She applied as a domestic student. The school’s know how to read. The student checks off African American. They can read the box.
So the guidance counselor mistakenly says she is Nigerian, they see she is a US citizen. And a domestic applicant.
Clearly an error by the GC. This would be reviewed and clarified.
Or she was born in Nigeria and is a naturalized citizen. And if this disqualified her from AA status, well if it’s the truth, then she should be disqualified if that is the rule. Then it’s accurate.
They read the lor and one of three things occurred.
They were able to learn about her great backstory.
Or they learned that she is not entitled to AA preference under the rules.
Or they said she was Nigerian. Which would cause the Ivy League reader back to the other parts of the application.
If they got it completely wrong and convinced the schools, this would be a simple matter of negligence and error. They would gladly step up to fix this and pay a settlement. Probably happily would do so. Not what is being alleged.
None of which is racial bias.
I’ll let it go at that for me, there are way too many ills to cure in the world to spend one more second on this case.
So many real cases of bias and problems than the Sidwell Friends lifer who had to wait out a gap year for the Ivy league education.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a formulaic “AA Preference” at Ivy League schools. I think URM status is a factor that can provide a boost to admissions, but will be applied only to the extent that a given school needs to apply it to meet their internal diversity goals. And I think that in many case, they will want to use that to benefit students who are coming from less privileged backgrounds than graduates of Sidwell Friends — that is, to URM who will also add diversity in other ways (geographic diversity, economic diversity, or coming from a public school rather than private.)
I’d note that Sidwell Friends apparently is 13-15% African American – (pulling stats from another site) – so it’s not as if a black Sidwell grad is some sort of anomaly.
I think the problem is with the world “entitled” (on many levels).
My guess is that the kid probably did have a conflict with the math teacher, but it probably has nothing whatsoever to do with race or national origin. There are some people who go through life alienating a lot of others with their behavior or attitudes, but never develop the insight to realize that the negativity they engender is tied to their own actions as opposed to some external quality.
“One of the reasons I read her family was upset about the counselor portraying her as Nigerian, and not African American”
They believe college admissions officers don’t know where Nigeria is? Or don’t realize she’s in America?
In a legal trial, once you show a witness has lied, pretty much all of the testimony from that witness can be ignored. There are simply too many ridiculous statements made in the claims to have faith in the rest of them. A Superior Court and a Court of Appeals, which presumably has much more information than anyone here, rejected the claims in what appears to be fairly dismissive language (“cited no evidence” - ouch)
“My guess is that the kid probably did have a conflict with the math teacher, but it probably has nothing whatsoever to do with race or national origin. There are some people who go through life alienating a lot of others with their behavior or attitudes, but never develop the insight to realize that the negativity they engender is tied to their own actions as opposed to some external quality.”
Perhaps instead, it was the 3 teachers who had a problem accurately calculating (and actually falsified!) grades that did something to alienate the student?
Perhaps putting erroneous grades on a student’s transcript is a negativity engendered action?
I think having trouble accurately reporting grades on a transcript of a HS that costs over 40,000$ /year is an external quality that I can do without if I am a student.
Her parents’ birthplace, Nigeria, would be on the Common App she filled out. And as so many Nigerian origin kids are stellar, no college auto diss for being of Nigerian parentage.
Her citizenship is also something she would note on the CA. Colleges would see it.
And in one case of misgrading, it’s said the teacher forgot to eliminate the lowest quiz/test grade for that whole class. That’s what took her from an A- to an A. Sloppy. Racism?
Two math teachers. Two math classes.
Her parents asserted retaliation stemmed from a separate legal dispute between the older sister and the math dept. Asserted. Who knows?
Someone want to tell me her rigor and grades, beyond math, and ECs other than running? How well she came across in written parts of the app?
Of course you can show any sympathy or empathy you want. But we don’t know much here. "Perhaps " doesn’t tell us what did occur. Or not.
