Profile of Private School Applicants
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SAM2
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A while back, a few people asked about using a survey form to gather info on how different student characteristics affect admissions. I've been thinking about how one could be constructed with the limited free utility Google provides, and how it might work. I think I've figured out a way to design it. I would create a survey that asks people to respond for each of several characteristics whether or not their child was admitted. At the end, we would see collective admission results subdivided by characteristic.
Here is an example of how it might work: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEhBN2JROG5MMHJQWUEzdmlfdUZjZHc6MQ#gid=0 Since we are not interested in any particular year, but rather in any results for particular schools, anyone who applied in any recent years to the school(s) covered could participate. I'd probably severely limit the number of schools covered, so we can see how it works before expanding. I'm a little hesitant to embark on such a process because it might make people overweight the relative importance of some characteristics. On the other hand, I don't really know what the results will be, so maybe it will help people understand better. Let me know whether you think this is a worthwhile process, or just a waste of time. Also, if you think it's a good idea, post the characteristics that should be measured and the schools that should be covered. My initial inclination is to aggregate a few similarly selective schools together, to increase the number of responses. What do you think? |
Anonymous
| I like the idea - since a lot of people applying to private schools have a child that has some minor ADHD or minor learning issue that they think could be accommodated by small class sizes, I'd be curious to add in that factor. I do think you'd need to get people to differentiate between minor issues, though, and more intense issues - I'd think minor issues could be defined as ones where the child needs a little extra re-direction to stay on task, or a little extra input from the teacher on learning something, but not anything that takes more than a moment or two of the teacher's attention on a somewhat regular basis. |
Anonymous
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I like the idea, but I don't think it's useful if you aggregate the schools at all. Different traits mean different things to each school, so I feel like doing that would defeat the whole point.
Also add characteristics about legacy status, whether parents visited more than once, whether the preschool is considered connected/competitive, whether the family told the school it was their first choice, and whether the child had applied before. |
Anonymous
Why? Most factors are binary -- your child is either a sibling or not, either a legacy or not, either scored 90% or not, etc. And if you group similar schools together -- say Beauvoir and Sidwell for example -- how does that defeat the purpose? They both seem to admit many of the same children. |
Anonymous
| But it is relatively unlikely that your child is a legacy at both Sidwell and Beauvoir... |
Anonymous
But you're only a sibling/legacy/whatever at one school. DH and I went to the same private elementary here, and were very confident dd would be accepted, and she was. But that had no impact on our standing at the other 5 schools to which we applied, so it would be highly misleading to look like DD was a legacy candidate elsewhere. |
Anonymous
Yes, that's true, but I probably did not describe clearly how I was envisioning the survey working. I would treat each application as a separate opportunity to complete the survey. So let's pretend the survey covers both Beauvoir and Sidwell. If you applied to Beauvoir but not Sidwell, you'd complete the survey once, and only respond with what characteristics were applicable to Beauvoir, and how your application fared. If you applied to both Beauvoir and Sidwell, you'd complete the survey twice, because you'd have one set of application data and results for each school. On one hand, this may seem more cumbersome for you if you applied to multiple schools, since you will be forced to answer the same survey twice (once for each school). But on the other hand, if we don't do it that way, then I will need to create a separate survey for each individual school, and you would need to find and answer a different survey for each school at issue. So even more cumbersome. I seriously doubt Beauvoir and Sidwell treat applicants much differently on these characteristics, so combining them would not really degrade the results. And combining the results will give many more responses in aggregate, which may improve the results by minimizing the impact of outliers. |
Anonymous
| I doubt the value of this as all it takes is one or two folks to make up some answers to destroy the validity of your effort. But, if this goes forward at some point, perhaps add a question getting at any special talents of the child. There are true standouts in music, sports, etc. - often starting at very young ages. |
Anonymous
Actually, I went to Beauvoir until 2nd grade and then switched to Sidwell. |
Anonymous
| I don't love the form, but think this is a fantastic idea that would be incredibly useful. The private school admissions process is devoid of any real statistics, and I think that causes families to make what would be otherwise illogical decisions in the admissions process. |
Anonymous
This. And I would be happy to answer honestly. |
Anonymous
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Replying to a 4 year old thread is what my kid's websites refer to a a "necro-bump".
Not sure you're gonna get much response here unless you're taking over the four year old abandoned project... |