That doesn’t characterize the “entire case” at all. The original settlement and original petition for breach of settlement both occurred before the SSRs were filed. The post HS graduation lawsuits and appeals do mention the SSRs, among numerous other claims, but the SSRs are far from the “entire case” in any of the lawsuits or appeals. The specific SSR academic ratings do fit reasonably well with expected strength of Sidwell applicant pool to those schools (I am assuming Cornell engineering is stronger than Cornell as a whole), as Sidwell claims, rather than the GCs arbitrarily boosting SSR ratings for Spelman so she wouldn’t get shut out. It is not surprising to me that the judges sided with Sidwell on this claim. The specific ratings are below:
Top Few Encountered – None
Excellent – Spelman
Very Good – Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, and Penn
Good – Cornell, Columbia, MIT, Harvard , and Yale
Average, Below Average – None
If “everything in its power” includes having to give a most excellent review to all students, which seems to be what the family demanded, that won’t - and IMO shouldn’t - ever be possible to accomplish.
Hypothetical— what if this student was only above average compared to her peers? What if she and her parents did have a perspective about her talents or abilities or character or what have you that differ from the counselors, or the person writing the LOR. A bland LOR can be the kiss of death at top schools, but what if it’s the truth? Is the counselor supposed to follow the Rick Singer model of dishonesty and embellish or possibly lie about the student’s attributes?
QM, your examples are good. I see it. But just calling/labeling them hurtful turns all this to emotions, projecting a need to defend the plaintiffs It’s more an issue, to me, that many respond from the gut, rather than accept the limited nature of the source info. Some here don’t see a need to be protective of the student or her parents. Not out of callousness, but because so little is substantiated in the complaints. We can only look at what IS on record.
And, as often on CC, some comments are shorthand, not indictments, not meant to be taken as deeper, broader, fuller reactions.
I get your Don Quixote comment, doschicos; I am just amused by it. Fair enough.
Case doesn’t rise to Supreme Court level. Fair enough. It would be pretty crazy if it did.
Grading in Math II is just another example of unfairness of teachers, which is ultimately unimportant. I disagree on this comment, if the statement is correct that the student never took the test graded as 79. Making up grades? Not right. Not something to make a federal case out of, but the situation took place in DC (unfortunately for the family), where everything becomes federal.
I think it likely that the student was put out of the running with faint praise in the letters of recommendation. Nothing that can really be done about that. Probably a little less than fair, if the “gone, gone, gone” allegation is to be believed.
@calmom I agree with nearly everything you have written. But one thought is something I don’t agree with in this case or others on CC
“Top students get into Ivies, the rest go to different colleges. Probably the majority end up at schools they perceive as low matches or safeties).
“Top” students attend many other “top” schools outside of the ivies on purpose - including those attending Sidwell and every other elite day or boarding school.
And students outside of the top students get into ivies from these schools with significant hooks. Like being a recruited athlete or other preferences etc.
It’s part of the problem with some of these students. Zero perspective. Actually I think a Spelman grad stands out in today’s marketplace and culture as spectacular.
Penn and Brown are awesome schools but a Spelman student’s access to internships, grad schools and careers are equal or perhaps better positioned in some ways in today’s world. Ie big corporations, finance and academics where diversity is a key focus, primarily focused on increased numbers of qualified women and minority hires. A top Spelman grad is like a first round draft pick in pro sports.
Only a small minority of high achieving HS students in the US apply to Ivies but that small subset tends to be tremendously overrepresented at selective private HSs like Sidwell. Kids attending selective private high schools tend to have a very high rate or students applying to selective private colleges. This includes Ivies, particularly among HSs located near the northeast. It’s not surprising that parents who are willing to spending a lot of money and effort to get their kid in a selective private HS are interested in doing the same for college and encourage those values in their kids. As such, GCs and teachers at selective private HSs tend to encourage this type of college applications, and values are often further reinforced among classmates and the community in general. High achieving kids attending other types of HSs tend to have much lower rates of applications, particularly among typical non-selective public HSs that are not in wealthy areas and are not located near Ivies. In many areas, high achieving students usually do not apply to colleges more selective than their flagships or those of nearby states.