The student could have a 220 PSAT and reach commended status with a much lower relative SAT score. Does anyone know the student’s SAT or ACT score taken while she was in HS? Seems like that would have been mentioned…or did I miss it?
But you the parent and the student are your own best advocate.
A relative of mine, their children go to the premier private day school in their area. I have another relative who’s children go to a lower rated large public school. My own children went to a high rated public school that was very small. The thing that was the same at every school and what my relatives all complained about?
That the counseling department had items they didn’t follow up on. Things fell through the cracks, items didn’t get sent in time. This was true at the school that charged $30,000/year and true at the low rated large public school.
You know why my kids experience went better? Because I and my kid made a checklist and made sure that we were on top of our applications. Us, we were the difference.
The difference between the expensive school and the large public? The private school knew the admissions staffs and could call them when things went sideways and have them accept things that were needed late.
Yes I know that when you are paying that much you expect the counseling office to handle things and act like a private counselor. I really don’t feel that Sidwell meant to have this outcome. It sounds like the parents were difficult, and that they expected a lot from the counseling department.
lookingforward has observed that “perhaps” doesn’t tell what occurred. I agree with that.
But it seems to me that many of the people who have posted here have been quite negative about the student and family, based on what appear to me to be assumptions, rather than statements of fact.
The family did bring a legal case. That much is for sure. People are entitled to bring legal cases to enforce their rights. I have heard of lawsuits that are further to the side of frivolous than this.
Any time one mentions the case of an excellent student, it is obviously the safe bet to say that the student will not get into any Ivy, just on the sheer odds. This student actually was admitted to an Ivy after a gap year, and apparently also to Williams, which I believe to be the top LAC in the country.
I would be surprised if National Merit Scholars made up the majority of the class at any college other than Caltech. Don’t the Ivies have a lot of students who are Commended, and would have been National Merit Scholars had they earned the same PSAT in a state with a lower cut-off? The Ivies also turn down students with PSAT scores that would have made them National Merit Scholars in any state, not just their home states with the lower cut-offs. So I don’t see the National Merit Commended status as disqualifying for an Ivy, when it was earned in DC.
@QuantMech , speaking for my own negative thoughts on the family, these are not based on assumptions.
The family wanted the girl to be described as gifted at math, but she had to sue to bring her grade up to an 89%. Smart, but gifted? ?
And it is hard to sympathize with a person that believes she is Ivy material, but can’t figure out that she should have a backup plan in case she gets rejected from the Ivies.
Nothing in the case claimed that the counselor called the girl a Nigerian. They complained that the counselor referred to her Nigerian heritage, something she herself had done in her essay. Plus, her name was Dayo Adetwu. I don’t have comprehensive knowledge of African names, but my experience tells me that’s a Nigerian name. Plus, the other information on her application about her parents would have indicated that they were educated in Nigeria.
There is a definite subculture of super-educated, crazy-rich Nigerians out there. I am privileged to be friendly with a few of them, and I have met lots more at their weddings and other family events. Trust me, Ivy League admissions people have seen many, many Nigerian-American applicants.
Another implication of that, however, is that it rings false to suggest that the parents did not understand the American educational system or the culture of Sidwell Friends. The Nigerian parents and children I have met are very sophisticated about such things (and about athletic recruiting, too).
And this isn’t the Adetu’s first experience with college applications. It looks like her older sister, Lola, possibly (probably?) attended Georgetown. Oh, and Lola filed a discrimination complaint with the DC Office of Human Rights against Sidwell Friends in 2011.
I am friends with someone on an Ivy adcom. What he says (this was in our own context, also domestic applicants of a different country origin), is that not necessarily at all ivies but certainly at his, anything that adds to diversity* is a plus. So with the citizenship/African American boxes already ticked on the app, the Nigerian aspect being highlighted would be a plus - not a minus - at least at that ivy. I can’t remember if the list of schools she applied to was published, but I’m sure it’s on there - it’s one of the 3 initials that everyone uses.
