Reply to After all the drama, Big3 college admissions are really as strong as ever this year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The title of this post is BS. GDS parent here and GDS had a bad year. No going to lie or sugar coat it- last year was stellar, this year is not anywhere near that in terms of ivy league and top 15 schools. Lackluster overall. Of course the school's party line is that this was a "weak class" which is not true.  Maybe less connected than last year i.e. no Supreme Court Justice's kids... but not weak.  I know for a fact Sidwell and St Albans also had worse years than in the past despite the boosterism in these posts.

I think GDS's arrogance (and this goes for the other Big 3's as well) in thinking that all the colleges "know how hard GDS is" is coming home to roost. Nope. They don't know and don't care that many GDS teachers don't give A's. And our kids are seeing the impact. Case in point: Kids with 36 and 35 ACT or 1570 SAT's with high (for GDS) GPA's in the most rigorous classes (we don't have AP's anymore) are getting shut out at schools they would have gotten into 5 years ago.  It's a new world, and GDS needs to keep up with the competition- which in part, is public school kids with 5.0 weighted GPA's. I'm not knocking the public schools or even saying the grade inflation is a bad thing, it's just that colleges are not comparing apples with apples when it comes to rigor. GDS kids are not getting credit for how ridiculously hard the classes are. And frankly, yes, I'm happy my kid will be well prepared but getting into a good college that is a good match for them is ALSO part of the equation of sending your kid to private.  At this point I actually feel being in a private is a negative when it comes to the admissions game. Whether or not it will be a positive as my kid moves through life, who knows.[/quote]

I think part of the arrogance is thinking your kid is working harder than the top public school kids, many of whom are taking 10 APs, doing activities after school, and so on. The colleges know this even if private school parents don't. I've had kids in both.

Another minor point--no college is impressed by a 5.0 weighted GPA wherever it's earned. They all have their own, proprietary weighting systems. They take your kid's transcript, strip out the existing weights, and reweight so those As in gym and APES or whatever count for less. [/quote]

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