The backstory is that when President Obama was first elected, the Obamas' first choice for their daughters was Georgetown Day. But the Secret Service vetoed their choice because they felt that egress and other security issues at the Macarthur Bdvd campus were not ideal. So they settled on Sidwell, where the USSS felt more comfortable because Chelsea Clinton had gone there. GDS' new campus on Wisconsin Ave is being planned with security considerations in mind so that the school will be very competitive if a future president or vice president wants to send children there.


GDS - get over it. It's pathetic. Nothing to do with Secret Service. Please stop whining. GDS needs to stop being so insecure. It's really unattractive.

Anonymous wrote:That is because OP has used the word "celebrity" incorrectly. DC doesn't have "celebrities". It has some people with power in the political world.

So now we've spent pages discussing your preferred definition of "celebrity." Waste of time. If you want to offer some suitable synonym, then I doubt anyone will care.

Anonymous wrote:The backstory is that when President Obama was first elected, the Obamas' first choice for their daughters was Georgetown Day. But the Secret Service vetoed their choice because they felt that egress and other security issues at the Macarthur Bdvd campus were not ideal. So they settled on Sidwell, where the USSS felt more comfortable because Chelsea Clinton had gone there. GDS' new campus on Wisconsin Ave is being planned with security considerations in mind so that the school will be very competitive if a future president or vice president wants to send children there.

At least, that's what some GDS boosters like to tell themselves. I'm pretty confident that if the Obamas had really wanted their children to attend GDS, the security concerns could have been resolved.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1 -- Of COURSE Big 3 schools let in children of "connected" parents. So do non-Big 3s. So for that matter do Langley and Whitman, if the families live in the right neighborhood and the school is attractive. News flash -- they let in athletes and nerds and artistic types, too. Private schools are NOT bound to let in the 14 or 27 or 38 students with the highest test scores each year; they look for a mix of types, and some of those will be "connected".

2 -- Many of those "connected" parents have money and your precious "HYP" alumni connections and all private schools need money. However, the schools do not need or want to be letting in kids who cannot make the cut and seem to do a good job at not letting the kids get in over their heads.

3 -- If security is a potential issue, in fact, (i.e., Obama daughters, Queen Noor's kids, ambassadors' kids), there are few other reasonable places to even consider sending your child (and none of those are public; the days of Amy Carter going to Jefferson JHS are long gone). Having seen the Secret Service presence at Sidwell -- well managed, BTW -- there is no way you could do that at any public school in the area and many private schools wouldn't even make that cut. Those few that do are in high demand, but it is a very small group of families that fall into that category.

4 -- Although we did not/do not currently send DC to a Big 3, we have been in child care centers and schools with senators' kids and lobbyist kids and Postie kids and other "connected" kids. They live in our neighborhoods, after all. Parents may or may not be nice, just as with "unconnected" parents. Kids seem to be just as all the others are, though, some nice, some dreadful, and do not seem to be getting obvious special breaks.

All of this is a completely ridiculous line of discussion anyway, though -- none of these folks (except the Obama daughters, who didn't ask for this after all) are even remotely "celebrity" anywhere in the real world outside the Beltway. They are "connected", yes, but we all come from places where the factory owners' kids or the lawyers' kids or the doctors' kids seemed to always get in the right places, this is no different from that....

The backstory is that when President Obama was first elected, the Obamas' first choice for their daughters was Georgetown Day. But the Secret Service vetoed their choice because they felt that egress and other security issues at the Macarthur Bdvd campus were not ideal. So they settled on Sidwell, where the USSS felt more comfortable because Chelsea Clinton had gone there. GDS' new campus on Wisconsin Ave is being planned with security considerations in mind so that the school will be very competitive if a future president or vice president wants to send children there.

Not to mention that a Safeway open to the public across the GDS high school driveway was not ideal. But going forward, the supermarket will be history and GDS will control the entire site.

That is because OP has used the word "celebrity" incorrectly. DC doesn't have "celebrities". It has some people with power in the political world.

Anonymous wrote:1 -- Of COURSE Big 3 schools let in children of "connected" parents. So do non-Big 3s. So for that matter do Langley and Whitman, if the families live in the right neighborhood and the school is attractive. News flash -- they let in athletes and nerds and artistic types, too. Private schools are NOT bound to let in the 14 or 27 or 38 students with the highest test scores each year; they look for a mix of types, and some of those will be "connected".

