Haha! Well, I've done plenty of statistics and ecometrics myself, although I don't currently work in that field either. Yes, seeing statements like these does tend to bring out my inner math nerd, and I feel I must set things right.... I can totally get on board with the hypothesis that Sidwell has the best oranges.

Anonymous wrote:8:52, I'm 8:28, and I think we agree there's no single Number 1 school for everyone in the DC area (and I've been bored this week too). I'm just trying to get beneath the impulse to say that the best school in all our minds is the most selective school and, even if this were true (I don't agree it is), the number of available seats in the classroom is a fair gauge of selectivity and not an artifact of something else, like classroom space or a mission to educate more kids. I was just speculating that there's an undrlying belief that everyone would choose Sidwell over Gonzaga if they could afford Sidwell and get in, and this belief is driving methodological choices. I don't have kids at either school, although I know several kids at Sidwell, so I guess this thread is just bringing out my inner math nerd.

So, I am actually a Math geek - degree in Math and Statistician for years - though I am not a Math geek in my soul - so I do something else now.

It does drive me crazy though to see such a debunk methodology and the comparison of apples to oranges with a sample size so silly it makes my math geekness emerge.

BTW, Gonzaga does not really have 250 slots. Mater Dei is promised a certain amount as is Holy Redeemer, BS, etc. So if Sidwell has 100 9th graders but only 25 slots due to current students getting the other 75. Gonzaga has 250 slots but there are only really X (unknown number of slots much less than 250) due to the Catholic feeder schools.

You can't apply statistics to everything.

I have been around here for a long time and there is no best school.

I have family that have attended over 10 of them - yes - Catholic family with a multitude of neices/nephews. Some are at an independent, Catholic, magnet, public (non W), out of the area.

I even have a NMS in my family and one accepted to Ivy but chose a different school. It sure did feel good to get accepted though.

I feel bad for the poor newbies - this site must be more confusing that any other informational blog because the information is simply wrong.

I have no affiliation to Sidwell but I can tell you the moms give you oranges after the game and it was one of my best memories. I vote Sidwell has the best oranges - but that is a personal preference.

8:28 here again. Thinking about this some more, some posters are making several leaps of logic that I don't follow. With the acceptance ratio methodology, these posters are saying, in effect,

1. Gonzaga has 250 openings in a class, for whatever reason, let's say a mission to provide a Catholic education to as many DC kids as possible, but it could be another reason.

2. We are going to let Gonzaga's large class size drive our conclusions about the commitment level (what one PP called "parental investment") of Gonzaga applicants.

Therefore, because of Gonzaga's large class size, we must conclude that:

3. Many or most Gonzaga's 1000 applicants must not really want to go there, because Gonzaga will accept 250 of the 1000 applicants. It could follow (some but not all PPs seem to take this line) that most Gonzaga applicants would prefer to go to Sidwell instead.

4. The best way to adjust for our belief that many, if not most, Gonzaga applicants don't actually want to go there is to divide by 250.

What I'm saying is that the only way to make some of these leaps of logic is if you start out thinking Sidwell is preferred by most DC families.

8:52, I'm 8:28, and I think we agree there's no single Number 1 school for everyone in the DC area (and I've been bored this week too). I'm just trying to get beneath the impulse to say that the best school in all our minds is the most selective school and, even if this were true (I don't agree it is), the number of available seats in the classroom is a fair gauge of selectivity and not an artifact of something else, like classroom space or a mission to educate more kids. I was just speculating that there's an undrlying belief that everyone would choose Sidwell over Gonzaga if they could afford Sidwell and get in, and this belief is driving methodological choices. I don't have kids at either school, although I know several kids at Sidwell, so I guess this thread is just bringing out my inner math nerd.

Anonymous wrote:A lot of posters, like 23:42, seem to start with the assumption that everyone prefers Gonzaga to Sidwell. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the conclusion that ... everyone prefers Gonzaga to Sidwell.

This isn't necessarily true. In DC's grade a few years ago, we know 4 kids who were accepted by Sidwell and went elsewhere - to Maret, to Bullis, and 2 kids to MCPS magnets. To underscore, these are kids who had the opportunity to go to Sidwell and turned it down. Out of maybe 25 admissions offers that Sidwell made, this is significant, and it's just the people we know.

23:42, could you explain what you mean when you say that Gonzaga's 1000 applicants are irrelevant because of all the "factors that might influence that"? What factors are you talking about that might cause Gonzaga to get 1000 applications, and why should this cause us to discount the 1000 applications? And why we should approach school preferences different from how pollsters do it, which is by viewing applicants as "votes" for a given school? Why is it necessary to "adjust" these "votes" for class size?

