As the founding father of a private university consulting firm, I’ve visible my fair proportion of college students, and dad and mom deeply misunderstand just how aggressive the university utility landscape has to grow to be—however, this tale takes it to a new stage. On Thursday, CNN posted this story titled, “She turned into rejected with the aid of 13 colleges and blames her elite DC prep school. She needs the Supreme Court to pay attention to her case.” The faculty in query is the Sidwell Friends School, and the appeal comes from former Sidwell student Dayo Adetu and her dad and mom. The Adeptus agree with the motive Dayo did no longer get into any colleges was due to negligence and/or discrimination on the part of Sidwell’s guidance counselors—even though she handiest carried out to tremendously selective schools.
As a college consultant, I suggest all my students apply to a wholesome blend of ‘protection,’ ‘in shape,’ and ‘attain’ faculties. These terms seem self-explanatory, although I’ve clearly had students who believe faculties like GWU and NYU count number as ‘safeties’ due to the fact they’re now not quite as aggressive as the Ivy League. It appears that Dayo Adetu felt this way—she applied to twelve schools, which are attained for any pupil (along with the Obamas), and withdrew her software from her simplest suit college. Of the attain schools, she implemented to each Ivy besides Dartmouth and Brown (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, and Penn), Duke, UVA, Johns Hopkins, CalTech, MIT, McGill (the “Harvard of Canada”). Every unmarried one of those schools is hard to get into and should be categorized as a ‘attain’ for any scholar, regardless of how outstanding. It is particularly risky and mindless to attain colleges’ handiest practice—if something, the Adeptus must be suing Sidwell for letting them take that danger. Instead, they’re suing because they accept as true that there has been no risk and that if Sidwell had done their jobs nicely, attractiveness at one of the quality schools in u. S. A. It could have been assured.
Some context—the Sidwell Friends School is arguably the first-class personal school within the DC region. Every president for the closing fifty years who had children in high college at some stage in their phrases sent their kids to Sidwell—Tricia and Julie Nixon, Chelsea Clinton, and Malia and Sasha Obama all attended Sidwell. (Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy, who drastically attended public DC colleges, become in fundamental and middle faculty all through his presidency.) Of path, having first-rate alumni doesn’t necessarily mean a school is notable—and it could make college admissions more competitive, as applicants are compared towards their friends. Still, Sidwell’s reputation speaks for itself.
The justification the Adetu families offer for their assumption (and consequent lawsuit) is that “Even though Sidwell touts a 100% college matriculation charge for its graduating high school seniors, Dayo did now not acquire unconditional popularity to any of the 13 (thirteen) universities to which she carried out and favored admission.” Despite the CNN headline, this doesn’t imply she become rejected from the one’s schools—she likely did receive a ‘conditional’ attractiveness (my guess is she become common to Emory but requested to spend her first two years at their secondary campus outside of the town). She or he withdrew her utility to her handiest suit college, Spelman, before acceptances had been released.
That’s right—I discovered this key detail hidden in footnote 7 to Appendix 77a of the Adeptus’ complaint: “Dayo become the best pupil in her Sidwell elegance to use to Spelman; she ultimately withdrew her Spelman application.” Spelman is at the heart of this case — it’s a traditionally black ladies’ college in Atlanta, Georgia. With an 89/99 “admissions selectivity rating” from the Princeton Review, it’s the nearest component Adetu needed to an in-shape school. To be clear, Spelman remains a very selective college—their reputation fee of 26% is already low. It would likely be lower without the self-selection that tends to show up with girls’ faculties, which often appeal to extra academically-centered students.