Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an STA parents an I spent way too much time on Instagram and I'm surprised by the college admissions. I probably saw 60-70% of the class and there are just a very small handful of Ivys (6?) and of course all but 2 (or even more) are athletic recruits or legacy or both.
Which is fine. But the rest isn't good either.
There are a handful of Chicagos and a couple of other top 30 schools and then bam--the bottom falls out. Lots of kids going to school ranked 50-100. (Then there are a bunch of kids that don't have anything posted on Instagram yet).
What happened? I can't find ANY admits to places like Michigan, UCLA, Williams, Rice, Penn, Georgetown, Stanford, Hopkins, Wash U, Emory, Bowdoin, Wash and Lee and on and on. Most of the half-decent admits (Pomona, Colgate) are athletic recruits. It really appears that almost all the non-athletes are going to schools ranked 50+.
GDS and Sidwell seem to be having very good years. NCS is doing ok (not as good as GDS and Sidwell from what I can tell).
Is this STA class just not strong academically? Am I missing something?

I am an STA Parent as well and have no access to that sort of information on Instagram? How do you have that information?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely no dog in this fight (my kid goes to one of the schools that's considered Top 5 and not one of the Big 3), but the GDS admissions are pretty impressive.

Yes they are quite impressive and congrats to those students. I think the point is that some kids still don’t know where they are going yet so it is a bit insensitive to create a page like this. I am happy to see the Cathedral schools so not have pages like this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What OP describes, if it is accurate, is on par on with what one would expect for all private high schools. Some Ivy and other top 20 acceptances; many others in good, selective colleges where many factors including student preference play a big role as well (such as the preference of many in Sidwell or GDS for SLACs over comparable, in terms of reputation, bigger state schools). Many students with very good options are still deciding. Based on what I know anecdotally about a small sample, I suspect STA acceptances when the dust settles down is going to be similar to other comparable private schools in the area.

To those attacking OP for looking at college acceptances of kids, instagram pages tracking senior college choices are not hard to find. Sidwell and GDS seem to have pretty well-populated ones, although clearly they aren't exhaustive given the no. of posts, as many kids probably haven't provided the info or haven't decided among multiple options yet. For those who haven't seen these, below are the links. Haven't found one for STA or NCS, but didn't look very hard so they might very well exist.

Finally, it's absolutely natural and human to be curious about college destinations, particularly for parents of younger kids going to any of these schools. Most of us don't send our kids to private schools to get a high "ROI" (ugh!) measured exclusively in terms of college admits. But I don't know of many who wouldn't - in addition to all other real and perceived benefits of private education for our kids - also look at college admits as a short-hand signal for a school's reputation, academic rigor, peer group and quality of college counselling. A highly imperfect signal no doubt, and probably not even the most important one, but not a useless signal all the same. And there is absolutely nothing creepy and "stalky" about looking at public instagram pages where kids report their own college acceptances.

https://www.instagram.com/sidwellseniors2022/
https://www.instagram.com/gdsseniors22/

Hmm, both schools have photos of girls wearing only bras, but only GDS has a photo of a guy sitting on the toilet. Go GDS

Anonymous wrote:Absolutely no dog in this fight (my kid goes to one of the schools that's considered Top 5 and not one of the Big 3), but the GDS admissions are pretty impressive.

Anonymous wrote:What OP describes, if it is accurate, is on par on with what one would expect for all private high schools. Some Ivy and other top 20 acceptances; many others in good, selective colleges where many factors including student preference play a big role as well (such as the preference of many in Sidwell or GDS for SLACs over comparable, in terms of reputation, bigger state schools). Many students with very good options are still deciding. Based on what I know anecdotally about a small sample, I suspect STA acceptances when the dust settles down is going to be similar to other comparable private schools in the area.

To those attacking OP for looking at college acceptances of kids, instagram pages tracking senior college choices are not hard to find. Sidwell and GDS seem to have pretty well-populated ones, although clearly they aren't exhaustive given the no. of posts, as many kids probably haven't provided the info or haven't decided among multiple options yet. For those who haven't seen these, below are the links. Haven't found one for STA or NCS, but didn't look very hard so they might very well exist.

Finally, it's absolutely natural and human to be curious about college destinations, particularly for parents of younger kids going to any of these schools. Most of us don't send our kids to private schools to get a high "ROI" (ugh!) measured exclusively in terms of college admits. But I don't know of many who wouldn't - in addition to all other real and perceived benefits of private education for our kids - also look at college admits as a short-hand signal for a school's reputation, academic rigor, peer group and quality of college counselling. A highly imperfect signal no doubt, and probably not even the most important one, but not a useless signal all the same. And there is absolutely nothing creepy and "stalky" about looking at public instagram pages where kids report their own college acceptances.

https://www.instagram.com/sidwellseniors2022/
https://www.instagram.com/gdsseniors22/

Anonymous wrote:I'm an STA parents an I spent way too much time on Instagram and I'm surprised by the college admissions. I probably saw 60-70% of the class and there are just a very small handful of Ivys (6?) and of course all but 2 (or even more) are athletic recruits or legacy or both.
Which is fine. But the rest isn't good either.
There are a handful of Chicagos and a couple of other top 30 schools and then bam--the bottom falls out. Lots of kids going to school ranked 50-100. (Then there are a bunch of kids that don't have anything posted on Instagram yet).
What happened? I can't find ANY admits to places like Michigan, UCLA, Williams, Rice, Penn, Georgetown, Stanford, Hopkins, Wash U, Emory, Bowdoin, Wash and Lee and on and on. Most of the half-decent admits (Pomona, Colgate) are athletic recruits. It really appears that almost all the non-athletes are going to schools ranked 50+.
GDS and Sidwell seem to be having very good years. NCS is doing ok (not as good as GDS and Sidwell from what I can tell).
Is this STA class just not strong academically? Am I missing something?

Anonymous wrote:I'm an STA parents an I spent way too much time on Instagram and I'm surprised by the college admissions. I probably saw 60-70% of the class and there are just a very small handful of Ivys (6?) and of course all but 2 (or even more) are athletic recruits or legacy or both.
Which is fine. But the rest isn't good either.
There are a handful of Chicagos and a couple of other top 30 schools and then bam--the bottom falls out. Lots of kids going to school ranked 50-100. (Then there are a bunch of kids that don't have anything posted on Instagram yet).
What happened? I can't find ANY admits to places like Michigan, UCLA, Williams, Rice, Penn, Georgetown, Stanford, Hopkins, Wash U, Emory, Bowdoin, Wash and Lee and on and on. Most of the half-decent admits (Pomona, Colgate) are athletic recruits. It really appears that almost all the non-athletes are going to schools ranked 50+.
GDS and Sidwell seem to be having very good years. NCS is doing ok (not as good as GDS and Sidwell from what I can tell).
Is this STA class just not strong academically? Am I missing something?

Anonymous wrote:That’s what everyone says