If you are as bored as I was this week and actually followed this thread (still waiting for most of my team to come back from vacation) nobody said Gonzaga is better than Sidwell. The thread is about there not being a #1, or #2, or #3 - in any measureable sense.

Then somebody said application are measureable. Then somebody said Gonzaga gets more application than Sidwell. (Just as an example)

The thread is more to point out that there is no statistically significant #1. There are so many #1's that it does not matter. Maret, Gonzaga, Prep, Visitation, MCPS magnet or Whitman - for example. Gonzaga was just used as the example, 1 of many. So really, Whitman would probably win if you count "applications" or the willingness to pay a bazillion $$ for a home to be in that district.

A lot of posters, like 23:42, seem to start with the assumption that everyone prefers Gonzaga to Sidwell. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the conclusion that ... everyone prefers Gonzaga to Sidwell.

This isn't necessarily true. In DC's grade a few years ago, we know 4 kids who were accepted by Sidwell and went elsewhere - to Maret, to Bullis, and 2 kids to MCPS magnets. To underscore, these are kids who had the opportunity to go to Sidwell and turned it down. Out of maybe 25 admissions offers that Sidwell made, this is significant, and it's just the people we know.

23:42, could you explain what you mean when you say that Gonzaga's 1000 applicants are irrelevant because of all the "factors that might influence that"? What factors are you talking about that might cause Gonzaga to get 1000 applications, and why should this cause us to discount the 1000 applications? And why we should approach school preferences different from how pollsters do it, which is by viewing applicants as "votes" for a given school? Why is it necessary to "adjust" these "votes" for class size?

Anonymous wrote:

Oh for chrissakes, I give up. I'm trying to have an actual discussion about methodology, and you just want to bicker about which school is better. Forget it. I'm done with this. You can have the floor to level whatever accusations you want.

If anyone wants to have a meaningful exchange, start a new thread.

Goodnight.

Good, because your transparent attempt to manufacture a methodologically flawed ratio that makes your school look good stunk, as several PPs have pointed out.

It's too bad you're incapable of being gracious about it, though. But I guess if the goal is self-promotion, you're not the type to be gracious.

(I don't have much to say for the so-called methodology of counting the number of Sidwell threads in a forum that somebody's recent poll said was dominated by Top 3 parents, either, who coined the term Top 3-Big 3 themselves. Especially when catholic families know that threads about their schools are lightening rods for the haters.)

Anonymous wrote:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf

Use something similar to this methodology and Sidwell comes out on top, I'd bet.

For those who just scrolled down and found Harvard as #1. The paper clearly states....

"Because we do not have a fully representative sample of college applicants, we rank only about a hundred undergraduate programs and our ranking is an example, not definitive."

This is an example of how they may rank schools if they ever did. They are proving a "method" they are not ranking schools. The method is the same used for ranking chess players. They want to see if the method would work for colleges.)\

It's actually very telling because they go on to say...

"Colleges do not necessarily want to manipulate their matriculation rate and admissions rate; they feel compelled to do so."

Which is why SAT, AP and NMS are important in MCPS and the privates here - not that it is meaningful but that is how they are ranked so they feel compelled to manipulate the system. The purpose of this paper is to see if they can find a ranking that can "eliminate manipulation" of these numbers.

So admission rates are not a good measurement - or we must believe this right because Wharton said so... (tounge in cheek)

"In Section II of the paper, we further discuss the weaknesses of using the matriculation rate and the admissions rate as measures of revealed preference, and show how these measures can easily be manipulated."

They also go on to say...

"Although the sample was constructed to include students from every region of the country, it is intentionally representative of applicants to highly selective colleges and therefore non-representative of American high
school students as a whole."

So in short - I agree to the person that posted this link this is a good way to rank Sidwell because DCUM posters are NOT representative of families with 8th graders in DC/VA/MD as a whole.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're way off base. No one has bragged about Sidwell or tried to suggest Sidwell is better than Gonzaga or any other school. Indeed, I made clear at the very beginning of this discussion that I don't care one bit about Sidwell's admission percentage, or Gonzaga's either for that matter. Please don't drag any emotional reactions about particular schools into this discussion, because it will only serve to distract everyone.

For me at least, this is all an abstract discussion about how best to evaluate applicants' preferences, and using limited data to discern underlying motivations. Perhaps some of you have an ulterior agenda, let's try to check that at the door, OK?

I'm one of the PPs above. Frankly, from the repeated attempts to promote data that favor Sidwell over a school that gets lots more applicants, it looks like you, or at least someone else here, is the one with the agenda.

Oh for chrissakes, I give up. I'm trying to have an actual discussion about methodology, and you just want to bicker about which school is better. Forget it. I'm done with this. You can have the floor to level whatever accusations you want.

If anyone wants to have a meaningful exchange, start a new thread.

Goodnight.