*To clarify, they are not only interested in the “diversity” indicators on CDS etc, but in actually putting together an interesting and vibrant class with different perspectives.
Supposedly, she also mentioned the NIgerian heritage in her own essay.
QM, yep, even a National based on the PSAT isn’t an Ivy tip. Partly because lots of those kids reach that, partly because it’s not the SAT. The 720 chem isn’t bad. It’s just not the higher range a toppy top will see. And I think it’s her only score mentioned. Alone, it doesn’t tell us anything.
On CC we often suggest that having no CYA plan is not smart. And a prep getting 100% matriculation to college never means all get into tippy tops or even anything more than a safety. When paid private counselors suggest these results, we tend to jump. No way. Our smell-o-meters click on.
We don’t know how she got into Penn. Or how she did there. Just graduating in engineering doesn’t fill in the blanks.
I have only one year’s datum, but it looks as though roughly 15% of the Sidwell Friends’ graduates were admitted to some Ivy in that year. I would imagine that the great majority of the parents of Sidwell Friends’ students are convinced that their child should be in the top 15%, surely. Numerically impossible.
I have seen the current college applications frenzy turn pretty normal parents into neurotic worriers (myself included), if their child is clearly Ivy-admissible, but not an Ivy-shoe-in, if there even is such a thing. Yes, my child’s list had back-ups, which were great if Plan A did not work out.
Sure, the Ivies are looking beyond scores. Sure, there is room to score above 720. I just don’t think that it is an indicator of a weak student, and some posters seemed to be making light of the student’s academic qualifications.
In my experience, students now have many conflicting obligations in addition to their classwork–more than when I was in school. School teams are often absent from class. I believe the local debate team was gone every Friday for an entire semester. The teachers generally have to put up with this. It is easy to envision a math teacher being willing to accommodate the school varsity or junior-varsity athletes (even if grudgingly), but thinking that school should take priority over a travel team. It is also easy to envision a student thinking that anyone good enough to be on a travel team should certainly be accommodated by the school, and saying so. Immovable object meets irresistible force. I would guess that is most of the story behind Math II, aside from the issue of whether the one test was taken or not.
Also, it would not be unreasonable, really, for the Math II teacher to feel that if the student was prioritizing athletics over math, the difficulty of learning the material while missing class would only be worse in Math III, and therefore the student should not take it.
As far as “how she got into Penn,” well, I imagine she applied.
“some posters seemed to be making light of the student’s academic qualifications.” Lol, some of us have zero idea what those were. I do include myself.
I’m sure SF know how to accommodate athletic schedules.
At my university, different faculty members have different levels of accommodation for athletes, even though the university has a uniform policy. It seems entirely plausible to me that a teacher at Sidwell Friends will accommodate members of school teams, but be less willing to accommodate members of travel teams. It’s not a stretch to think that.
I am willing to agree that we don’t exactly know what the student’s academic qualifications were, but I would not say that I have zero idea. They were apparently good enough to get her into Penn, taking whatever she did during the gap year into account. The data we do have seem okay, aside from the C/C+.
Perhaps instead of writing that some posters were “making light” of her qualifications (trying to be polite, there), I should have said that some posters were “unduly negative” about her academic qualifications, which is also true and fits with the limited information.
Bringing speculative lawsuits is generally NOT a good way to resolve problems when it is important to maintain an ongoing positive relationship with the party being sued. It sometimes makes sense if there is a clear policy of discrimination that needs to be addressed – but in those cases the people are usually suing for injunctive relief rather than money damages. Not “change my grade” – but it could be a matter of requiring a school to provide ADA accommodations to a disabled student, or litigating the rights of a transgendered student when it comes to choice of clothing or which school bathroom to use.