Unfortunately Sidwell doesn’t publish public college matriculation and acceptance information, but some other selective private HSs do publish great detail. The first one that came in Google was https://www.gulliverschools.org/uploaded/Guidance/Prep/2018-Decile.pdf . It shows acceptances by rank of all of the top 30% of students. There is clearly a correlation between rank and highly selective private colleges, including Ivies, but there are also many exceptions. For example, one of the kids in the top decile appears to have only applied early to UMiami. There also some kids well outside of top decile who were admitted to Ivies. For example, the 3rd decile includes a Columbia acceptance, Northwestern, 2 Dukes, Vanderbilt, CMU, WUSTL, etc. There were also multiple kids ranked outside of the top 30% who were accepted to Ivies. It’s not a simple admit by rank, nor would it be for the Sidwell student discussed in this thread, who sounds like she had some strong hooks, including communication with coaches about athletic recruitment, and running on Penn’s track team.
On one point, I disagree. These elite private hs do end up with kids who have a variety of academic strengths and accomplishments. For various reasons, not all will be tippy top candidates. One thing the GCs do is point the kids in the right directions for them. It may mean a smaller subset are encouraged to, say, Ivies, while plenty of others are pointed toward the seemingly endless array of other good colleges. This is true even at test-in preps. And especially when a lot of the students are there many years, well before hs, when more potential shows, (at least, in theory.)
I’ve seen this time and again. Many kids off to a happy but less competitive schools that matche their strengths and needs. And the kids and families are proud. Note SF says 100% matriculation, not 100% to prestige names. We can easily name many of the colleges fed by these preps- not all these colleges are even tier 2.
I did not particularly see a need to be protective of the student, based on the information on the record. Someone who files a lawsuit is being plenty assertive and does not need my protection ipso facto. However, when people started making negative remarks about the student, I did think it was important to counter those.
I think you are correct, lookingforward, that people are “responding from the gut, rather than accept the limited nature of the source info.” But I think it is mainly the people who are critical of the student, of whom that is true.
When I don’t have information about what actually happened, I tend not to assume negatives about students.
One could say that I am assuming negatives about the school. Fair enough. I am more likely to assume negatives about institutions than about individuals, especially when the institution is one of a type that is generally rather inflexible. It’s my life experience.
Lol, imo, just don’t assume positives we don’t know are there. Or that the school is necessarily inflexible, by nature.
QM, I’m still wondering if (pure speculation) they kept Dayo because, despite the parent crap, they like her. And/or wanted to in some way to influence her positively, while they could. That happens.
@Data10 Schools like Gulliver are also full of wealthy legacies, who are not really required to be in the tip deciles of their class to be considered seriously by Ivies. Of course, it also goes back to the Ivy pipeline high schools.
What I do find interesting is that the kids all made sure they applied to reaches, targets and safeties. Well, except to the kids who applied ED and were accepted, and therefore didn’t need to apply to a safety. It’s a good lesson - even kids going to an “ivy pipeline” high school make sure to apply to list which includes targets and safeties. Their GCs seem to be doing a good job on that front.
I won’t assume positives from the get-go. I will only start to suggest positives if others are assuming negatives.
I have never personally encountered a flexible school. I have heard that the Putney School in Vermont is quite flexible. Summerhill in Britain is flexible. There are probably quite a few others that are just outside of my knowledge, let alone experience. Even if the school is flexible as a whole, there may be individual teachers who are not. It is not a far-out assumption to assume that could be the case. Wild assumption: STEM teachers may tend to be less flexible than others. Except for French teachers.
