As a former SFS parent, I agree that it's ridiculous to try to tell parents it doesn't matter where your kid goes to school. Depending on the field a student wants to pursue, it can be helpful to go to a T20 university, plus, after a very rigorous high school experience, most parents will want their kids to go to challenging university. That doesn't mean Ivies or even T20s.

I think Lauren does a really good job --she knows how to best present applicants -- but she can't work miracles. In the past few years there has been a shift toward rural, first generation, URM applicants, especially at the very top schools. There are plenty of excellent schools though, and my sense is that most SFS grads are getting into them. And once they get in, they do very well. I think SFS does a great job in preparing students for college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Is this what happens at Sidwell? CCOs discourage very qualified students from applying to particular schools to avoid interfering with VIP's kids? This is shameful...

This doesn't happen at Sidwell. Nobody is stopped from applying to any school.

Ah, but since parents or students do not see the profile CCO sends to colleges, do we know who (as in VIP or big donor kids) they actually steer toward top colleges? Sunlight, Sidwell, sunlight!

There is no proof of this whatsoever, and, you are suggesting the school disclose what it writes both about your student and other students? Are you mad?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Sidwell CCO's don't dissuade a student from applying anywhere. If you look at the top of the thread, there were a lot of complaints that "they allowed" 15 seniors to apply to Brown ED. So which is it, they should be dissuading kids or they shouldn't be?

See? Its a no-win.

When someone gave the MIT hypothetical a few pages ago, the response was that the CCO would need to tell the girl that she had virtually no chance at MIT and look at other schools that might be consistent with her interests. And the response by many was "they do this." That would be dissuading (which they should do when appropriate), not prohibiting (which they should not do). Unfortunately the fact is that they did not dissuade any of the seniors who applied ED to Brown. There are some of those 15 who now wish they had been dissuaded and had applied ED somewhere they might have had a better shot.

The issue is Sidwell and MIT specific. MIT highly correlates class rank. Sidwell doesn't do class rank. Ergo, any application from Sidwell to MIT is going to be at a disadvantage. Also (I am not going back to that example to look) my recollection is that the prospective applicant's record was not up to the normal MIT standards. Thus, a high high reach to the point that it isn't worth wasting the applicaiton fee. That doesn't mean the school wouldn't support the application or withhold a transcript.

The college counselors make like 85k total per year - and have how many juniors and seniors to work with? They aren’t a college counselor getting 12k per kid! I think parents also need to be reasonable about their expectations. They are employees paid a relatively low wage in DC and are doing fine. The college admission game has changed and these top schools no longer can get their overly well qualified students all into t20 schools. Test optional screwed a lot of kids, colleges looking for more diversity of all types also does not play well for the majority of sidwell parents. What the college counselors need to tell full pay unhooked parents is your kid won’t get into an Ivy or top 20 because of this, you should ED at a target school you’d be happy at so you have a real chance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent of a high stats kid from another private school...our college counselors made it very, very clear that all bets are off for ANY college with acceptance rates <20%. Those schools cannot be counted on for any kid. They insisted that kids have at least 3 schools with acceptance rates over 50% and at least one had to have an acceptance rate over 60%. Other than that, kids were strongly encouraged to find at least 5-6 schools in the 20-50 percent range that they could really be happy at.

This seemed to work well when the advice was followed...the ones that ended up unhappy are those who disregarded the advice and just put in a couple of safeties and shotgun 20 plus applications for schools with <15% acceptance rates. These kids and their parents are now blaming the counselor for not doing more.

I'm not saying that is what is going on at Sidwell but it is certainly the case that people are upset that the process/outcomes were different that what they were 4-5 years ago and they didn't want to hear it.

New to this thread..(at least since April surge)...the concerning part of admissions this year is that I hear of SOOO many students who are not accepted to these schools despite having great stats and activities. Maybe for yield protection? It feels very hard these days to feel confident in creating even a list of matches/safeties. Very much hoping that the CCO will be able to gain insight from what happened this year.

Here is an example... The University of Wisconsin has long been seen as a fantastic "safety" for high stats kids. This year, not only did they delay notification for EA until the end of January, but they also waitlisted tens of thousands of applicants, admitting only a half the incoming class (plus yield) on EA, deferring the rest to the RD pool. Add to it, that kids with over 1500 and over 3.6 UW MCPS were part of the deferred or denied group. So all of the sudden, applicants in the 3.2-3.6 range with say 1450 are no longer shoe-ins there. That means applicants start having to look at - I am just making up names - Kansas, Clemson, Indiana, iowa etc for that 100% admission somewhere else.

MCPS =/= Sidwell.

Is Wisconsin a safety for 3.6 UW MCPS?

Not at all!!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent of a high stats kid from another private school...our college counselors made it very, very clear that all bets are off for ANY college with acceptance rates <20%. Those schools cannot be counted on for any kid. They insisted that kids have at least 3 schools with acceptance rates over 50% and at least one had to have an acceptance rate over 60%. Other than that, kids were strongly encouraged to find at least 5-6 schools in the 20-50 percent range that they could really be happy at.

