applicant is relying on an athletic scholarship to get admitted, I suspect her real competition is with all the other athletes across the country playing that same sport, since I imagine each coach will only have a limited number of recruiting slots to award. (In other words, the womens crew coach cannot designate 300 women as priority admits because they happened to row in high school.)

Yes, an applicant who lacks any legacy/athlete/diversity factor must be incredibly highly-qualified (and very lucky) to be admitted to a top college. But she doesn't have to be more qualified to get admitted when she's coming from a local private school rather than from a local public school.

The one exception I can see relates to class rank -- I've definitely read articles about how students from top high schools (private and public magnets) are disadvantaged in college admissions because they have relatively lower class ranks than they might get at standard public schools (since the academic competition is more fierce at many privates and public magnets). This is the reason many such schools refuse to report class ranks.

Hold the phone! Did someone say "glazed donut"? Because I really like donuts.

And by the by, I don't understand PP's claim that any student from private who lacks legacy/connections/diversity/athletics will be disadvantaged at college admissions. If you're applying to college from a local public school, you'll be competing against all those same people. And while some colleges might put some maximum limit on the number of students from a particular private school, it's not like we're talking strict max/min quotas here that will have much impact. Sure the legacy/athletes/diversity people might benefit from a lower bar for admissions to colleges, but that doesn't mean the colleges won't accept other candidates who can meet the higher admissions criteria for someone without those characteristics. If Penn has already decided to admit 3 GDS students who are legacy/athletes/diversity, it's not going to close the door on a 4th GDS student that is fully qualified. Similarly, if Penn has not found any legacy/athletes/diversity students from Whitman that meet its admissions criteria, it's not going to lower the admissions criteria for some kid without those characteristics.

I will be busy eating my donuts. Please explain your thinking further.

I read "Personal Finance for Dummies" many years ago, and found it to be extremely helpful for understanding all the basics. Once you understand those basics, you can get more specifics as needed from CNN, SmartMoney, etc.

Anonymous wrote:I've posted some items on certain topics where if you read the "body of work" could figure out schools, locations, etc. Using "6 degrees of separation" some could be identifiable.

This is really the most persuasive argument I've seen against requiring logins on DCUM. Of course, there are some easy ways to get around this problem:
(1) don't post so much self-identifying info in the first place,
(2) change non-relevant details (DD instead of DS for example),
(3) make it a habit to create a new login every 6 months, so your "body of work" doesn't get too big,
(4) use a separate "clean" login if you want to post something extra-snarky or embarrassing,
(5) etc

All this assumes that you really are concerned about being identified. I suspect many people posting here are not too worried. Jeff can obviously be identified, and it doesn't seem to deter his free speech even when the topic gets controversial. Zumbamama has 1600 posts, and I'm willing to bet that someone could figure out her secret identity pretty easily, but she's so open and friendly that I doubt she'd care. PenguinSix is another example of someone who probably could be identified, but I doubt he'd care too much either since he seems the type to be unembarrassed by anything he posts.

Here is what Concord Hill reported to the Dep't of Education about its student body for 2007-08: http://fwd4.me/W3D
Here is where you can get data on other nearby schools to compare: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pss/privateschoolsearch/
Here are photos of the students & community posted on Concord Hill's website:
http://www.concordhill.org/news/detail.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=88&ModuleID=18&NEWSPID=1
http://www.concordhill.org/gallery/index.aspx?LinkID=61&ModuleID=33

Everyone can judge for herself whether the school meets your own personal vision of diversity.

Anonymous wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landon_School

Landon boosters wipe the slate clean. Every mention of george huguely, cheating, SAT wiped out of wikipedia entry. You can go back through edit history and see who wipes it it out.

That is interesting. If you look at the history page, you can see that over the past month, various Wiki contributors have corrected many instances of improper "sanitizing" on the Landon page. I don't have time/interest to do this right now, but I suspect some enterprising muckraker could use a site like WikiScanner to try to track down who is making edits to the Landon page. That could prove embarrassing for the people sanitizing the Wiki page. \

[ETA: I realized after I posted that WikiScanner was really only a two-year database of edit tracking, which ends sometime in 2008, so it won't help here. I'm not sure if there is some other WikiScanner-like website that allows for more recent tracking of Wiki edits. I suppose someone could just manually unmask each IP address listed on the Wikipedia history page, but that will require some effort.]

Goodwill or Value Village.

Just for context, here is some data on the (relatively minimal) diversity of the general neighborhood.

DivIndex AmInd/Alskn Asian AA Hispanic White Other/Multi Ward 3, DC 34% 6.3 6.2 6.6 80 Bethesda 29% 0.2 7.9 2.7 5.4 85.9 3.3 CC, MD 13% 0.1 2.2 0.9 3.4 95 1.8 Greater DC 60% 0 8.4 26.3 11.6 63.3 2

Anonymous wrote:What's so bad about the proposed additional testing?

My (limited) understanding is that it's not the testing itself that's the problem, but rather how the test results are used. Teachers & schools are rated based on how their students perform on those tests, and those ratings affect budgets, salaries, and jobs. (Bad test scores mean bad ratings.) Because teachers & schools face big incentives to have students perform well on the tests, many end up spending all their time drilling students to take the tests rather than actually teaching them in more productive ways. If schools were told that the tests are being used to hand out more money, so that schools with low test scores will get more funding and teachers will get better pay (perhaps a bonus for having the tougher job of teaching at-risk students), then I suspect teachers would spend a lot less time prepping students for the tests. And lots fewer parents would be complaining about the tests.

Here's a recent Valarie Strauss post that touched on these issues: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/jay-mathews-and-rhee-you-a.html#more .