Analyzing rec letters to this degree and holding g.c.s liable for the results after a rec letter is submitted will lead to schools not wanting their staff to do them at all.
Re summary judgment: I think the case was decided on a summary judgement motion in the trial court. Iâm not going back to look at it again, but I seem to remember the core finding was âno material issue of fact,â which is summary judgment language. I do not believe there was a trial here. There was a lot of discovery, however.
Re British system: The trial court awarded Sidwell some $30,000+ in costs, to be paid by the plaintiffs.
I looked: She was on the track team for one year at Penn, without a lot of distinction.
One interesting dangly loose end for me: The family asserts that Dayo got into Penn and Williams the second time around because Sidwell was not involved. But how could Sidwell not be involved? She would still need recommendations and a SSR from Sidwell even if she had taken a gap year. Could she have avoided that if she took a post-grad year at another school? (Of course, she applied to Penn and probably Williams the first time, so they still had her first application and all of Sidwellâs materials to look at. Sidwellâs materials did not keep her from being accepted at Penn the second time around.)
âI am apparently almost the only person on the thread who has sympathy for the studentâ
I do, for having litigious parents. This will follow her for life as it will be on the internet forever.
I do agree, however, that âpowering throughâ carries a connotation that can mean âhard workerâ more than highly capable or intelligent.
No doubt, and many of us on cc know that âhard worker A studentâ is not as good as âgifted A studentâ (assuming both have good ECâs). But what if âpowering throughâ is an accurate description given high quality of kids at Sidwell? (The young girl might have received a âgiftedâ label at a typical high performing suburban school, but the competition ratchets up at at top privateâŠ)
If possibly more accurate, does that change your âsympathyâ?
full disclosure: my kids were more of the power through type of A students, i.e., had to work extra hard for an A in calc.
The really interesting thing would be to compare her two applications to Penn.
I agree. While I think that LoRs should focus on a studentâs positive attributes (even if you have to dig deep), they also need to be reliable to be of any worth whatsoever. None of us know what she was like at school.
Which would be a positive if it gets colleges to focus more on objective criteria and less on whether the GC used the in vogue set of buzzwords.
âPowering throughâ is high praise for a student-athlete.
And now?? Are her parents following her around in her professional career sending lawyers after any supervisor who issues less than a stellar performance review?
The plaintiff is now what, 23? She would have to agree to continue with the litigation (not just her parents), correct? Maybe the apple doesnât fall far from the tree.
RightâŠwhose wrongful suit is this? The parentsâ or the daughterâs? Or both?
@QuantMech I too agree with your assessments and have a lot of sympathy for Dayo. IMO, Sidwell did her dirty, and they know it, but it will never be proven in a court of law.
I do think the school passive aggressively retaliated and kept her applications for admission into the ivy and top schools from being accepted. Not so much by what they did say in her letters of recommendation (that she can prove in a court of law) but by what they didnât say about her.
College admissions is a game that the guidance office at Sidwell knew exactly how to play. Rightfully or wrongfully, IDK, but IMO unprofessionally- they did not play it to her advantage. Not mentioning her academic achievements at all yet highlighting her ethnicity says it all. (And to you naysayers, there were plenty academic achievements- read the appendixes to see she was a top academic athlete scholar) Also w student athletes, by the school not communicating with the coaches, when the norm is to advocate for the student⊠well as Brown and Princeton said they dropped her application and could go no further. Its like an unwritten code, albeit one that can never be proven in a court of law. Her attorneys should have told her she has no leg to stand on. I blame them to an extent but I donât know how determined her parents were to litigate.
The fact that her parents had similar trouble with her older sister in the same manner and kept Dayo in the school has me scratching my head⊠but then I realized she had been with her fellow classmates since kindergarten - how could they pull her away from all of her friends� That might have been more destructive.
Perhaps the parents werenât educated in the subtle ways of the American school system workings to know that they couldnât be a PITA and still get the school to work to their fullest on their behalf. In reading they had the same problem w her sister - That Lola wasnt accepted to any colleges Sidwell wrote letters of recs on her behalf to, but was accepted to the top schools lola didnât ask Sidwell to write for her, they should have been much more pro-active with Dayo IMO!!
I donât think they should have litigated this at all.
I blame her parents (and her attorneys?) someone should have given them the street smart version of reality before it went to court. They are now stuck with a big bill.
I donât think that Sidwell got off scot free though as this is a PR nightmare for them. Esp in light of other recent reports out about Sidwell. (Heads need to roll there and it sounds like they are). Had Sidwell taken the high road and aggressively advocated for Dayo, and she had been accepted to some of the schools courting her, would have been a much better outcome for Sidwell in the long run IMO how shortsighted of them not to.
