How selective is the Potomac School?

[Anonymous]

Why is this year considered a good year to get in?

We are applying to 1st grade, and there were about 50-60 applicants for 6 slots! Granted some of those will be repeating K, but still.........talk about tough. I harbor no hopes whatsoever!

[Anonymous]

Don't be so negative! 50-60 applicants doesn't mean they're all qualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is this year considered a good year to get in?

We are applying to 1st grade, and there were about 50-60 applicants for 6 slots! Granted some of those will be repeating K, but still.........talk about tough. I harbor no hopes whatsoever!

I was told it was a good year to get into kindergarten. Not sure about first grade. I never heard of first grade being a natural entry point at a private, so I'm just imagining that's why it's so hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this year considered a good year to get in?

We are applying to 1st grade, and there were about 50-60 applicants for 6 slots! Granted some of those will be repeating K, but still.........talk about tough. I harbor no hopes whatsoever!

I was told it was a good year to get into kindergarten. Not sure about first grade. I never heard of first grade being a natural entry point at a private, so I'm just imagining that's why it's so hard.

Not sure where you are getting your info PP, but once again applications are way up this year at Potomac. Probably has to do with the beautiful new lower school building.

[Anonymous]

I think there were over 200 applicants for K.

[Anonymous]

It is a few years out of date, but I believe Georgia Irvins book (the former edition ... haven't seen the new one yet) showed Potomac accepting 130 out of 900 applications. So 200 applicants for K, which is a big entry year, might actually provide better (although steep) odds than in some years. Potomac is a really fantastic looking school, so I think it would always be pretty difficult to get in there. We are looking to try there for HS ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a few years out of date, but I believe Georgia Irvins book (the former edition ... haven't seen the new one yet) showed Potomac accepting 130 out of 900 applications. So 200 applicants for K, which is a big entry year, might actually provide better (although steep) odds than in some years. Potomac is a really fantastic looking school, so I think it would always be pretty difficult to get in there. We are looking to try there for HS ...

Potomac is slightly expanding the size of its upper school, and I believe this year was an expansion year - so it might be true that this is a good year to apply if you are looking for upper school. I would imagine lower school would be the same odds as normal (steep).

[Anonymous]

To the PP applying to 1st grade, who told you there were 50 - 60 applicants? That seems very high to me. We are applying to 1st grade at Potomac as well. Based on our playdate, with about 15 kids x 2 sessions, I thought there were 30 or so applicants. May not make a huge difference in the end, but the 6/30 odds are better than 6/60. I may be wrong about the 2 sessions, but I thought there were only 2 sessions on Jan 30th. Good luck! It'll all work out in the end for all of us.

[Anonymous]

Not to be a downer but weren't there also 2 sessions on the Feb weekend?

[Anonymous]

Yes!

[Anonymous]

There was initially only 1 day to visit for first grade applicants--the Jan. 30 date that 13:44 mentioned. Perhaps they had to schedule a second makeup day because of the snow on Jan. 30.

But I don't believe that there were more than 30 or so applicants total--that's about how many it looked like they were anticipating on Jan. 30, and then many of the kids did not show up.