Originally Posted by
MCFinARL
Not sure what you are referring to, but any prominent private school in DC (and probably elsewhere) is going to consider a lot of things in admissions--academics, special talents (whether creative, musical, athletic, etc.), racial/ethnic and (to the extent scholarship funds permit) socioeconomic diversity, "important" families, legacies, etc., etc. It's not that different from applying to an elite college like Duke, just on a much smaller scale.
In the case of Sidwell (speaking as a former Sidwell parent, though a few years back--1996-2000), and from what I know indirectly of Maret, these are not schools that are trying to become basketball factories while paying only lip service to academics. Kids who play on the basketball team, like anyone else at the schools, will get a very good education and will be expected to work hard doing so. The main point of the original article, in fact, was that these kids were choosing schools like Sidwell and Maret, not generally known for athletics and competing in the MAC against other smallish, not powerhouse athletic schools, precisely because they and their families wanted to ensure they would get a good education along the way.