Reply to The Potomac School - 2016 College List?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "The Potomac School - 2016 College List? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sidwell tends to get about 30 kids into the Ivies each year, and this year is the same.  If you add in Chicago and Stanford, the number goes past 40.

Chicago is a great school, probably more rigorous than most Ivies, but it can be grueling.  Not for everyone.

As for sports recruits, most of Sidwell's recruits are very strong students -- getting good grades in top classes.  Sports definitely helps, but all those kids certainly were in the tier of kids who would have been encouraged to apply to Ivies.[/quote]

[b]Why in the world do they not publish their list?  [/quote][/b]

Sidwell does publish its list, but just doesn't post it on the Internet.  A PP posted this note last week on a Post article summarizing Sidwell's results. A little less stunning than the 30 to Ivies and 10+ to Stanford and Chicago listed above. In 2012, looks closer to 17 than to 40+:

[i]
"Apparently, Sidwell does publish its results. A quick internet search shows this article giving the numbers for Sidwell's class of 2012: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggl...e1-8398-0327ab83ab91_blog.html The Post article quotes the Sidwell alumni magazine on the numbers: "The magazine said two Ivy schools, Brown and Harvard, will be getting at least four Sidwell grads, but so will NYU, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Michigan and Tufts. Two other Ivies, Columbia and Penn, will get three Sidwell grads each. The other colleges in that category were Boston College, Emory, Georgetown, Occidental, and the University of Chicago. The magazine failed to reveal if anyone got into Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth or Cornell." 
So, at least in 2012, Sidwell had at least 14 going to Ivies (Brown 4, Harvard 4, Columbia 3, Penn 3, and the four other Ivies unknown--although presumably less than 3), and had 3 going to Chicago. 
Of course, these are great numbers for a class of 123, but not the same as the numbers being thrown around here."[/i]

[/quote]

Y[b]ou know, of course, this is a bit date[/b]d.  Last year they sent 18 kids just to Penn and Yale.  The total Ivy number was in the low 30's.  And in Stanford and Chicago and it was 40.  This year, different mix but similar overall number.[/quote]

This really isn't all that dated. It's from four graduating classes ago (basically Sidwell kids that just graduated from college last month). Unless you have more recent published data to put up against the data cited by the Post in 2012, it's hard not to be skeptical of claims that Ivy matriculations have basically doubled (while acknowledging that either 2012 or 2016 were aberrations---but your 2016 numbers still seem to be nothing more than word of mouth).

[/quote]

Lame attempt.[/quote]

Lame?  Not PP and no dog in this fight (my kids are still in a K-8), but I hope you can understand why some find fishy the ever more impressive Sidwell college matriculation numbers--always based on the reliable reporting of a Sidwell student to his or her DCUM poster parent.

I did a search of this forum and the only PUBLISHED report of Sidwell's exmissions for a specific graduating class is the Post's article cited earlier for the not-too-long ago class of 2012 (after all, Potomac publishes its combined matriculation list for 2011-2015, so the actual subject of this chain doesn't consider 2012 a long time ago).  So let's compare the Post's report to numbers provided by anonymous DCUM posters:

Anonymous poster says Sidwell's Ivy matriculations for 2016 are 30.   Post lists 14 Ivy matriculations from Sidwell in 2012.
Anonymous poster says Sidwell's Ivy matriculations for 2015 are in "low 30s."  Again, Post lists 14 Ivy matriculations from Sidwell three years earlier.
Multiple anonymous posters say Sidwell's Chicago matriculations for 2016 are 10.  Post lists 3 Chicago matriculations from Sidwell in 2012.
Multiple anonymous posters say Sidwell's Stanford matriculations for 2016 are 3.  Post says Stanford didn't even make it into Sidwell's reporting on its matriculations in 2012.
Anonymous poster says Sidwell's matriculations at Yale and Penn for 2015 are 18.  Post says Sidwell sent 3 to Penn, and Yale didn't even make it into Sidwell's reporting on its matriculations in 2012.

Now do you see why anonymous parent reporting seems a little BSish?

Of course, there could be possible explanations, such as the 2012 class was embarrassingly subpar or that college admissions directors are so smitten with the Obamas that they will admit anyone who may have rubbed shoulders with them in high school, but without any published data, it seems reasonable to be suspicious of claims of unpublished numbers that are all roughly double the only published numbers.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics