Reply to Where does a 3.5 Sidwell kid end up going to college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Someone with a 3.5 is unlikely to be the best a teacher has seen in 10 years. And teacher recs aren't "profoundly influential" anywhere. Nice to have good ones, and certainly a factor, but hardly profound.[/quote]

The big land grant colleges rely primarily on GPA and test scores, but the elite schools all read each application and teacher recommendations are incredibly important. Among a pool of very talented students, they are often decisive.  This is particularly true for high schools that send a lot of students to elite schools and the admissions officers know that the teachers have a strong understanding of the students. And a great many admits are students who are particularly accomplished in one field/endeavor rather than the classic well rounded stereotype. So it is unusual for Harvard to admit a student with a very strong academic record in English/literature from an exceptional high school English program with Bs in calculus BC and AP physics.  [/quote]

1. Almost every college these days is looking for kids with "passion" rather than the well-rounded kid who got accepted in our day. Even places like UMD that you'd undoubtedly sniff at. Well-rounded kids have been out for over a decade. Sure, they're more focused on scores and GPA, but they still look to see if the kid has a direction.

2. It's not the teacher recommendations, it's the counselor recommendation. It's silly to think that a Sidwell teacher with 20 kids is going to do a better job than a public school teacher with 30 kids, of ticking off the boxes for "is this kid in the top 1%, top 10%, top half of the students you've taught?"  And 2nd-tier private and public school teachers are perfectly capable of writing strong recommendations on the rest of the colleges' standard teacher rec forms.

2. If you're saying that the private school counselors have a good Rolodex that the public school counselors lack, then I agree with you. [/quote]

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