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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Having gone through the college process twice in the past several years with my kids at Sidwell, much of what is being purported in this thread is completely wrong in our experience.  Maybe we were just lucky, but the counselor (who is the one still remaining at the school) knew my kids well, helped our kids (and us) think strategically, ensured my kids were focusing on a realistic range of schools once they had seen places and set parameters based on their own interests in terms of the size, location and philosophy of the colleges. And her predictions about admissions outcomes were just about 100% spot-on.  Never did anyone at Sidwell, including the counselor, ever make us or the kids feel that the application strategy would be or should be dictated by anything outside each kids individual situation (ie no issue at all with where other kids in the class were applying, and really our experience was that it just didn't matter, one kid was in a class which was very strong and many many kids got into the HYP de jour despite about 30 applying early, the kids did not seem to be preventing each other from getting in, and other class not as academically fantastic clearly based on numbers of NMSFs etc and did not have the incredible results).  Yes, the issue of where a kid might be a legacy certainly came up and was part of the planning process, but whether the kid was somehow the child of a Sidwell major donor or trustee or anything else really didn't seem to have any impact we could discern. In those terms we were nobodies, but the counselor reached  out to us to ask if we wanted any sort of special push to get off the waitlist at a top school, we said no since kid was already into what was her first choice. And I did not hear of any kid in either class who got in nowhere or even close to nowhere. Given how incredibly competitive it is right now even at schools, at PP says, that were not considered super selective in our youth, such as Tufts or Vanderbilt. Once at college, kids have been super well-prepared and thriving academically. A few classmates of both have transferred, generally due to social issues (wanting a larger or smaller place) or focusing on a completely new area (moving to an arts school or to somewhere with a better computer science department for instance).  [/quote]

1.  Yes, you were lucky.

2.  You didn't hear about the kids who didn't get in anywhere because your kids didn't know them or didn't tell you about them and/or because you're not friends with the parents of those kids.  Even in a small school, nobody knows everything that goes on.

3.  A student who transferred because of social issues may have benefitted from having a counselor discuss with him/her and parents the social climate at different schools.  IME the counselor you describe seemed totally clueless about this aspect of selecting a college.  She's a nice person, but, honest to God, she made some crazy suggestions to our kids.

4.  ITA that some schools that were decidedly B list in our youth have become very selective.  I think most Sidwell parents -- with a very few exceptions that I can think of -- appreciate this.

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