The real-world impact is simply that a lot of employers do background checks, and a person’s name showing up on a lawsuit is public record. The background checks probably don’t typically do much more than report the nature of the lawsuit and outcome.
It takes very little in an employment context to knock a candidate out of contention. The employers typically want to winnow down a large pool of applicants to a handful of well-qualified people to interview. They might use all sorts of screens to get to that point.
I don’t think we can assume the athletics was treated as just a good HS EC. if not recruited. This is especially true at colleges that need to fill more athletic roster spots that they have recruited athletes. The lawsuit mentions 2 colleges Dayo was admitted to after the gap year – Penn and Williams. While we don’t have much information about those specific colleges, we do for others in their athletic conference.
Both sides of the Harvard lawsuit agree that an athletic rating of 2 does not indicate and is not treated like just a good EC, even though they are not recruited athletes. However, the degree of preference is for this group is obviously far smaller than for recruited athletes. Similarly the Amherst reports indicates NESCAC rules allow 2 endorsed by coaches “athletic factor” recruits per team, aside from football. Those 2 often have a large admissions preference, but there are also “coded” athletes who are not endorsed by coaches, yet still get a significant admissions preference. Considering Williams athletic successes (has won NACDA Director’s Cup for best overall in division during 19 of past 20 years), I’d expect at least a great an athletic preference at Williams.
Sidwell’s counselor testified that is what they do. Doing that would tend to be beneficial to the students who are applying to less popular schools. That is, let’s assume that Sidwell has a bunch of highly competitive students who routinely apply to top tier schools and certain state flagships, but rarely apply to HBCU’s or college-that-change-lives types of schools, or schools that show up on the US News regional lists So let’s hypothesize a B student at Sidwell who ranks in the bottom half of the class and is applying to, say, Goucher. By tailoring a SSR report to Goucher applicants only, the school is giving them a boost.
So if the litigant in this case was “excellent” for Sidwell but only “good” or “very good” for the top tier schools – it’s likely then “good” or “very good” is probably the best she would get if the school used a single, school-wide SSR. Their practice of individuating the SSR’s is probably intended to avoid putting Sidwell kids at a disadvantage when applying to non-elite colleges because of the high academic expectations of the school.
At the risk of being repetitive, I don’t write “in general” for every single sentence.although that is what I meant. Similarly, I was intentionally being overly simplistic by saying “just an EC;” there are gradations to everything, and they usually vary by college. And I was further limiting the discussion to the colleges listed on the lawsuit as schools to which she applied as a senior at Sidwell, which for the most part are D1. Amherst and Williams, in addition to not have been appliedtooriginally, are D3, so recruiting rules are slightly different and both those schools hive a higher than average percentage of student-athletes by virtue of its smaller student body size but relatively large number of teams.
You didn’t write “in general” for any sentence of the referenced post, or any similar statement to that effect. She did apply to Harvard while at Sidwell, which was one of the specific colleges I referenced. Like Harvard, many of the other colleges on the Sidwell list have significantly more spots on the athletic roster than they do recruited athletes. I believe positive feedback from the athletic department/coaches due to sprint times on the border of official athletic recruiting and beyond team standards as listed on the respective college websites was relevant at many colleges on her list. It’s also likely an important factor at the two listed colleges for which she was admitted, including the college where she joined later the track team as a freshman.
She didn’t apply to Williams while at Sidwell, so we don’t know if she would have been admitted if she had. The main thing that I’m noticing is that there isn’t any kind of smoking gun as far as Sidwell’s behavior went regarding the college applications. The judges didn’t seem to think so since they stuck the parents with a chunk of the legal costs.
I don’t think it’s that complicated. I used to joke that I think that there were probably at least 20% of my class of 80 that were labeled as the top 10% of the class. (Which way back then I think was what was asked, as opposed to the more granular questions they ask now.) But say even though you have no official ranking you could make a ranking of your students. If kid #20, still an excellent student, but say they got B’s in a foreign language, and they are part of a group applying to MIT. The school has the choice to say they are not in the tippy top group because they suck at Latin, or to say they do because they are great at science. Or they give them a very good, but not top rating for MIT, because there are kids who were great at both, or who got better summer internships or whatever. But you don’t want that #20 kid to get shut out so when they are the only kid applying to a college, then you give them the tippy top rating. At a small school it’s not that hard to know students well and to fudge the numbers.
