Reply to Outplacement directors that speak in code or total silence; can anyone translate ?

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Reply to "Outplacement directors that speak in code or total silence; can anyone translate ?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Schools have long-term relationships with each other and with families.  And lots of schools will want to balance their classes with a variety of different kids from a variety of different places.  So, for example, how many well-behaved white girls with corporate lawyer daddies from Beauvior does some school other than NCS want to admit in any give year.  And if Beauvoir has 4 such candidates and one set of parents is a PITA and another set of parents are major donors with other kids potentially in the pipeline, I could certainly see them being more interested in family B getting the exmission result of their dreams than family A.  And it can be rationalized as a sort of victimless crime (or even a blessing in disguise) if the decisionmaker is pretty confident that the daughter in family A will do just as well (or better) in a school that isn't her parents' first choice.

All examples are meant to be fictional, but I think it takes a certainly level of detail to understand what can happen, so I filled in the blanks with specifics.   [/quote]

From our experience, looking around our school's K-6, your example is exactly right.

Your example is a fairly clean one, though, with identical kids but a PITA family vs. a major donor family.  Where this sort of engineering gets more questionable is when rejected kid A didn't come from a PITA family, or accepted kid B had much lower test scores -- both of which we've seen, again looking around our K-6.  And while Beauvoir or another private K-6 or K-8 may be able to rationalize this sort of engineering as a "victimless crime" (and I have no doubt they do), it probably seems a bit high-handed to the rejected family that honestly thought their first choice school was a good fit for their kid.

Of course, it's not just Beauvoir wanting to push the rich kid with the low test scores -- it's also STA or Sidwell wanting that rich kid with the donor parents.  The connivance is mutual. Beauvoir tells STA or NCS, "this family has been very generous with their time and during the annual fund drive, and besides X is a lovely kid and contributes to the class in so many ways that aren't reflected in those low test scores" and 'nuff said.  But I digress!

For what it's worth, some of this angling goes away for college admissions.  For college, some preferences are still there (legacy, URM and athletic).  But at least some of the variables are struck off - your family as a whole isn't being judged on how much money you can donate (unless it's in the millions, in which case it can help) or whether you will run the auction at the next school.  [/quote]

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