Upthread poster here. I'm going to try to translate this from Private School Parent to English.

BLUF: This is a pile of self-serving crap.

Anonymous wrote:
By “strictly enforced” I meant that confirmed cases are dealt with harshly. As in expulsion.

So only draconian punishments will get high schoolers to do the ethical thing.

Anonymous wrote:
That said, I don’t see your point. The schools that are DL ARE trusting the students, and that trust, by all accounts from students, is being regularly violated when classes are on line. The kids are in a room, by themselves, with an iPad sitting beside their computer. The temptation is simply too much for many. You can imagine how demoralizing it is for kids that do not cheat who are seeing their classmates coast to the same or better grades.

Students cannot resist temptation. Some students have been caught cheating. Therefore all are suspect. Students at private schools with draconian punishments are not cheating (see above).

Anonymous wrote:
We’re talking about public schools with thousands of students, not Harvard Law School. It doesn’t matter if these schools have what meets your definition of a real honor code or not. The cheating is a real thing, and I don’t see how AD’s measure the difference between a kid that has been in person all year, with full-time classes, ECs, and exams, with a kid that has been staring at a zoom screen a few hours a day and had no real exams. I know that schools have varied greatly on how they’re handling DL, but I have friends and family members who have described what they’re kids are doing, and my description is accurate for many.

Admissions directors cannot be trusted to figure out which public school kids merit a precious slot at Harvard. We should probably return to the old system where each well heeled private was given a quota and could simply tell the Admissions Committee who to admit. A few smart public schoolers will be admitted to provide a veneer of respectability to the whole thing.

Anonymous wrote:
Honestly, I don’t thinks kids who cheat their way to a 4.5 are going to flunk out of college, but I do think it’s made a process that was previously a crap shoot even more arbitrary.

Look, I'm reasonable. They'll probably pass. But is that how a properly elitist society should be run?

Anonymous wrote:
Oh, and for those who keep insisting that it’s only one semester of grades, in many areas, this year’s Juniors will have gone to school DL for half their HS careers.

All of the public kids achievements should be viewed with suspicion.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused about these posts complaining how Big 3 kids are getting hammered this year. I thought the whole reason everyone sends their kids to private school is not for college placement but to instill that love of learning? I thought parents didn't care about college outcomes?

So why are so many parents complaining about where their Big 3/private school children and their college outcomes?

It’s one thing to know that the $400k you spent does not confer an advantage. It’s another thing to find out that it’s a disadvantage.

True, but when you realize at the end of the game that your child really is a well-educated human being in a way that s/he simply would not be if coming from a public school, and in a way that will benefit him/ her for the rest of his/ her life, that is when you are thankful that you were able to give your child this gift.

I guess all those disadvantaged and depraved public- school louts that are ivy bound are also thankful for that gift.

From what I've observed as a parent at one of the 3 mentioned in this thread, it looks like it was more unpredictable but everyone is going to end up doing ok. Meaning, a kid who wanted Yale might end up at Williams. Or a kid who wanted Harvard ends up at Northwestern. Or a kid who wanted Duke or Stanford or Princeton ends up at Cornell or UChicago or Middlebury. Or a kid who wanted Cornell goes to Washington University, or a kid who wanted Tufts goes to Northeastern. Or a kid who wanted Amherst goes to Bowdoin or Wesleyan. The results are perhaps not as good as expected, and kids might be initially disappointed, but it's not like they're getting shut out. And the waitlist situation is absurd. If those start to move, kids might still end up where they had hoped initially to go. That's my 2 cents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused about these posts complaining how Big 3 kids are getting hammered this year. I thought the whole reason everyone sends their kids to private school is not for college placement but to instill that love of learning? I thought parents didn't care about college outcomes?

So why are so many parents complaining about where their Big 3/private school children and their college outcomes?

It’s one thing to know that the $400k you spent does not confer an advantage. It’s another thing to find out that it’s a disadvantage.

True, but when you realize at the end of the game that your child really is a well-educated human being in a way that s/he simply would not be if coming from a public school, and in a way that will benefit him/ her for the rest of his/ her life, that is when you are thankful that you were able to give your child this gift.

I just can’t even.
DP

Sorry, but it's true.

Karma. STFU. Enjoy State U.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W school parent and longtime Ivy interviewer here. I haven’t noticed a significant drop in admissions to the very top schools (mainly hypsm). For the big 3 parents, I’d imagine that the increasing access for applicabts from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds and weaker public is creating a lot of pressure for slots at roughly T30 but not T10 schools. So for the parents of kids who did ok and thought being a Sidwell grad was a kind of insurance policy, they are seeing kids slide further down. It’s also the case that as you get out of T10 you start looking more at admissions policies that downweight the soft parts of the application, where those big 3 kids tend to shine.

For those who think the public kids are all racking up the 4.5w by cheating, that’s offensive and totally untrue. As someone with a degree from an Honor Code university, I won’t tolerate those types of accusations. Trust goes both ways.

My DC has friends who opening admit to cheating! Obviously not everyone is doing it, but you can't be serious that you think it's not happening to a moderate extent.

Pp is naive. My very much the rule follower kid told me that cheating was pervasive during distance learning, and she goes to a private with a strictly enforced honor code.

I’m the OP in this sub thread. I’m not naive. Big 3 students cheat too. (Plenty of public news on this, Google is your friend.)

The upthread implication was that the public school kids were taking slots at top schools by cheating their way to a 4.5w. Saying that is a bad look, at a minimum, and might be worse.

