I am curious about the parent statement. I heard that several years ago, the school started asking parents to write a very short statement during the playdate, instead of the series of longer personal statements that accompany all other schools' written applications. But I know when we applied about 4 years ago, there was no in-person statement, and we instead had to write 3 or 4 statements on the written application.

For parents applying currently, is there a written statement during the playdate, or not? Is all this complaining based on a practice that was discontinued several years ago, or is it happening now?

I'm not sure which one I'd prefer. When I hear about doing a single short statement in-person, that sounds a lot better than several statements written in advance. I remember applying to 4 different schools all at the same time, each with 3-4 different essays, and that was a really tiresome experience. But the pressure of an in-person statement would also be scary.

We, as the parent community of Washington, partly have ourselves to blame for the applicant treatment at Sidwell. You can't blame the Admissions department at Sidwell for being human and having adapted to the vacuous onslaught of status seekers over the last two decades due to the POTUS child attends syndrome and the ensuring applicant stampede. Literally thousands of parents a year trying to buy there way into the school, being VERY pushy and not self monitoring their own behavior because they seem to think their DC's future life DEPENDS on admission to Sidwell. I say this as a parent who has been to the Sidwell open house and was asked to submit a "family personal statement" in the form of a surprise essay that I had to sit in a chair sized for a 5 year old and write with a number 2 pencil. The AD explained that the decision had been made to do this as a surprise to avoid parents hiring a professional journalist to write it for them or spending too much time on it at home. Again, only ourselves to blame, people. Yes, it was ridiculous, but did anyone speak up, walk out, laugh ??? No, to the contrary, I remember silence ensued pretty quickly as necks bent and we all got to work.

Just as the Admissions team is overwhelmed so the teachers are similarly confronted all year by pushy parents who they are obliged to be nice to. For example, when I dropped of my DC for his Pre-K visit, the teacher was greeting my DC when she was interrupted by a man who stuck his outstretched hand between my 4 year old's face and the teacher and said, "hi, I'm Mr X, I'm a grandfather and also a lifer at Sidwell as are my two daughters, this is my grandson, so and so..." The teacher stiffened visibly, but nonetheless said hello and then looked at me somewhat apologetically. Imagine that seen replayed at every open house for months year in and year out.... a school pushes back after a while.

The parent test was an absolute joke. Says a lot about the school that they pulled a "pop quiz" for the parents, adding to the anxiety of the process for some/many.