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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It follows (to me at least) that the school is not going to promote equally every single kid who wants to apply to Sidwell.  It is going to tell some families that Sidwell "is not a good fit for you."  But it can't stop determined families from applying to Sidwell anyway, and then what does it do?  It knows that if family X gets in, with the PITA dad and the kid who looks good on paper but is probably a budding drug addict, Sidwell is going to look askance at future applicants from your school.  The question is, what does your school do next, to make sure Sidwell doesn't take the 12-year-old pot experimenter? My answer is, I think your school gives a tepid promotion.  [/quote]

I think I see one spot where you and I are not seeing quite eye-to-eye.  You seem to start from the premise that an OD will not promote with equal effort all its applicants -- that it will "play favorites" in effect.  (Please forgive me if I'm distorting you in any way.)  But I don't accept that proposition.  I certainly agree that most ODs will talk to the family, suggest other alternative schools, and perhaps dissuade a family from applying to a bad-fit school.  But my assumption (and my experience) is that ODs will try to give equal effort to all candidates.  To use your example, I believe that OD will want as many students accepted at Sidwell as possible, so she will highlight the positives of every student, including even the 12-year-old she suspects might have experimented with pot.

And ultimately, I think the OD's advocacy carries fairly minimal weight in the scheme of things.  Whether the 12-year-old you describe will be admitted to Sidwell likely depends far more on his grades, his test scores, his interview, his teachers' recommendations, his personal statement, his extracurriculars, etc etc etc.  The OD can't change the record; she only can marshal the facts.  I'm fairly certain that Sidwell's AD has plenty of experience with seeing past puffery from various ODs, and getting down to the underlying facts.

If the ODs did have so much power that they could submarine a student's application (despite stellar underlying grades, tests, interviews, etc), and so much authority/autonomy that they were permitted to submarine an application based on such subjective ideas as whether a child's father is a PITA, then I'd be pretty disturbed by that situation.  But I really don't think they have that much power.  Also, my experience with most people at various local private schools (ADs, ODs, teachers, etc) is that they generally are most interested in doing what's right for the children.

But that's just my experience / outlook.  Yours may be different.  [/quote]

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