Reply to Washington City Paper article on picking a school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you want to know how good we have it here compared to NYC, go find the 2008 documentary "Nursery University."

It's insane. [/quote]

My cousin was told his daughter was not "diverse" enough despite the fact that he comes from[b] an old famous decent family[/b], his wife is from Columbia, and his daughter already spoke English, Spanish and French.  So now she is at a sweet Catholic school and obsessed with horses, but one smart kiddo who did not get in to the "best" NYC schools.  The school idiot who made that comment was from Dalton....[/quote]

What does it mean to be from an "old famous decent family", and what does that have to do with diversity?[/quote]

Nothing. And fine forget the decent part.  I was trying to say not a robber baron, not a Rockefeller.  And obviously not a Kennedy.  Her father is not diverse.

I guess what I was trying to say without identifying the child is she is a mix of a before the Mayflower WASP father and a mother from Columbia, trilingual and bicultural and indisputably Hispanic.  I think there are many kinds of diversity, but I think hers certainly counts. She spends all her time when not in school in Columbia... For the Dalton School (which purportedly prides itself on diversity) to decide that she was not diverse seemed ridiculous to me.

Maybe the idiot from Dalton had filled up all the "Hispanic" slots, or only wanted kids who were 100% from a foreign country, or was looking for a Taino ... I could go on and on and get less and less politically correct and offend more and more people, but what is the point?

I do really want to know what the admissions officer meant though about her not being "diverse enough" for Dalton... Maybe it is that WASPS are now a minority but her heritage on her mother's side disqualified her?  He was looking for one of the few remaining 100% WASP kids whose parents have a lot of money?

The only point was how ridiculous the comment was and how sad the situation was - not that she did not get in, but the reason they gave her parents, which had everything to do with her meeting some strange kind of checklist that had nothing to do with her intelligence.  And as I said,  I would have loved to have seen the checklist.  Her parents were too taken aback and too polite to ask what particular type of diversity she was lacking.  But I really wish they had, cause I think the story would just get better and better.....[/quote]

Between this post and your other one going on about not being the Bushes, you pretty much demonstrate what most likely that Dalton admissions person was getting from your friends, which would indeed be a real turn-off.  If your friends/family has an attitude like yours about how amazing and diverse the family and child are, not only is the superiority piece hard to swallow, but it shows you really don't know much about the range of "diversity" a school can and often does consider.  The tri-lingualism is indeed impressive, but beyond that, being half Columbian doesn't offer much that stands out when compared with the immense diversity of nationality and experience that is so deep in NYC.  Your friends may even possess some of that broader/deeper diversity and - if they presented themselves the way you presented them - it likely got buried under all that "We are so awesome, amazing and diverse" hyperbole, it couldn't be seen.

Hopefully the young lady ended up somewhere that she's thriving, and hopefully she'll learn to present her own strengths and diverse experiences/characteristics much better than you just did. [/quote]

As I said, as if you care, she landed at a sweet Catholic school.  They are not amazing, they are my family.  And they did not feel entitled to get in, it was the explanation that bemused them.  But I guess you would prefer some country other than Columbia for the other half?  Please tell me, since I am a NYC native and know so little, what type of diversity this sweet little six year old needed in the color of her skin or otherwise since the admissions officer made it so clear to my very humble and understated cousins that it had nothing to do with the content of her character?[/quote]

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