A similar comment could be made for Sidwell. This is the HS that the Obama kids and children of various other political figures attended, as well as a HS that has a close enough relationship with Rick Singer (from the recent college admissions scandal) to choose him as a witness in the discussed lawsuit with the Adetus (deposition in 2016, before scandal became public). I chose Gulliver because it is a selective private HS, just as Sidwell is a selective private HS, not because it is a good representation of typical HSs in the US.
That said, being admitted to selective colleges outside of top decile not just about hooks. Selective HSs usually have a high concentration of stellar students. Students who are outside of the top decile can still be stellar students. Selective private HSs almost never directly submit rank, and Ivy type colleges consider many factors besides rank when submitted, or similar information that can be derived. Harvard says it does not consider rank at all in their CDS. I certainly wouldn’t assume everyone outside of top decile is hooked.
While Sidwell is an entity, it’s also a collection of individuals. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of those individuals have only the best intentions for the Sidwell students, it would be naive to assume that every individual is acting with those best intentions for every student all the time. While I wouldn’t attribute vindictiveness to an entity, I can easily envision individuals representing that entity as behaving as such.
Sidwell takes its Quaker identity seriously and there is a lot that goes with this that is not what posters may be familiar with if the point of reference is other selective private schools.
One of those things is helping each student to develop the skills to assess who they are and who they want to be in the world with the hope/expectation that they will continue to reflect about this throughout their life. This is because Friends believe each person is unique, none is better than another, and all have that of God in them. This doesn’t mean that Quaker (aka Friends) schools don’t have rules and can’t be rigid about them or that adult members of their community don’t also make mistakes from time to time but overall, they put a lot of intention in walking the walk. It’s called “letting your life speak”. If they are anything like other Quaker schools, they really try to honor each student for the person they are.
I am going to guess that one of the reasons presidents’ kids end up there is because this devotion to equality means that they will be treated like any other regular kid there. (And the secret service knows the lay of the land!)
Parents like to send their kids to Quaker schools because they tend to be welcoming and nurturing with a strong sense of any commitment to community. They want kids to figure out how to be the best version of themselves, not how to be the perfect applicant for xyz college. I don’t know if SF ranks but most do not. College guidance is about finding that place where you can be who you are and become who you want to be. That should not be the same place for a diverse group of individuals with different gifts and goals.
I am sure that there are plenty of families who have loved the environment for their kids and bought into this approach. But you can see where there is going to be a real culture clash between a family that wants a school to say “my kid is best” and a school that believes that nobody is better than someone else. Academically, SF has a lot of amazing kids. I would guess that even among them, their academic gifts aren’t "equal ". But more important, they are all different people. And most Quaker schools have fewer than 20% Quaker kids/families, so most families are really working through how this will work for them. And some, no doubt, are struggling.
SF’s excellent reputation is, I suspect, a real double-edged sword for them as a Friends school.
“One component of the application process was a Secondary School Report (SSR), which Sidwell prepares on behalf of the Sidwell prepares on behalf of the student for each school she applies to. The SSR asks Sidwell to rate the student compared to other students in his or her class on a scale that ranges from “below average” to “outstanding.” Dayo’s rating differed among the SSRs depending on the school, with her academic achievement rated as either “good” or “very good” for Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, Purdue, Pennsylvania, MIT, and Johns Hopkins and “excellent” for Spelman College/”
Is this something all high schools are required to prepare? I have never heard of this. It’s basically ranking the applicants within each applicant pool.
The secondary school report that I am familiar with is about the school and class, and not created individually for each student/college
^I know that when I have been asked to write LORs for people applying to grad school, this question is always part of it. There are a bunch of check boxes then room for comments.
At public schools, the counselors report requires some kind of ranking of the quality of courses taken. Since a lot of these schools rank all of their students one way or another, there is no need to further rank the students.
Why would one be “protective” of a 23 year old plaintiff in federal litigation? She has been an adult over 5 years now and could have dropped the suit at any time; she chose to pursue it. It says a lot about her judgment.
