Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

What about a kid who was in DCPS until 9th? Will you also write them off on principal?

I don't write private school kids off. I've recommended a number strongly over the years. But many come off as gratingly arrogant and entitled despite not being terribly impressive. I don't want most of them at my Ivy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

Real question - do you think perhaps, you might be biased towards public schools? We are considering switching from BASIS to private for various reasons.

Yes, no question that I'm biased toward public school applicants. But that's my prerogative as a public high school and Ivy League grad who interviews applicants to be of service to my alma mater.

When I attended my Ivy, in the late 80s, graduates of ordinary public schools (vs. Stuyvesant, Boston Latin etc.) on a great deal of fi aid like me were just starting to become a force on Ivy campuses. We were Pell Grant recipients, not legacies. Now we're in our 50s, and we get a little bit of say in who's admitted.

My particular Ivy seems to rely on interview reports in making admissions decisions to a greater extent than some of our sister schools. Of the roughly DC 150 applicants I've interviewed over a 25-year period, I can't think of an applicant who has been admitted after I urged admissions officers not to admit him or her in no uncertain terms. That said, I used to work at BASIS and do not send my children there. I don't care for their one-size fits all approach to education, their top down management, the way they hit parents up to finance teachers' bonuses, or their aversion to PTAs/PTOs and parental involvement in the school in general.

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

I obviously cannot know who you’ve been assigned but it cannot have been my DS’s close friends who recently graduated from Sidwell. Your summation reveals a bias that I suspect is by now affecting your impressions and written reports before you ever meet the applicant. I suspect all the schools discussed have very small pools of genuinely big, innovative thinkers. Sounds like you weren’t randomly assigned any of these kids from a school with a tuition bill

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

What about a kid who was in DCPS until 9th? Will you also write them off on principal?

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

Real question - do you think perhaps, you might be biased towards public schools? We are considering switching from BASIS to private for various reasons.

Anonymous wrote:Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

Thank you for writing this!

Anonymous wrote:If there is any credit due for this girl it is her parents and Basis.
Her mom when to Harvard and Harvard Law School. Her dad went to Oxford.
She attended Basis DC through 8th grade and started Algebra there as a 5th grader. She went on to Walls and took 1, max 2 math classes there and then took at least 5 college level math classes at GW, including vector calculus and linear algebra
Basically her STEM education was at Basis DC followed by George Washington University.

So she’s a legacy?

Not sure I'm buying the above, not here in the Information Age. These days, a really determined, super hard-working, bright kid from a middle-class family can learn a great deal from the Internet, on-line libraries, and enrichment camps during school breaks. I've done a lot of volunteer interviewing for my Ivy in the DC area in the last 20 years, interviewed many applicants from DC's most expensive private schools, WIS, Sidwell, Maret, NCS, St. Albans, GDS etc. Few of these applicants blew me away, or got stellar write-ups from me, but some of the applicants I've interviewed from Walls, BASIS, Wilson/JR and Latin did. When a kid is spoon fed excellent academics at a tony private from a young age, chances are good that said applicant is only so thoughtful, interesting and resourceful by senior year in HS. Hint: colleges admitting in the single digits in this country are seeking the intellectually entrepreneurial.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As with almost any school, the biggest difference is the caliber of the students and the resources they bring to the table. In that measure Walls cannot compete with the avg privates let alone the elite ones that are elite because of the resources of their students not due to the shine of their floors. As the rule of thumb in this country that poor kids will have poor outcomes, rich kids will have rich experiences with middle kids.... you guessed it middle. Walls is solidly middle. Individuals can buck trends, but the mean outcome is typically quite mean in its consistency.

You're equating private school outcomes and parental wealth outcomes. Parental wealth is far more predictive of outcome than the high school attended.

But the Venn diagram of upper tier private school attendance and upper tier affluence is almost a solid circle. Walls has almost no real money in it. People focus on math levels but what they are really talking about is engineered outcomes. Privates build better futures for kids who for the most part are already on the fast track. Walls wouldn’t be able to keep up in just about any metric. Just as Dunbar can’t compete with Walls. Simply because much of it is already decided at the start for most. Very few schools actually help you move up significantly in SES, the few that do have single digit acceptance rates and most of the boost come from the affluence of body and not the school it’s self. No coach can make a team full of 5’7 band nerds compete at the D1 basketball level. And there isn’t a school that can constantly take a bunch of middle class and engineer elite outcomes.

I mean shouldn’t private schools be better than Walls academically and resource wise? Walls is also hampered by DCPS- which requires accepting late work, retakes, a minimum test score of 63, etc. They aren’t allowed to hold kids to high standards. That’s the DCPS way.

And Walls used to have very high standards, including when Samantha went there. DCPS got in the way.

Anonymous wrote:As with almost any school, the biggest difference is the caliber of the students and the resources they bring to the table. In that measure Walls cannot compete with the avg privates let alone the elite ones that are elite because of the resources of their students not due to the shine of their floors. As the rule of thumb in this country that poor kids will have poor outcomes, rich kids will have rich experiences with middle kids.... you guessed it middle. Walls is solidly middle. Individuals can buck trends, but the mean outcome is typically quite mean in its consistency.

You're equating private school outcomes and parental wealth outcomes. Parental wealth is far more predictive of outcome than the high school attended.

