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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I guess I don’t understand what the expectation is for the school or guidance counselor. Pre-internet, I went to the library researched AP classes I could take without classes, signed up for them, and took them at a different school. We plan to send kids to college in Europe, the country requires an AP /IB language test and three other IB/AP tests. All the info is online - just put it on your calendar and sign up. It’s a small public school - their focus rightly is on getting most students into college, not to prepping your kids for Oxford or Cambridge. [/quote]

For some perspective as someone looking in and not at DCI yet, the school just graduated what their 4th class ever?  The school is still really early in its infancy years and I would agree with above.  The priority is not about getting your UMC high performing kid into Oxford or an elite school.  [b]It’s about strengthening the IB curriculum, offering course variety, offering more HL courses, getting kids to score better to get the IB diploma and improving their averages, etc….You as UMC parent can easily look online and know what to do.[/b]

I’m not saying that the school could not improve their college counseling department and maybe they will in a few years.  But if the only complaint in the bigger picture of the short timeline of the high school is this, that is not too bad.  BTW, I suggest you ask around about college counseling at most of the highest performing DCPS schools and charters in this town, how lacking it is, and how so many families outsource this.  [/quote]

I strongly disagree that these DCI priorities should outweigh the imperative to provide appropriate college counselling to the strongest IB Diploma students. I say this as a DCI parent who earned the Diploma who works in admissions counseling. The inconvenient truth is for IBD studies to pay off in this country, IB World School students need to know how to manage the curriculum vis a vis the admission process at competitive US colleges. When clueless DCI teachers and admins advise kids not to bother taking two SL early exams junior year or to double up on AP exams, families who aren't in the know are listening to this crappy advice. The first order of business should be do no harm. The push for kids to score better, improve averages, can't necessarily compensate for the unfortunate timing of standardized subject exams in the US context. DCI HS students need to be taught this early on to position them to look ahead to presenting the most competitive profiles they can pull together in the college admissions game.  [/quote]
Asking because I don’t know, how many [b]US based parents send their kids to a UWC for a couple years after high school?[/b] That seems like a viable path forward for DCI parents who really want their kids to get the IBD (and is popular among parents at schools internationally)[/quote]

This is a wacky and random comment. The answer is nobody. As noted, United World Colleges are high schools abroad.

As a middle school parent, what I see DCI doing with IBD is pretending that it's some sort of magic bullet for admission to elite colleges. They're not willing to grapple with the complicated realities or complications. I don't see this changing. We're hoping to leave for Walls or a private. [/quote]

UWC has a campus in New Mexico, which as private schools go around here has a pretty reasonable tuition. I was curious whether people considered it. I knew a lot of internationals kids in undergrad who went to that campus for a sort of two year finishing school, which is common enough even around here (just for example Woodberry Forest does this to launder the GPAs of football players, as does Oak Hill). [/quote]

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