Everyone has a right to equal treatment, but no one has a right to favorable treatment. Smart students, and their parents, will understand that the path to the advanced classes in a school is not to end up bickering about borderline grades (example – needing to litigate over the dropping of a lower grade in order to boost the semester’s grade above the 93 cut off for an “A”) – but to work to the level where there is a comfortable margin so no need to worry about the cut off. That is --there are certain to be other kids in the math class who have scored 95+ on all their exams … especially given that it’s math. (It really is possible for a math kid to miss class all the time and score 100% on exams — because the kids who are truly gifted in math find the high school curriculum to be easy and intuitive and are often spending their free time working independently on more advanced stuff.)
So whatever the academic credentials of this kid, it is very dumb thing indeed to try to resolve this particular problem with a lawsuit.
If a student wants good recs for college then the student needs to impress the teachers and GC’s with their positive attributes (whether it is academic brilliance, class participation, leadership — but the point is, if the kid wants to get into an Ivy, then step one is to wow the high school teachers.) It’s actually quite common for teachers to make detail-based errors in gradings, such as misrecording a grade. The solution to that is generally a polite conversation.
So it’s not that there is anything wrong with this kid’s grades or scores as they have been disclosed – it’s just that those aren’t competitive within the student’s own school for admission to the schools she targeted. Because it’s a pretty sure bet that when she was worrying about the 93 point cutoff for an A, there were other kids in the same class who had 98’s.
I’m way behind but did want to comment on an early comment about subjectivity in Math grading. In our HS each problem is graded on a 5 point scale. If you get the correct answer, you get either a 4 or a 5. A 4 is “the answer is correct but it is not the most elegant solution”. And a 4 is an A-/A. Seriously.
I don’t think the family has any other children in the school, and probably they do not have identifiable relatives with children in the school, so maintaining a relationship is probably not high on their minds. (Later enrollees: No, no, my last name is Uteda, no relation to Adetu.)
I agree with you, in general about lawsuits. We certainly have never sued anyone! And that is not to say that the local school never upset us.
Whether a gifted math student can miss class “all the time” and still score 100% on exams depends a lot on the nature of the exams. Whether a gifted student finds the high school curriculum to be “easy and intuitive” depends a lot on what the nature of Math III at Sidwell Friends is. I don’t know about that. I do know that it is possible for a math course to be sufficiently challenging that even gifted students are working hard on it. I have been in quite a few university math classes where the high scores were well below 98. No reason the same could not be possible in high school.
I recall reading that some famous physicist–can’t remember who it was now, might have read about it in Sheldon Glashow’s autobiography–got a low grade in a thermodynamics class at Cornell because the professor had invented his own symbols, renaming all of the common thermodynamic functions. Then he asked questions on the final in his own notation with no translation! That is an extreme case, but it is certainly possible to ask questions where “being there” helps even a gifted student.
I haven’t read this whole thread, but I’ve followed it on a different message board.
This isn’t going to the Supreme Court. The odds that the Supreme Court will accept it are worse than those you have when to buy a Powerball lottery ticket. There was no trial here; the lower court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment–and ordered plaintiffs to pay roughtly $34,000 to Sidwell for legal fees.
Nigerian-Americans are seriously overrepresented in top colleges. Back in the 70s, when Hispanics first benefited from affirmative action, Cuban Americans became serious overrepresented. Definitions were changed so they no longer qualified for affirmative action at many, if not most, schools. There’s a book–I think Amy Chua wrote it-?-which lists the 6 most successful groups of recent immigrants; Nigerians are on it.
In this case, as others have noted, Dayo herself wrote an essay which said her parents were Nigerian immigrants. So, it’s hard to fault the counselor .
I don’t know if this is mentioned in this thread, but Sidwell had a form on which it compared the applicant to others in the same class as Sidwell who were applying to the same school. Dayo was listed as excellent on the form submitted to Spelman College. She and her parents argued that the same rating had to be given to her on the form sent to other colleges to which she was applying. That isn’t Sidwell’ practice.
Moroever she withdrew her apps from several colleges. She wasn’t rejected everywhere.
