Hey, I went to an actual . . . drumroll please . . . Sidwell boys' basketball game!

Saw Sidwell beat St. Albans in a very close game on Saturday. They do have some good players, and not just the player featured in the Post article (although he was definitely a cut above all other players on the court from either team). It was a nice sporting event -- well played, good sportsmanship by both sides, enthusiastic but well-behaved crowd.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Paging Mr. Aesop -- we don't want those grapes because they are probably sour anyway.

And by the way, U Maryland is just as good as Harvard. Everyone there just doesn't want what Harvard has to offer.

Why is it so hard to believe some schools are more sought-after, rigorous, or selective than others? No one has ever said Sidwell is everyone's top choice -- release your death grips on the straw man.

How did you miss the whole point of this thread? Everybody agrees that some schools are more sought-after than others. The point is, nobody agrees which school that is or how to find an unbiased measurement.

New poster. Those who seem to be advancing the "everybody agrees that some schools are more sought-after than others" but that there's no way to tell "which school[s] that is or how to find an unbiased measurement" seem to be making that argument as a way of asserting that, in fact, there are not objectively more desirable schools. Would people be able to admit that Sidwell is more sought-after than Flint Hill? How about that St. Albans is more sought-after than Bullis? It doesn't seem like it from this thread.

If someone believes in single gender education ( and there is a lot of research supporting single gender education). Sidwell won't even be on the list. I personally think Sidwell is the most desirable private COED high school in the area, but that's a bit like the tallest building in Peoria, because the best schools are single gender. IMHO

Anonymous wrote:Paging Mr. Aesop -- we don't want those grapes because they are probably sour anyway.

And by the way, U Maryland is just as good as Harvard. Everyone there just doesn't want what Harvard has to offer.

Why is it so hard to believe some schools are more sought-after, rigorous, or selective than others? No one has ever said Sidwell is everyone's top choice -- release your death grips on the straw man.

How did you miss the whole point of this thread? Everybody agrees that some schools are more sought-after than others. The point is, nobody agrees which school that is or how to find an unbiased measurement.

Anonymous wrote:Paging Mr. Aesop -- we don't want those grapes because they are probably sour anyway.

And by the way, U Maryland is just as good as Harvard. Everyone there just doesn't want what Harvard has to offer.

Why is it so hard to believe some schools are more sought-after, rigorous, or selective than others? No one has ever said Sidwell is everyone's top choice -- release your death grips on the straw man.

Oh for heavens' sake. Stop already! We just had a nice, neutral analysis of the Wharton paper. But now you're back to rant about how you're still right.

Paging Mr. Aesop -- we don't want those grapes because they are probably sour anyway.

And by the way, U Maryland is just as good as Harvard. Everyone there just doesn't want what Harvard has to offer.

Why is it so hard to believe some schools are more sought-after, rigorous, or selective than others? No one has ever said Sidwell is everyone's top choice -- release your death grips on the straw man.

I just got around to reading the Wharton paper, which I couldn't do from my iPhone yesterday. Here's the link again: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1287.pdf. I have to say, whoever posted the link and suggested that we all read up on "Revealed Preference" and then we'd agree that Sidwell is tops, didn't understand the paper.

The authors specifically reject measures like admissions ratios and matriculation ratios, as the PP at 1/4 @ 7:49 pointed out. For example, on page 34, the paper states, "Looking at Table 5, we observe that most of the top twenty colleges based on revealed preference are not in the top twenty based on the admissions and matriculation rates." If you open the link and check out Table 5, it shows that the admissions ratios are usually pretty different from the revealed preference ratios the authors constructed.

Also, the authors construct their measure of desirability based on a range of characteristics, and class size isn't even one of the characteristics they include in their model. On page 10, for example (although you can find this restated throughout the paper), they say, "Our measure of desirability encompasses all characteristics of a school, including (perceived) educational quality, campus location, and tuition." Of particular note for the discussion on this thread, the authors consider tuition amounts to be an important factor, and they specifically take financial aid offers into consideration in their model. On page 14, the authors write, "For some characteristics, we can measure variation across applicants: tuition, room fees, board fees, grants to the student, the subsidy value of loans to the student, the subsidy value of the work-study it offers the student, the cost associated with its distance from the student's home, its being in-state, its being in-region, and its being the alma mater of one or more of the student's parents."

So to conclude, it's pretty clear that nobody on this thread has the data we would need to replicate the Wharton study for local private schools, in a way that would prove that Sidwell, Gonzaga, or any other school is the preferred school. We might be able try if we had access to data on average SATs or exmissions results which we could use as proxies for the "educational quality" variable in the Wharton paper, but then Sidwell doesn't publish these.

Anonymous wrote:"The question is what school do most 8th graders (with input from their parents) in DC/MD/VA want to go to. "

I would think that if you took a statistically meanigful survey of area 8th graders, they would probably say the school they attend or feeder high school. Why most would care about Gonzaga, or Sidwell or the Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Homework is beyond me.

That is what I was saying. Whitman families will say Whitman. The idea that they only go there because they are not blessed enough to get into Sidwell is silly.

Some families send each kid to a different school, they would say it depends on the child.