If she rated “excellent,” let’s remember, the higher ratings per the CA are: "Excellent (top 10%,) “Outstanding (top 5%,)” and “One of the top few encountered in my career.”
She’s two notches down from the top category. Enough for some to speculate she “should have” gotten admits? Not. It’s a hesitation. We have no idea if she merited this or not.
And if she were a recruited or a wink-wink athletic ‘maybe,’ it doesn’t seem to have proved out in her Penn track record, as someone else pointed out.
She competed in track meets, representing Penn while still a freshman. Nothing is certain, but most students who fit this description are not your typical admit, with zero athletic preference, regardless of whether they continue all 4 years at a college that does not offer athletic scholarships.
But the point is that she didn’t have the rating of “excellent” when compared with a pool including the top candidates from her school – the reason she was rated that way for the application to Spelman is that the bar was set lower on the SSR, because of the exclusion of all the students who weren’t applying to Spelman.
I think it’s fairly safe to assume that despite the allegations of the lawsuit, the counselor filling out the school-specific SSR is going to be mindful that all of the applications from SF are likely going to be screened by the same regional admission counselors at each school where the student applies, and those ad coms are going to see the grades and transcripts of all the applicants. So no way to fudge a lot there – the ad coms would be seeing if other applicants had higher grades or had taken more rigorous or advanced classes along the way. Maybe there’s room to bicker about whether the very top students in a given year deserve the distinction of “one of the top few encountered in my career.” – but it’s going to be pretty clear where students stack for categories tied to top 5% or top 10%.
"the counselor filling out the school-specific SSR is going to be mindful that all of the applications from SF are likely going to be screened by the same regional admission counselors at each school where the student applies, and those ad coms are going to see the grades and transcripts of all the applicants. So no way to fudge a lot there – the ad coms would be seeing if other applicants had higher grades or had taken more rigorous or advanced classes along the way. "
Exactly, and the duty of Sidwell Friends is to all their students, both at that time and in the future. With that duty is fostering a relationship of trust, honesty, and integrity with colleges and universities to best help with placement for ALL students.
And you can serve all, even when some may not be as strong as others. Not all are destined for tippy tops, no matter the high school costs or rep. The fact she didn’t originally get into a TT doesn’t mean Sidwell ignored, under-supported, or dissed her. That alone isn’t the smoke.
Btw, for all we know, by her own choice, she may have sent in original apps that didn’t reflect her as a top, compelling applicant, beyond stats, rigor, and whatever ECs she had, besides track. It’s more than doing the work, sending any old app, and then the GC’s supposed to make the magic work.
mathmom is exactly right. At my kids' Sidwell Friends-like school, I don't think there's any question that 20% or more of each class was in the top 10%, maybe even the top 5%, according to the counselors' reports. That was facilitated by having everyone apply early and making certain there was as little overlap as possible in the early applications.
In the class in between my kids’ classes, there were five students who generally competed to be the top academic student in the class. Four were accepted with single early applications, at Yale (2x legacy), Stanford (legacy), Penn (facbrat), and Amherst. The fifth was rejected at Princeton (legacy), but ultimately accepted RD at Harvard. No college ever saw an application from more than one of them. I bet dollars to donuts the SSR for each of them identified them as the most impressive student in the class.
However, when you play that game, it can be tough on a kid who isn’t accepted early, and then wants to apply to colleges where others have already been promoted as the top student.
Also, it's entirely possible, as someone suggested earlier, that the faculty at the school loved Dayo while disliking her parents. I saw that happen a number of times. The general attitude in the Upper School was that children were perfect except for their parents. Except that children who really struggled academically were counseled to look for another school, sometimes quite cruelly.
No one has even suggested an answer to a question I asked earlier: When Dayo did college applications during her gap year, could she have avoided submitting recommendations and an SSR from Sidwell Friends? It looks to me like Sidwell Friends did support her well enough to get her into Penn and Williams in the second go-round.
I also speculate that she was not a pure athletic recruit at either of those schools. If she were, she would have been asked to apply ED and accepted then, and she would not have had the chance to be accepted at both of them.
