Reply to S/O, Where did your "top private school" DC get into through ED (that's not Ivy, or a Top 10 school)

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Reply to "S/O, Where did your "top private school" DC get into through ED (that's not Ivy, or a Top 10 school)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Surprisingly (to me), the unhooked, non-recruited kids who did the best were from public school while the unhooked kids at Big 3s did less well."

I think GPAs have a lot to do with that.  Some of the local privates, Sidwell Friends just to name one of them, are notoriously tight in their grading while grade inflation nationally in high schools is pretty common.   A more typical profile for many kids applying from a deflationary grade environment is to have high test scores that do not have the expected correlation with their GPAs.   For a long time, the privates have relied on their reputation with colleges, figuring that their recognized rigor would compensate for lower GPAs.   That approach no longer works as much, and either the privates have to do a much better job of selling their curriculum and how it prepares their graduates for college or join the crowd and start inflating their grading policies.[/quote]

Agree with your assessment of the problem; hope that schools in this situation start ramping up the PR effort, rather than dumbing down the curriculum or pushing grade inflation.  [/quote]

I disagree with the assessment. Colleges have regional admissions folks who are very familiar with the grading and rigor at each school in their assigned regions. Many colleges even reweight applicants' GPAs using their own proprietary weights, based on their knowledge of the grading and rigor at different schools. It would be wrong to think that colleges put a B from Sidwell on the same level as a B from Easy A HS.

There's no need for PR efforts to provide regional admissions reps with this info they already have. To the extent they're taking a smaller share of area privates' graduating classes, I'm guessing this is because of increased interest in having different types of students, or something else. But I don't know for sure.[/quote]

As a former admissions staffer, I'd say that turnover in those jobs is pretty high, so there's a constant need for schools to keep their regional officers informed about the strength and rigor of their curricula.  Some schools do a better job of this than others.    [/quote]

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