Anonymous wrote:An A- student from Sidwell with decent scores is in the pool of potential admits at any school, including all the Ivies. The distribution of GPAs at Sidwell is different than at the public schools. And because the standards are high and the classes small, teacher recs can be profoundly influential. If the Sidwell history or English chair wrote a recommendation that your DC was one of the strongest students in 10 years, the odds of admission would be good anywhere even with a lower GPA. Practically, though, she/he can't make Yale his/her first and only choice and must be prepared to look at schools that might be a good fit but not as competitive.
Someone with a 3.5 is unlikely to be the best a teacher has seen in 10 years. And teacher recs aren't "profoundly influential" anywhere. Nice to have good ones, and certainly a factor, but hardly profound.