I have never argued, and wouldn’t argue, that the fact that any given student did not get into a very top college indicates that the high school did not support the student–although in some specific cases, not this one, it might ini itself indicate that the high school did not support the student strongly enough.
I continue to think that the fact that the student was admitted to Penn and Williams shows that her academic level was reasonable enough for an Ivy. Everyone with an academic record that is “reasonable enough for an Ivy” does not necessarily get into any Ivy. I understand that. But it was reasonable for the student to think that she had a chance at an Ivy.
My idea that the high school was not especially supportive of the student in this case comes from the material in the court filing. I admit that this is just one side of the story and that misleading inferences can be drawn. But I would consider this to be adequate prima facie support of my view. Perhaps the headmaster only said that he wanted the parents “gone, gone, gone,” and not the student. Perhaps he did not say anything at all.
Also, I think that in fairness, posters who seem to be looking askance at the fact that the student in question “only” competed in track her freshman year at Penn ought to disclose their own college varsity competition record. I have none. I know how fast our track team runs. I have never run remotely that fast.
The other remark that I would like to make about the track team is that engineering is often a difficult major to combine with varsity sports at the university level, due to the time demands of both. I have personally known only 3 students who have done this, in 40 years. Extrapolating based on the fraction of the time I might have been in a position to know varsity-athlete engineers, I would estimate that fewer than 1% of engineering majors also compete at varsity level in athletics. This might actually be larger than the percentage of the entire student body who are varsity athletes, or close to it, but then the engineers here are an unusual bunch academically and personally.
In any event, I might think that an engineering major who had competed for the college only during freshman year had made a sensible choice to prioritize academic work over sports.
"I was intentionally being overly simplistic by saying “just an EC”
"And if she were a recruited or a wink-wink athletic ‘maybe,’ "
It’s not just an EC, and there’s no wink wink going on, if you’re an accomplished athlete right below recruitable, it’s a big hook, especially in the non-revenue sports. Not sure if these are the latest numbers, but Stanford has 900 div 1 players, 300 full scholarships, do you think the other 600 are chosen by adcoms with the hope that they are also good athletes to fill the other 600? No, Stanford has the won directors cup the last 25 years, they’re an athletic juggernaut, they do that by giving a pretty serious preference to the kids ranked right below the top. Note, you have to academically qualify of course, so it’s not like a 2.0/1000 kid is getting in.
I wonder what this student did during her gap year. It sounds like she might have done some serious running to continue to be competitive in that sport.
And I still don’t understand what a conditional acceptance is? Was she accepted to some places the first time around, but didn’t want to satisfy the extra criteria? Maybe she did that during her gap year as well.
I will say…I’m perplexed by her initial list…which was great list, but all elite schools with very competitive admissions. And I’m including Spelman in the group because it’s a great school too.
There are thousands of colleges perhaps in the top 50 but not top 20…and I’m wondering why these weren’t considered.
“But it was reasonable for the student to think that she had a chance at an Ivy.”
But imo it’s not reasonable to sue a school on that basis of “having a chance” at something. Many people who never get an ivy admit also reasonably, and sensibly, think they “have a chance”.
A/ Stanford was not a school to which she applied, so the argument is really going off-topic.
B/ In general, scholarships and recruiting slots are two separate concepts, and in most sports do not align 1:1, and invariably will be far off for non-head count sports (Head count sports are football/basketball for men; basketball, tennis, volleyball, and gymnastics for women)
So to use as an example for a non-head count sport, the Stanford baseball team has a roster usually in the 33-36 range (current is 33). There is a scholarship limit for baseball of 11.7. So 11.7 scholarships are somehow divvied up amongst 33 student-athletes. But that does not mean that there are only 11.7 recruits over the past 4 years or that 21 of the current team are walk-ons. Given that 8 were recruited and enrolled for the current 2018-2019 year, I suspect baseball has few walk-ons. Track may have some. Rowing usually has a bunch. So perhaps not the total 900 (it’s actually 840 according to govt data) were recruited, but I suspect that it’s pretty close.
But whether Dayo was recruited for Penn track the second time around, or walked on, or if her track accomplishments helped her or if there was something totally different about her second time around is all just speculation anyway.