This seemed to work well when the advice was followed...the ones that ended up unhappy are those who disregarded the advice and just put in a couple of safeties and shotgun 20 plus applications for schools with <15% acceptance rates. These kids and their parents are now blaming the counselor for not doing more.

I'm not saying that is what is going on at Sidwell but it is certainly the case that people are upset that the process/outcomes were different that what they were 4-5 years ago and they didn't want to hear it.

New to this thread..(at least since April surge)...the concerning part of admissions this year is that I hear of SOOO many students who are not accepted to these schools despite having great stats and activities. Maybe for yield protection? It feels very hard these days to feel confident in creating even a list of matches/safeties. Very much hoping that the CCO will be able to gain insight from what happened this year.

Here is an example... The University of Wisconsin has long been seen as a fantastic "safety" for high stats kids. This year, not only did they delay notification for EA until the end of January, but they also waitlisted tens of thousands of applicants, admitting only a half the incoming class (plus yield) on EA, deferring the rest to the RD pool. Add to it, that kids with over 1500 and over 3.6 UW MCPS were part of the deferred or denied group. So all of the sudden, applicants in the 3.2-3.6 range with say 1450 are no longer shoe-ins there. That means applicants start having to look at - I am just making up names - Kansas, Clemson, Indiana, iowa etc for that 100% admission somewhere else.

MCPS =/= Sidwell.

Is Wisconsin a safety for 3.6 UW MCPS?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Sidwell CCO's don't dissuade a student from applying anywhere. If you look at the top of the thread, there were a lot of complaints that "they allowed" 15 seniors to apply to Brown ED. So which is it, they should be dissuading kids or they shouldn't be?

See? Its a no-win.

When someone gave the MIT hypothetical a few pages ago, the response was that the CCO would need to tell the girl that she had virtually no chance at MIT and look at other schools that might be consistent with her interests. And the response by many was "they do this." That would be dissuading (which they should do when appropriate), not prohibiting (which they should not do). Unfortunately the fact is that they did not dissuade any of the seniors who applied ED to Brown. There are some of those 15 who now wish they had been dissuaded and had applied ED somewhere they might have had a better shot.

But if they were dissuaded and did not apply, they will always think they might have a chance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Is this what happens at Sidwell? CCOs discourage very qualified students from applying to particular schools to avoid interfering with VIP's kids? This is shameful...

This doesn't happen at Sidwell. Nobody is stopped from applying to any school.

+1 although not impressed by school's COO, Nobody is stopped from applying to any school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why doesn’t sidwell send more kids to Oxbridge or grand ecoles if woke policies are freezing them out of American schools?

UK schools require rather different things of applicants (extreme academic specialization -- relative to the US) and pay virtually no attention to sports/ECs. Dcs preparing for US admissions would find themselves in a rather different world.

Yes, that's what makes the process so much easier - as long as you've taken the necessary tests. All you have to do is have a strong academic record and be prepared to talk about your interest in the field you plan to pursue. (DC got to the interview round at Oxford and withdrew after getting into a US school ED.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent of a high stats kid from another private school...our college counselors made it very, very clear that all bets are off for ANY college with acceptance rates <20%. Those schools cannot be counted on for any kid. They insisted that kids have at least 3 schools with acceptance rates over 50% and at least one had to have an acceptance rate over 60%. Other than that, kids were strongly encouraged to find at least 5-6 schools in the 20-50 percent range that they could really be happy at.

This seemed to work well when the advice was followed...the ones that ended up unhappy are those who disregarded the advice and just put in a couple of safeties and shotgun 20 plus applications for schools with <15% acceptance rates. These kids and their parents are now blaming the counselor for not doing more.

I'm not saying that is what is going on at Sidwell but it is certainly the case that people are upset that the process/outcomes were different that what they were 4-5 years ago and they didn't want to hear it.

New to this thread..(at least since April surge)...the concerning part of admissions this year is that I hear of SOOO many students who are not accepted to these schools despite having great stats and activities. Maybe for yield protection? It feels very hard these days to feel confident in creating even a list of matches/safeties. Very much hoping that the CCO will be able to gain insight from what happened this year.

Here is an example... The University of Wisconsin has long been seen as a fantastic "safety" for high stats kids. This year, not only did they delay notification for EA until the end of January, but they also waitlisted tens of thousands of applicants, admitting only a half the incoming class (plus yield) on EA, deferring the rest to the RD pool. Add to it, that kids with over 1500 and over 3.6 UW MCPS were part of the deferred or denied group. So all of the sudden, applicants in the 3.2-3.6 range with say 1450 are no longer shoe-ins there. That means applicants start having to look at - I am just making up names - Kansas, Clemson, Indiana, iowa etc for that 100% admission somewhere else.