Dayo and her family suffered I am sure during this, but alls well that ends well in that she successfully graduated from Penn in engineering and I am sure her future is bright. I am happy about that.
Sidwell knew this was a very litigious family. Iâll bet my socks they dotted their "I"s and crossed their "T"s when they handled her application materials. That said, the counselors likely follow NACAC ethics and would likely write a counselor school report form that accurately reflects her academic performance and personal character. This sample that follows is not the the Common App form, but the NACAC form (which should be similar) http://wacac2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/NACAC-Secondary-School-Report-Form.pdf
Agree, the appeals court found no material claims. That matters, not just what plaintiffs contend. Or re-contend. And so, also their appeal that assigning them the costs of SFâs defense was unmerited.
Agreeing with others. In LoRs, âpowered throughâ is sometimes a compliment, in certain contexts. And sufficient for many kids and parents to interpret as a strong endorsement.
But with the letter writing expertise at exclusive preps (or strongly competitive hs,) it can be code for ânot our top recommendated student.â Agree, âclearly crafted as a positive with limitations,â as NC1 notes. But I highly doubt a lawyer, certainly not her parents, would be privy to this âcoding.â
Nor does it mean itâs untrue that she was more dilgent than gifted. Later getting into Penn doesnât mean her case has merit.
We donât know that the school âpassively-aggressively retailated.â Certainly the courts didnât see it this way.
Just being a top prep doesnât mean they owe anyone/everyone a tippy top admit. Itâs not open season, where every kid who wants a tippy top gets similar levels of support. In ways, a top prep applies some of the logic of adcoms, in matching kids. They know what makes the right matches.
Will be interested to see where she gets a job, if she doesnât already have one.
Agree - Iâm also curious what job she gets.
Does anyone know where her sister went to college?
I worked with someone in a government job who was a real PITA. She used all her vacation and wanted more. Her supervisor wouldnât sign her timesheets because they werenât correct (came in late, left early, used all her sick time and stayed out sick) and she filed grievances with the union. She continuously fought to have her workspace changed and I know the head of the department didnât change it just because she was such a complainer. Really, who cared where anyone sat, and it would have been easy to change her cubicle but they didnât just because she complained all.the.time.
When it came time for the review, the supervisor (a friend of mine) knew that if she gave her the review she deserved (bad) that the employee would file a grievance. I said Iâd give her 2âs (below average) and 3âs and not say a word on the comments section, and my friend said âthatâs exactly what I did.â Even I, a non-supervisor, knew what having no comments meant, and so would every other future hiring supervisor in the federal system.
There are ways to say things without saying them.
College counselors should differentiate between students when writing recommendations. My kidsâ letters of rec shouldnât be as glowing as other students who have much more stellar transcripts. If a student is a great community citizen and a thoughtful person, that should be noted, too. Top schools arenât going to take all Sidwell Friendsâ graduates. Counselors can and should, IMO, differentiate that by righting glowing recs for some and good but more average recs for others and that includes all attributes of the student, academic and otherwise.
@doschicos certainly at a private prep like Sidwell, itâs possible for the GC to personalize the counselor letter. But at my kidsâ high schoolâŠwith classes under 200 students or soâŠthe GC didnât know a speck about my sonâŠor my daughter. And their counselor letter was justâŠdone mostly based off of grades.
Another reason why these private schools place well, the individualized, nicely written letter of rec. 
The former headmaster was described as âchargingâ at the studentâs father, saying that all of the teachers at Sidwell Friends wanted the family âgone, gone, gone from the school.â The school apparently does not dispute this, and that headmaster resigned the year the girl graduated. If this action happened, I would characterize it as going somewhat beyond âpassiveâ-aggressive.
In a recent year, Sidwell Friends had 18 Ivy League graduates. The studentâs class was 126. So that would mean that roughly 15% of the Sidwell Friends graduates (give or take) were admitted to Ivy League schools in one year. This must be a pretty strong showing among prep schools. I totally understand that college admissions is not ârank and stack.â But I am also of the opinion that being an athlete helps with Ivy admissions. So the students aspirations were not far off the mark, in my view.
There is also the common argument on CC that once a student has passed the academic threshold, other qualities matter. While admittedly the studentâs parents donât look so hot in terms of other qualities, there is not so much in evidence about the student herself. There are a lot of students in the US who qualify to be National Merit Scholars in their states, but would be âmerelyâ commended in DC, as this student was. Also, if my recollection that the Chemistry SAT II score was 720 is correct, that certainly fits the descriptor of "any SAT score that starts with 7 . . . "
It seems clear to me that Sidwell Friends preferred others to this student. I might have preferred others myself. She did not appear to be in the very top tier academically there. However, it has been preached at me many times that above a certain academic threshold, better academics give no extra advantage in Ivy admissions (not totally sure I believe that even yet, but it is certainly the line).