Reply to Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]But in this environment, isn't almost every candidate an "iffy" candidate?  Including, for example, the kid you interviewed last year who seemed stellar in every respect but who still got locked out.  [/quote]

Actually, that kid got in -- class of 2009.  I was saying that a Sidwell kids with the same GPA/scores the next year but without the other things that made that kid look great could suffer by comparison.

My take is that there's a boatload of highly qualified kids and a shortage of truly exceptional kids.  And truly exceptional kids are truly exceptional enough that not every excellent school has one (much less more than one) in every class.  And, of course, that truly exceptional kid may not even apply to whatever the conventional wisdom suggests is the best college.

[quote=Anonymous]I also wonder whether, if college advice is all that private counselors can offer, than this really isn't worth paying $30K+ for.  Public HS have extensive databases that show where their kids got accepted in previous years, and this info is sorted by SATs, GPAs, and other factors.  There are also online resources like College Confidential. [/quote]

College selection/application advice (and quality control re letters of recommendation) is probably all that private school college counselors have to offer.  But that's not necessarily all that (some) private schools have to offer.  Basically, if a school gives your kid an exceptional education and helps provide the opportunities/abilities/motivation that lead your DC to do something different and interesting and impressive, then that school has probably contributed to your DC's college admissions success.  I'm fairly certain, for example, that my own DC's take on what she wants to do with her life has had a lot to do with her school.  She's a different person (and her talents have been channeled in different ways) than she would have been had she been educated elsewhere.

Blew-me-away applicant was a scientist but probably wouldn't have been as impressive coming from TJ or Blair.  Not because the candidate would have been a worse scientist but because the candidate would have looked more conventional, less creative, etc.  Similarly, I was a public school kid who probably would have been less impressive had I come from a private school like Sidwell.  My school didn't provide the opportunities I craved, so I blazed my own trail.  Had I been from a different high school where I was sufficiently challenged or content, I would have had the same grades/scores, but I doubt I would have looked as exceptional.   Just high-performing.

So, basically, schools like Harvard seem to look for kids who transcend their environments rather than just ace them.  They admit aces too, but at that point they've got a lot of applicants to choose from and other factors beyond the applicant's control matter more.

And, frankly, even though it's not in my own DC's interest to argue this, I'd prefer to see Harvard choose kids whose lives may be transformed by the experience rather than kids for whom Harvard is arguably more of the same and whose lives won't be much different if they go to Princeton or Amherst or University of Chicago instead.  While no one from Sidwell's class of 2010 may have gone to Harvard, I'm not sure there's any downside (for Harvard or the kids involved) to that outcome.

[/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