Having an Honor Code also means no accusations without proof AND no or no excessive monitoring during testing. If your DDs “honor code” means you signed something acknowledging you would only turn in your own work and the school proceeded to treat all the kids like they had zero ethics, that’s not an Honor Code, it’s just a piece of paper acknowledging you already know the consequences for getting caught.

By “strictly enforced” I meant that confirmed cases are dealt with harshly. As in expulsion.

That said, I don’t see your point. The schools that are DL ARE trusting the students, and that trust, by all accounts from students, is being regularly violated when classes are on line. The kids are in a room, by themselves, with an iPad sitting beside their computer. The temptation is simply too much for many. You can imagine how demoralizing it is for kids that do not cheat who are seeing their classmates coast to the same or better grades.

We’re talking about public schools with thousands of students, not Harvard Law School. It doesn’t matter if these schools have what meets your definition of a real honor code or not. The cheating is a real thing, and I don’t see how AD’s measure the difference between a kid that has been in person all year, with full-time classes, ECs, and exams, with a kid that has been staring at a zoom screen a few hours a day and had no real exams. I know that schools have varied greatly on how they’re handling DL, but I have friends and family members who have described what they’re kids are doing, and my description is accurate for many.

Honestly, I don’t thinks kids who cheat their way to a 4.5 are going to flunk out of college, but I do think it’s made a process that was previously a crap shoot even more arbitrary.

Oh, and for those who keep insisting that it’s only one semester of grades, in many areas, this year’s Juniors will have gone to school DL for half their HS careers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused about these posts complaining how Big 3 kids are getting hammered this year. I thought the whole reason everyone sends their kids to private school is not for college placement but to instill that love of learning? I thought parents didn't care about college outcomes?

So why are so many parents complaining about where their Big 3/private school children and their college outcomes?

It’s one thing to know that the $400k you spent does not confer an advantage. It’s another thing to find out that it’s a disadvantage.

True, but when you realize at the end of the game that your child really is a well-educated human being in a way that s/he simply would not be if coming from a public school, and in a way that will benefit him/ her for the rest of his/ her life, that is when you are thankful that you were able to give your child this gift.

I just can’t even.
DP

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused about these posts complaining how Big 3 kids are getting hammered this year. I thought the whole reason everyone sends their kids to private school is not for college placement but to instill that love of learning? I thought parents didn't care about college outcomes?

So why are so many parents complaining about where their Big 3/private school children and their college outcomes?

It’s one thing to know that the $400k you spent does not confer an advantage. It’s another thing to find out that it’s a disadvantage.

True, but when you realize at the end of the game that your child really is a well-educated human being in a way that s/he simply would not be if coming from a public school, and in a way that will benefit him/ her for the rest of his/ her life, that is when you are thankful that you were able to give your child this gift.

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me or do a whole lot of these posts read as "I paid a ton of money for my privileged kid to go to private high school with the expectation that they'd get into a fancy-ass college and I am big mad that they are being lapped by a bunch of public school kids I do not know who I assume are undeserving and not as worthy as my precious darling."

YIKES.

+100

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another private school parent here who didn’t send her kids to private for college admission purposes. We don’t know whether we made the right decision, but the kids turned out to have great critical thinking skills and the ability to write and this has proven to be beneficial in college. My senior has many public school friends and it’s been a hard year for them as well. However, they all (private and public) have great choices. The ridiculous emphasis on a tiny number of colleges is truly insane.

Nice post. Kids at our public have been getting some brutal rejections too. 4.0/36 and can’t sniff Ivies or NU/UC/Duke/Vandy.

Sprry to sidetrack, but is "NU" Northeastern? Or Northwestern? My son is obsessed with getting into Northeastern even though he has been accepted to higher ranked schools. He really wants that co-op, I guess.

Anonymous wrote:My kids all go to public and will likely go to state schoosl.

I will say that I went to a top private in HS and it was a better school than my college was (at least the first 2 years.)

That private hs education is really worth something intangible for the rest of their lives, regardless of their college.

Yep. Whatever gets you through the day and makes you feel better.

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me or do a whole lot of these posts read as "I paid a ton of money for my privileged kid to go to private high school with the expectation that they'd get into a fancy-ass college and I am big mad that they are being lapped by a bunch of public school kids I do not know who I assume are undeserving and not as worthy as my precious darling."

YIKES.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's great!

Signed, the OP of the "we did it right" thread

I believe OP asked for Big 3 parents only. You're the cheap parent who chose to pay for early retirement but not schools of choice for your kids. Not interested in your opinion. Thanks.

LOL. This an anonymous forum where anyone can post anything anywhere. For a more exclusive experience, pls repair to your school’s listserve behind the firewall.

Anonymous wrote:I think it's great!

Signed, the OP of the "we did it right" thread

I believe OP asked for Big 3 parents only. You're the cheap parent who chose to pay for early retirement but not schools of choice for your kids. Not interested in your opinion. Thanks.

Anonymous wrote:Another private school parent here who didn’t send her kids to private for college admission purposes. We don’t know whether we made the right decision, but the kids turned out to have great critical thinking skills and the ability to write and this has proven to be beneficial in college. My senior has many public school friends and it’s been a hard year for them as well. However, they all (private and public) have great choices. The ridiculous emphasis on a tiny number of colleges is truly insane.

Nice post. Kids at our public have been getting some brutal rejections too. 4.0/36 and can’t sniff Ivies or NU/UC/Duke/Vandy.