2 -- Many of those "connected" parents have money and your precious "HYP" alumni connections and all private schools need money. However, the schools do not need or want to be letting in kids who cannot make the cut and seem to do a good job at not letting the kids get in over their heads.

3 -- If security is a potential issue, in fact, (i.e., Obama daughters, Queen Noor's kids, ambassadors' kids), there are few other reasonable places to even consider sending your child (and none of those are public; the days of Amy Carter going to Jefferson JHS are long gone). Having seen the Secret Service presence at Sidwell -- well managed, BTW -- there is no way you could do that at any public school in the area and many private schools wouldn't even make that cut. Those few that do are in high demand, but it is a very small group of families that fall into that category.

4 -- Although we did not/do not currently send DC to a Big 3, we have been in child care centers and schools with senators' kids and lobbyist kids and Postie kids and other "connected" kids. They live in our neighborhoods, after all. Parents may or may not be nice, just as with "unconnected" parents. Kids seem to be just as all the others are, though, some nice, some dreadful, and do not seem to be getting obvious special breaks.

All of this is a completely ridiculous line of discussion anyway, though -- none of these folks (except the Obama daughters, who didn't ask for this after all) are even remotely "celebrity" anywhere in the real world outside the Beltway. They are "connected", yes, but we all come from places where the factory owners' kids or the lawyers' kids or the doctors' kids seemed to always get in the right places, this is no different from that....

The backstory is that when President Obama was first elected, the Obamas' first choice for their daughters was Georgetown Day. But the Secret Service vetoed their choice because they felt that egress and other security issues at the Macarthur Bdvd campus were not ideal. So they settled on Sidwell, where the USSS felt more comfortable because Chelsea Clinton had gone there. GDS' new campus on Wisconsin Ave is being planned with security considerations in mind so that the school will be very competitive if a future president or vice president wants to send children there.

Seems like people -- maybe just one poster -- is getting hung up on the semantics of the word "celebrity."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other than the president, the vice president, supreme court justices, the speaker of the house/house minority/majority leader/senate minority/majority leader government figures are by and large not famous. I guess maybe among college educated people who tune into the news we can add Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, and Attorney General to that list. As far as pundits go, aside from those who host big talk shows, those people aren't really famous either.

NP. Let's turn this around a little bit -- Who would you and other posters consider truly and legitimately famous? Sure, I'll give you A-List celebs like Clooney or Pitt or Aniston. I'll also give you top-tier business & billionaire tech folk like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or Elon Musk. But outside 3-4 dozen people from those obvious groups spread around the entire country, who are you going to call famous? By your rarified standard, there aren't many people who make the cut.

A better question, given the original post, is who is sufficiently influential to sway the admissions process.

And that would likely be someone, with or without name recognition, but with a net worth of over $250 million. So I imagine that any person among the world's highest-paid hedge fund managers, traders, Silicon Valley titans, most highly-compensated Fortune 500 executives. I imagine that a private school might make admissions accommodations for these monetary celebrities.

Holy shit, you could not be more wrong.

This isn't Stanford we're talking about. It doesn't take $250 million to move the dial on the admission committee's thinking.

Look at it this way: you have two equal applicants. Two white female 8th graders with 92% SSAT scores, club travel soccer, 3.7 GPA coming from Deal/Lowell/some Arlington MS. One plays piano, the other plays violin. Both are as articulate and poised as an 8th grade girl can be in her face-to-face interview with the Maret/Sidwell/NCS admissions office.

One girl has a father who is a partner at Biglaw and a mom who used to be in marketing but is now a Volunteer. One girl's father is the Secretary of the Treasury. He actually earns LESS than Biglaw dad. Or, her mother is Christiane Amanpour

Is i[i]t really your position that both children have a completely equal chance at admission? You'd be wrong.

And, let me say it again with feeling: it doesn't matter who "America" thinks is famous for the purposes of OP's question. That's irrelevant. Worldly world capital dork can't seem to get that straight.

Anonymous wrote:Good lord. The great unwashed, yes I mean you partner, are fighting over the crumbs again. Once again the New Money fights to prove its relevance while the Old Money goes about fortifying our portfolios over what will forever be the Yard Sale of your lives. You capitulate and give up, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations while we go on. We'll be the people who will snatch the the Triple Tax Exempt Bonds from your pathetic weak hands. Please darling, buy a bigger house so we can short the securitized debt that you made possible. Me? I'll settle back in my leather chair and watch your economic lives flickering and die like a votive candle in a hurricane. I rented the money to you and I'll get it back.

