Applying to college can make any high school senior feel like he or she is pleading a case before a judge and jury — but one former Washington, DC, prep school student is trying to get her college woes heard by the Supreme Court.
Dayo Adetu and her parents, Titilayo and Nike Adetu, say that the private Sidwell Friends School — the elite school attended by a who’s who of Beltway families, including presidential daughters Sasha and Malia Obama and Chelsea Clinton as well as former Vice President Joe Biden’s granddaughter Maisy — breached a settlement with the family after it allegedly discriminated against Adetu, an African-American, in the grades she received while in high school and then in materials Sidwell submitted as she applied to colleges.
“Sidwell has long been perceived as a ‘feeder-school’ to Ivy League institutions and other top universities,” the Adetus wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court. Adetu, however, was not immediately accepted by any university.
The court is scheduled to consider whether to take up the case, along with scores of other petitions, at their private conference on Thursday.The pressurized world of admissions to top-tier colleges has been a national focus recently following the sprawling scam that has implicated wealthy parents, Hollywood celebrities and college coaches, resulting in several guilty pleas.