MCPS =/= Sidwell.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Sidwell CCO's don't dissuade a student from applying anywhere. If you look at the top of the thread, there were a lot of complaints that "they allowed" 15 seniors to apply to Brown ED. So which is it, they should be dissuading kids or they shouldn't be?

See? Its a no-win.

When someone gave the MIT hypothetical a few pages ago, the response was that the CCO would need to tell the girl that she had virtually no chance at MIT and look at other schools that might be consistent with her interests. And the response by many was "they do this." That would be dissuading (which they should do when appropriate), not prohibiting (which they should not do). Unfortunately the fact is that they did not dissuade any of the seniors who applied ED to Brown. There are some of those 15 who now wish they had been dissuaded and had applied ED somewhere they might have had a better shot.

There is absolutely no way that you know that (bolded) for a fact. Maybe they DID try to dissuade 13 out of those 15 from applying ED - or at least said, OK, you're call, but understand it's a real long shot. But in typical fashion, everyone assumes themselves to the exception to the rule.

Absolutely. Thousands of students thought they were ED candidates from all manner of high schools. There read nothing unique about this situation to this particular high school. Almost every one gets rejected and knows that going in but thinks they have a shot or they would not bother to apply.

Anonymous wrote:This is a hard message to deliver and I apologize in advance. A 3.7 just isn’t all that compelling and neither is a 34 ACT relatively speaking for top 15 universities even coming from a great school like Sidwell. If your kid isn’t a NMF and/or Presidential Scholar candidate and done some substantive internships or academic research outside of school, and hit > 3.9 overall GPA having taken the Math I — Math IV sequence plus all the accelerated 1A sciences plus four years of language, plus a >1560 SAT or 35/36 ACT, you really don’t get on the radar screen of the top 15 schools. Exception is the hooked kids — namely athletes, legacies and URM, but a couple of those hooked kids have the former qualifications, too, making them spectacularly attractive applicants. These schools really know Sidwell and for example understand that a solid A from Math III is a pretty powerful academic signal. I just cannot sit by and continue to watch the Sidwell CCO get trashed the way it is by some folks on this forum. In the aggregate, they are doing a good job in a very challenging and competitive environment. The reality is, putting aside the “branding” element, the top 30 - 50 schools offer a great education. Sidwell parent of senior.

The bolded is absolute bullshit. Any upper school parent reading this, please disregard if your kid's intention isn't STEM research or a top 5 engineering program. e.g., if your kid signals to a T15 school that their current goal (at age 17) is arts and sciences.

My Sidwell senior and several of his friends are off to T15 schools next year -- from the regular math and science track and not > 1560. Another group of his friends are also off to Ivies and a few T15 schools (which I can't name because I'd identify them) with the Math III but lower SATs than you indicate and not powerhouse research.

Bottom line, if your Sidwell teen wants to study philosophy or econ or international relations at Northwestern or Yale or Duke or Chicago or Penn or Cornell or Vanderbilt ... PP's assertions are exaggeration. Can't speak to the kids who want to pursue chemical engineering at Stanford -- but a sizable group doesn't want this and does very well without hitting PP's benchmarks.

Bringing this back to the basics: Does any one know what the outcomes for the year are? How did students do overall?

sorry, "your" call

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not a Sidwell parent. My kids go to a different private school. We were less than impressed by our college counseling as well. In hindsight I realize what someone else already mentioned. The school college counselors don’t really care about your individual kid. They are trying to get the best results for the school. What they want sometimes works in your favor and sometimes against it. Advice for future parents - Do your own research. Hire a private counselor who is your kid’s advocate. Listen to your school counselor but keep in mind that sometimes you need to ignore their advice. No one cares about your kids applications as much as you and your kid.

Private counselors are not calling colleges on your kids behalf. As such, what do you mean by the bolded?

I agree that private counselors are not calling colleges on your behalf. I mean they will help you make a list that is 100% focused on what is best for your child. They won’t discourage your kid from applying to a particular school because it is the first choice of a VIP’s kid.

Sidwell CCO's don't dissuade a student from applying anywhere. If you look at the top of the thread, there were a lot of complaints that "they allowed" 15 seniors to apply to Brown ED. So which is it, they should be dissuading kids or they shouldn't be?

See? Its a no-win.

When someone gave the MIT hypothetical a few pages ago, the response was that the CCO would need to tell the girl that she had virtually no chance at MIT and look at other schools that might be consistent with her interests. And the response by many was "they do this." That would be dissuading (which they should do when appropriate), not prohibiting (which they should not do). Unfortunately the fact is that they did not dissuade any of the seniors who applied ED to Brown. There are some of those 15 who now wish they had been dissuaded and had applied ED somewhere they might have had a better shot.

There is absolutely no way that you know that (bolded) for a fact. Maybe they DID try to dissuade 13 out of those 15 from applying ED - or at least said, OK, you're call, but understand it's a real long shot. But in typical fashion, everyone assumes themselves to the exception to the rule.