This is such a Washingtonian post. No wonder so many people choose to move out of the area. Dahhling, the real wealth is not in Washington, but then no one would bother telling you that.

Good lord. The great unwashed, yes I mean you partner, are fighting over the crumbs again. Once again the New Money fights to prove its relevance while the Old Money goes about fortifying our portfolios over what will forever be the Yard Sale of your lives. You capitulate and give up, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations while we go on. We'll be the people who will snatch the the Triple Tax Exempt Bonds from your pathetic weak hands. Please darling, buy a bigger house so we can short the securitized debt that you made possible. Me? I'll settle back in my leather chair and watch your economic lives flickering and die like a votive candle in a hurricane. I rented the money to you and I'll get it back.

Dumbest thread ever.

Why in the world would you think the Obama girls are not more academically qualified than most of their classmates? Their parents are Columbia/Princeton/Harvard Law grads and the girls were strong students at a top independent school in Chicago. Your assumptions about them, whether its because of their father's job or their race, expose your own issues.

1 -- Of COURSE Big 3 schools let in children of "connected" parents. So do non-Big 3s. So for that matter do Langley and Whitman, if the families live in the right neighborhood and the school is attractive. News flash -- they let in athletes and nerds and artistic types, too. Private schools are NOT bound to let in the 14 or 27 or 38 students with the highest test scores each year; they look for a mix of types, and some of those will be "connected".

2 -- Many of those "connected" parents have money and your precious "HYP" alumni connections and all private schools need money. However, the schools do not need or want to be letting in kids who cannot make the cut and seem to do a good job at not letting the kids get in over their heads.

3 -- If security is a potential issue, in fact, (i.e., Obama daughters, Queen Noor's kids, ambassadors' kids), there are few other reasonable places to even consider sending your child (and none of those are public; the days of Amy Carter going to Jefferson JHS are long gone). Having seen the Secret Service presence at Sidwell -- well managed, BTW -- there is no way you could do that at any public school in the area and many private schools wouldn't even make that cut. Those few that do are in high demand, but it is a very small group of families that fall into that category.

4 -- Although we did not/do not currently send DC to a Big 3, we have been in child care centers and schools with senators' kids and lobbyist kids and Postie kids and other "connected" kids. They live in our neighborhoods, after all. Parents may or may not be nice, just as with "unconnected" parents. Kids seem to be just as all the others are, though, some nice, some dreadful, and do not seem to be getting obvious special breaks.

All of this is a completely ridiculous line of discussion anyway, though -- none of these folks (except the Obama daughters, who didn't ask for this after all) are even remotely "celebrity" anywhere in the real world outside the Beltway. They are "connected", yes, but we all come from places where the factory owners' kids or the lawyers' kids or the doctors' kids seemed to always get in the right places, this is no different from that....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not that those type of people do not qualify as "DC Celebrities" (note to the Industry, if you are looking for your next reality flop), they certainly do. The original post posited that this "DC Celebrity" status is enough to merit special admissions consideration and success in the Big 3, but it certainly does not.

A number of posters, including former students at those schools, feel otherwise.

Really?

So you are saying that current and former parents and students at the Big 3 Schools feel that their certain students who are the children of prominent (if not celebrity) Washington appointees, journalists, politicos, politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, and businesswomen are given preferential admissions (admitted without the qualifications?) and in-school treatment (better grades or priority class placement?) at those schools, by virtue of the fact that their parent(s) are well-known inside the Beltway?

It is good to know that this is your opinion, but it is not mine. I believe that it is easier for a school to turn down an unqualified candidate during the admissions process, with the true and polite, "we had a very large number of excellent applicants this year", than to have to uncomfortably counsel the child of prominent Washingtonian out of the school several years later because they are not doing well.

Please assume that the 5 percent of "DC celebrity" children at your Big 3 schools are there for the same reason that every other student is, because they earned the right to be there on their own merits.

If you want to pretend you're so hot shit that you can't be bothered by such down-market personalities, then perhaps you need a different thread.

Whatever, I'm not hot shit. I'm just pointing out DC (or rather upper middle class professional people who work in areas related to politics in the DC metro area) has a really warped idea of "celebrity" that doesn't jibe with the rest of the world, or even reality. I think that all of these people do important work and are rightfully well regarded among those in their professional field, but the idea that they are so influential that it sways admission? Ridiculous.