Reply to Sidwell College Admissions This Year

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Sidwell College Admissions This Year"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m lost as to what the CCO has to do with your child not getting into college.
I assume Sidwell parents are highly educated and capable of researching college admissions.

Did you feel out the common app with your child and honestly believe some magic was happening that you weren’t involved in that guaranteed their admission to every college they applied for? 
Because, I’m thinking if you didn’t have the power to wil your child into Brown, the CCO sure didn’t either. [/quote]

The role of a good CCO is to provide real advice and counseling, based on their knowledge of the student and also their knowledge and perspective as an inside expert at the school who has insight into all aspects of Sidwell's college placement process--an insight that parents, by definition, cannot and do not have on their own. Sidwell's CCO does not provide any of that meaningful advice and counseling.

Of course they're not going to will anyone's kid into a particular school. But there is a huge chasm between that absurd strawman you have created, and a CCO that is just pushing paper and making sure that deadlines are met (which is about all that Sidwell's office actually does).[/quote]

They do this. It's just that many parents apparently don't want to or aren't willing to listen to what they are trying to tell you. and then fast forward a few months an you get a thread like this[/quote]

No, they did not and do not do this. At least, our counselor did not. And it has already been discussed that there is a huge variance among the four counselors as to what they do. Also, I don’t know what you are talking about when you say “fast forward a few months.” Lots of parents have been consistently pointing out for months that the CCO is terrible and does not provide any advice or counseling. And before you accuse me of some sort of sour grapes complaining, let me tell you that my kid got in to their #1 choice. That was no thanks to the CCO though.

Last point: if the CCO is so great, why is the conventional wisdom among upper school parents that you need to hire a private counselor? I can’t even count how many 9th-11th grade parents there are who have told me that they have been advised this by parents of older kids or recent graduates.[/quote]

I'm going to need an example of what you expected. As in, Larla goes into the office with you and hubby. She has a 3.7 at the end of the last trimester of her junior year. She's looking at the admissions process ahead.   You and your hubby explain she wants to study chemistry in college and both you and hubby graduated from MIT.

What are your expectations of this CCO?  Someone educate the parents of lesser private schools who don't have someone in this role.

[/quote]

I am the PP you are responding to. I’ll answer your question as best I can without outing myself/my kid, but first a couple points: as I stated, my kid got into their #1 choice and so this is not sour grapes about the result, which our kid and we are very happy about. We don’t attribute this result to any efforts or help at counseling or advising from the CCO as in our experience there was not any provided. I am commenting here because I feel the school has let down its students and I am hoping that, given our kid’s own results, some might see my views as more of an objective observation and less personal venting and expressing disappointment.

So, what are my expectations of the CCO? I believe that the CCO should provide individualized advice and counseling to each student, based on (1) the school’s knowledge of the kid, and (2) the CCO’s institutional insight, knowledge and experience with specific colleges as far as both prospects of admission and fit for a particular kid. This should include realistic handicapping and advice of admission chances at particular schools.  Also, to be clear, I’m not just focused on reaches and the most elite colleges in this context, as in my view the individualized counseling can and should include advice and counseling about how to identify safeties that are good fits, and admission strategies for them as well. I also believe that the CCO should get to know a kid sufficiently well that the counselor can write a good and meaningful school letter. Obviously we never see the letter as parents, but it is pretty easy to tell from the meetings whether the counselor knows and “gets” your kid, or not.

In my experience with my kid, we got none of this from Sidwell. I can’t give you more specifics without potentially identify us/our kid, but I would summarize that among other things our kid’s counselor obviously never read/remembered the detailed questionnaires that our kid and we completed, would never give any assessment of how kids from Sidwell with records similar to our kid have fared historically in admissions at particular schools our kid was considering (even with the obvious qualifier that there are no sure things in this admissions climate), and suggested considering specific safeties that were fundamentally incompatible with our kid’s specified preferences and priorities as if they were just pulled from the CCO’s boilerplate list.

So to your hypothetical about the MIT alum parents, what I would hope for from the CCO in that kind of circumstance is that first of all the counselor knows before the meeting (from reading the questionnaires that we and Larla filled out) that we are MIT alums and that Larla wants to study chemistry and has a very strong but not off-the-charts academic record (3.7 is really good at Sidwell). And that the counselor is prepared to explain that Larla has essentially no chance at admission to MIT based on her record and Sidwell’s track record there, and here are some schools to consider that are considered to have strong chemistry programs, along with an assessment of how Sidwell kids with a 3.7 and in the advanced math and science tracks (I am making an assumption here) have fared in admissions at these colleges over the past few years, with the qualifier that the post-COVID admissions climate is very unpredictable and there are no sure things. Based on our experience, the CCO would not have done any of that.[/quote]

My kid got all of that from the Sidwell CCO.

Your kid got into their ED, so there was little to no reason for your familiy to have have contact with the CCO after November 1, or whenever your kid got their application in. For the rest of us, they did exactly what you outlined.

I honestly have no idea what you are arguing or complaining about.

[/quote]

It has been pretty clearly established that there is a wide variance among the four counselors’ practices. You don’t know what conversations we and our kid had with our counselor, but I can tell you definitively that our kid’s counselor never did any of the things that I outlined. I have had discussions with several other parents of seniors who had the same experience as us. And none of this has anything to do with whether my kid got in to their #1 choice (I never said that my kid got in ED).[/quote]

then the solution is to calibrate what the staff is telling the students and families across the board so that everyone is getting the same message. But clearly some families got it loud and clear and others didn't. That DOES fall on the CCO to fix.[/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