This has devolved into such horrible math, it's hard to read. So more applicants, and ignoring any factors that might influence that, makes a school most desirable? The math is so easy to break down, especially considering the number of applicants per slot, and the fact that Gonzaga has 6 times as many open slots for Freshmen. How many kids that got into both schools do you think picked Gonzaga?

The only actual methodology posted in this thread was in the Wharton paper that was posted. The rest of it is just people trying to make random numbers fit their arguments.

Here's an easy one when it comes to the plurality preference: What school gets the most threads on here and people the most riled up? That's Sidwell for sure. And there's a reason that "Big 3" thread has Sidwell included in everyone's "Big (whatever number you want".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're way off base. No one has bragged about Sidwell or tried to suggest Sidwell is better than Gonzaga or any other school. Indeed, I made clear at the very beginning of this discussion that I don't care one bit about Sidwell's admission percentage, or Gonzaga's either for that matter. Please don't drag any emotional reactions about particular schools into this discussion, because it will only serve to distract everyone.

For me at least, this is all an abstract discussion about how best to evaluate applicants' preferences, and using limited data to discern underlying motivations. Perhaps some of you have an ulterior agenda, let's try to check that at the door, OK?

I'm one of the PPs above. Frankly, from the repeated attempts to promote data that favor Sidwell over a school that gets lots more applicants, it looks like you, or at least someone else here, is the one with the agenda.

Oh for chrissakes, I give up. I'm trying to have an actual discussion about methodology, and you just want to bicker about which school is better. Forget it. I'm done with this. You can have the floor to level whatever accusations you want.

If anyone wants to have a meaningful exchange, start a new thread.

Goodnight.

Anonymous wrote:You're way off base. No one has bragged about Sidwell or tried to suggest Sidwell is better than Gonzaga or any other school. Indeed, I made clear at the very beginning of this discussion that I don't care one bit about Sidwell's admission percentage, or Gonzaga's either for that matter. Please don't drag any emotional reactions about particular schools into this discussion, because it will only serve to distract everyone.

For me at least, this is all an abstract discussion about how best to evaluate applicants' preferences, and using limited data to discern underlying motivations. Perhaps some of you have an ulterior agenda, let's try to check that at the door, OK?

I'm one of the PPs above. Frankly, from the repeated attempts to promote data that favor Sidwell over a school that gets lots more applicants, it looks like you, or at least someone else here, is the one with the agenda.

You're way off base. No one has bragged about Sidwell or tried to suggest Sidwell is better than Gonzaga or any other school. Indeed, I made clear at the very beginning of this discussion that I don't care one bit about Sidwell's admission percentage, or Gonzaga's either for that matter. Please don't drag any emotional reactions about particular schools into this discussion, because it will only serve to distract everyone.

For me at least, this is all an abstract discussion about how best to evaluate applicants' preferences, and using limited data to discern underlying motivations. Perhaps some of you have an ulterior agenda, let's try to check that at the door, OK?

What if we went through Gonzaga's 1000 applicants and found that 1/3 (maybe 333 applicants) wouldn't go to Sidwell, even if Sidwell were free? One third seems reasonable, even low, so let's say 333 applicants to Gonzaga are strongly committed to Gonzaga over Sidwell.

Are you really claiming that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, about Gonzaga, not the Catholic aspect, not the strong sports teams, that could make some families prefer Gonzaga to the so-called prestige offered by Sidwell?

Would you Sidwell boosters still insist that, in the universe of 9th grade applicants, Sidwell's 280 applicants are more meaningful than Gonzaga's 333 highly committed applicants? Would you believe any poll that made such a comparison involving anything other than these two schools?

Anonymous wrote:Here's a spreadsheet of applications and admissions from 50+ colleges. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArlRBr9Qvz0mdEdLNzNsRnBKT3Z1dDZ5QTFCQVV1NkE&output=html

Group A - The ones with the most applications:
UCLA
UCSD
UCSB
UC Berkeley
UC Irvine
Boston U

Group B - The ones with the lowest admissions percentage:
Brown
Columbia
Cooper Union
Harvard
Princeton
Julliard
Stanford
Yale

Now if I told a high school senior she could choose to attend a school from either Group A or Group B, which Group do you think she'd pick?

I'd say that people from Sidwell need to get a life.

19:13 here again. Did you notice that the UC schools in Group A are, in every case, larger than Group B's ivies and selective fine arts schools and music conservatories? The UC schools admit more kids. This says absolutely nothing about how these kids perceive the UC schools against Brown. To repeat, all we can say from the admissions ratios is that the UC schools admit more kids every year.

And do you realize that Cooper Union is FREE, proving that price actually IS important when people are choosing from among expensive fine arts schools like RISD and Pratt (or between DC privates like Gonzaga and Sidwell)?

So like the other PPs, I choose Group C.