That is all I am saying.

"The question is what school do most 8th graders (with input from their parents) in DC/MD/VA want to go to. "

I would think that if you took a statistically meanigful survey of area 8th graders, they would probably say the school they attend or feeder high school. Why most would care about Gonzaga, or Sidwell or the Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Homework is beyond me.

21.37 again. BTW, I do not care if it is Sidwell or not, so don't bother accusing me of bias.

Seems that for many people here, they want the answer to be "ABS" -- "anywhere but Sidwell."

Anonymous wrote:The question was not what was the top academic school - which is clearly TJ. (tongue in cheek)

The question is what school do most 8th graders (with input from their parents) in DC/MD/VA want to go to.

The answer is there is no #1 that would be statistically significant. The Sidwell peeps believe it is Sidwell. The rest of us think that a whole bunch would fall at the top as equally desirable. Somebody made the mistake of using Gonzaga as an example and then a whole bunch of bean counting happened.

Thanks for this, and I agree.

It is very vintage DCUM that you are arguing with those that agree with you. Many don't desire Sidwell because we are quite happy with a 4.0 and really aren't pushing tutoring to get to the 4.5 level. Who would? Oh, wait....

It's not that we can't it's just that we don't want to.

Anonymous wrote:If you look back at the chart that someone compiled of multiple years of NMSFs (it's linked in the first couple of FAQ posts), Sidwell had the highest percentage of NMSFs (about 15%) over about a 5 year period, followed by St. Albans (at 14.3%), followed by NCS (11%). As I recall, that chart was created in 2009 or so. It is true that Sidwell's percentage is not the highest every year -- I think St. Albans' % was higher last year and maybe in another recent year, and a couple of years ago GDS had a whole slew of NMSFs. On that chart, Gonzaga has 2 % NMSFs over the same time period. This year I believe they had 6 total, and assuming a graduating class of about 200, that would be 3%.

My kids don't go to Sidwell, but I don't have trouble agreeing that for academics, Sidwell is generally, if not invariably, top of the heap in terms of selectivity in admissions and strength of the cohort. Standardized tests aren't everything, but they are standardized, and they work for me as a decent proxy for academic aptitude -- every NMSF I met was a gifted student.

This feels very recent vintage American society to me -- nobody can stand to admit that their kid isn't the smartest, or doesn't go to the best academic school, etc. (at least until college when everyone goes bonkers over a short list of ten schools). My kid is pretty smart. My kid likes school. My kid isn't the smartest, isn't the most athletic, doesn't deserve more playing time on the team, doesn't deserve a higher GPA, hasn't gotten screwed by the teachers, and guess what, my kid is fine by me and I think will achieve good academic and career success.

The question was not what was the top academic school - which is clearly TJ. (tongue in cheek)

The question is what school do most 8th graders (with input from their parents) in DC/MD/VA want to go to.

The answer is there is no #1 that would be statistically significant. The Sidwell peeps believe it is Sidwell. The rest of us think that a whole bunch would fall at the top as equally desirable. Somebody made the mistake of using Gonzaga as an example and then a whole bunch of bean counting happened.

Anonymous wrote:If you look back at the chart that someone compiled of multiple years of NMSFs (it's linked in the first couple of FAQ posts), Sidwell had the highest percentage of NMSFs (about 15%) over about a 5 year period, followed by St. Albans (at 14.3%), followed by NCS (11%). As I recall, that chart was created in 2009 or so. It is true that Sidwell's percentage is not the highest every year -- I think St. Albans' % was higher last year and maybe in another recent year, and a couple of years ago GDS had a whole slew of NMSFs. On that chart, Gonzaga has 2 % NMSFs over the same time period. This year I believe they had 6 total, and assuming a graduating class of about 200, that would be 3%.

My kids don't go to Sidwell, but I don't have trouble agreeing that for academics, Sidwell is generally, if not invariably, top of the heap in terms of selectivity in admissions and strength of the cohort. Standardized tests aren't everything, but they are standardized, and they work for me as a decent proxy for academic aptitude -- every NMSF I met was a gifted student.

This feels very recent vintage American society to me -- nobody can stand to admit that their kid isn't the smartest, or doesn't go to the best academic school, etc. (at least until college when everyone goes bonkers over a short list of ten schools). My kid is pretty smart. My kid likes school. My kid isn't the smartest, isn't the most athletic, doesn't deserve more playing time on the team, doesn't deserve a higher GPA, hasn't gotten screwed by the teachers, and guess what, my kid is fine by me and I think will achieve good academic and career success.

Anonymous wrote:
This feels very recent vintage American society to me -- nobody can stand to admit that their kid isn't the smartest, or doesn't go to the best academic school, etc. (at least until college when everyone goes bonkers over a short list of ten schools). My kid is pretty smart. My kid likes school. My kid isn't the smartest, isn't the most athletic, doesn't deserve more playing time on the team, doesn't deserve a higher GPA, hasn't gotten screwed by the teachers, and guess what, my kid is fine by me and I think will achieve good academic and career success.

So now the argument is, if we don't agree with you that Sidwell is the best, then we must be jealous and hyper-competitive? Well, that's a creative new twist, at least.