As with almost any school, the biggest difference is the caliber of the students and the resources they bring to the table. In that measure Walls cannot compete with the avg privates let alone the elite ones that are elite because of the resources of their students not due to the shine of their floors. As the rule of thumb in this country that poor kids will have poor outcomes, rich kids will have rich experiences with middle kids.... you guessed it middle. Walls is solidly middle. Individuals can buck trends, but the mean outcome is typically quite mean in its consistency.

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Anonymous wrote:Walls is a mediocre public school...good for DC but nowhere near the top (or even second tier) local private schools. Teachers are overall uninspired and unmotivated and it shows. The administration is abysmal. If private is an option for you (and you are not morally opposed to private education, which understandably many people are), I'd say go for private. If you are in-boundary to J-R and your kid can handle large/overcrowded chaos, I'd even consider that over Walls. I've had two kids go through Walls and my third is at J-R and I am overall more impressed with the caliber of teaching there (though it is certainly not a top private education either).

I think Walls’ recent Harvard grad, now Rhodes Scholar would disagree with you. She give Walls a lot of credit in terms of her academic preparation for Harvard and beyond. However, other children may need the extra handholding that private school provides.

She is an super impressive URM child of two highly educated academics. She would have gone to Harvard and received the Rhodes if she had gone to Walls, JR, NCS, Sidwell, Stone Ridge, BCC, etc. She would have rise to the top at any school. Really.

Complete and utter nonsense. I’m a member of Jack and Jill, and each year there are (mostly) private high school graduates from my chapter. Many of them are “super impressive URM child[ren] of two highly educated” and wealthy parents. While several have attended Harvard, and other highly selective colleges, none are Rhodes Scholars. These are graduates of the Big 3/5/10/whatever. NONE!

Also note, the Walls/Harvard/soon to be Oxford alumna often credits Walls for giving her a strong foundation. Argue with her, not me.

She did the GW track taking college courses while at Walls. That is what I think prepared her well, not the upper classes at Walls which she did not take.

She participated in the GW exposure program (one GW class per term). She did not participate in the GW dual enrollment program, so most of her upper level classes were taken at Walls.

You are completely making this up. Her 11th and 12th grade STEM classes WERE ALL TAKEN OUTSIDE OF WALLS. They were not WALLS OR DCPS COURSES.
She took the bare minimum at Walls after 10th grade.
Read the article.
Reading is fundamental.

No, you NEED to read the articles. She only took 1 GW math class per term (fall and spring of 11th and 12 th grade, and one summer). The rest of her classes were taken at Walls. Some of you are really slow.

No, she is whited as taking 5 GW math classes. Why are you intent on lying about her accomplishments?

Ok, you’re just stupid. You clearly took zero math classes because you’re incapable of doing basic addition.

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Anonymous wrote:Walls is a mediocre public school...good for DC but nowhere near the top (or even second tier) local private schools. Teachers are overall uninspired and unmotivated and it shows. The administration is abysmal. If private is an option for you (and you are not morally opposed to private education, which understandably many people are), I'd say go for private. If you are in-boundary to J-R and your kid can handle large/overcrowded chaos, I'd even consider that over Walls. I've had two kids go through Walls and my third is at J-R and I am overall more impressed with the caliber of teaching there (though it is certainly not a top private education either).

I think Walls’ recent Harvard grad, now Rhodes Scholar would disagree with you. She give Walls a lot of credit in terms of her academic preparation for Harvard and beyond. However, other children may need the extra handholding that private school provides.

She is an super impressive URM child of two highly educated academics. She would have gone to Harvard and received the Rhodes if she had gone to Walls, JR, NCS, Sidwell, Stone Ridge, BCC, etc. She would have rise to the top at any school. Really.

Complete and utter nonsense. I’m a member of Jack and Jill, and each year there are (mostly) private high school graduates from my chapter. Many of them are “super impressive URM child[ren] of two highly educated” and wealthy parents. While several have attended Harvard, and other highly selective colleges, none are Rhodes Scholars. These are graduates of the Big 3/5/10/whatever. NONE!

Also note, the Walls/Harvard/soon to be Oxford alumna often credits Walls for giving her a strong foundation. Argue with her, not me.

She did the GW track taking college courses while at Walls. That is what I think prepared her well, not the upper classes at Walls which she did not take.

She participated in the GW exposure program (one GW class per term). She did not participate in the GW dual enrollment program, so most of her upper level classes were taken at Walls.

You are completely making this up. Her 11th and 12th grade STEM classes WERE ALL TAKEN OUTSIDE OF WALLS. They were not WALLS OR DCPS COURSES.
She took the bare minimum at Walls after 10th grade.
Read the article.
Reading is fundamental.

No, you NEED to read the articles. She only took 1 GW math class per term (fall and spring of 11th and 12 th grade, and one summer). The rest of her classes were taken at Walls. Some of you are really slow.

No, she is whited as taking 5 GW math classes. Why are you intent on lying about her accomplishments?

Anonymous wrote:If there is any credit due for this girl it is her parents and Basis.
Her mom when to Harvard and Harvard Law School. Her dad went to Oxford.
She attended Basis DC through 8th grade and started Algebra there as a 5th grader. She went on to Walls and took 1, max 2 math classes there and then took at least 5 college level math classes at GW, including vector calculus and linear algebra
Basically her STEM education was at Basis DC followed by George Washington University.

She credits both Basis and Walls for her strong academic foundation—not Basis alone. I’ll take her word, not your useless blathering.

Btw, you and I both know there are many children with similarly well educated parents who barely make it through a mediocre college, before landing a job that barely pay their bills.