Decision from Duke Ellington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

This strikes me as wildly inappropriate for a public school.

It is completely unclear to my why my tax money supports the corrupt, mismanaged white elephant that is DE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

This strikes me as wildly inappropriate for a public school.

It is completely unclear to my why my tax money supports the corrupt, mismanaged white elephant that is DE.

No one knows this for sure. It seems that they have some flexibility as to how many students they admit to each program. I know of one student from MD who got in last minute during the summer as a rising 10th grader after contacting the department they were interested in. They may not keep spots open, but they may have 20 “official” spots with additional spots available in case someone spectacular comes along. Of course this is all speculation on my part. I have no idea how it really works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

This strikes me as wildly inappropriate for a public school.

It is completely unclear to my why my tax money supports the corrupt, mismanaged white elephant that is DE.

No one knows this for sure. It seems that they have some flexibility as to how many students they admit to each program. I know of one student from MD who got in last minute during the summer as a rising 10th grader after contacting the department they were interested in. They may not keep spots open, but they may have 20 “official” spots with additional spots available in case someone spectacular comes along. Of course this is all speculation on my part. I have no idea how it really works.

Not accurate. Many things can happen over the summer. Families get new jobs elsewhere, etc.., and by the time the school finds out it's way too late to go to the waiting list since those kids have made other plans, so a spot gets filled late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

This strikes me as wildly inappropriate for a public school.

It is completely unclear to my why my tax money supports the corrupt, mismanaged white elephant that is DE.

It would be like letting a kid who just finished algebra into the calculus class because there was a space to fill, and then grading the child like every other calculus student. I doubt you would find that appropriate.

[Anonymous]

DE has already announced there are still spaces available in the most competitive departments. This was in the Feb 18 rejection letters to those students who were called back but ultimately didn’t pass their auditions (using the analogy above, this would be like students who are in pre-calc, truly love math, and really want the challenge of calculus, but the school determined they are not quite ready). That does imply DE is holding spots open.

[Anonymous]

Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Is this true? If so, i find it problematic that they change the requirement every year. How would they know how the applicant pool changes. Don’t the set the requirements well before people apply?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And even if you do all that PP suggests, your DC may not make it. DE is a selective, competitive school. Knowing the numbers does reinforce this actually, and helps families know what to expect.

Right. Especially since they appear to leave spots open rather than fill them with less than ideal students.

This strikes me as wildly inappropriate for a public school.

It is completely unclear to my why my tax money supports the corrupt, mismanaged white elephant that is DE.

It would be like letting a kid who just finished algebra into the calculus class because there was a space to fill, and then grading the child like every other calculus student. I doubt you would find that appropriate.

This makes a lot of sense. I think the biggest critics of this model don’t understand what it takes to be successful in such an environment because it’s art.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Is this true? If so, i find it problematic that they change the requirement every year. How would they know how the applicant pool changes. Don’t the set the requirements well before people apply?

Why wouldn’t this be true? This is the way most application schools work, including colleges. There are a certain number of openings, they do their best to get the best pool of applicants they can, and then they select those that best meet the selection criteria to fill those openings. There is a minimum GPA that every applicant must meet to even be considered, but the actual cutoff to progress to interviews will be much higher. And that will change depending on how many applicants they get and how qualified they are. That is going to be a moving target because they can’t predict precisely who will apply. But still they intend to fill all the openings with what they’ve got.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Is this true? If so, i find it problematic that they change the requirement every year. How would they know how the applicant pool changes. Don’t the set the requirements well before people apply?

Why wouldn’t this be true? This is the way most application schools work, including colleges. There are a certain number of openings, they do their best to get the best pool of applicants they can, and then they select those that best meet the selection criteria to fill those openings. There is a minimum GPA that every applicant must meet to even be considered, but the actual cutoff to progress to interviews will be much higher. And that will change depending on how many applicants they get and how qualified they are. That is going to be a moving target because they can’t predict precisely who will apply. But still they intend to fill all the openings with what they’ve got.

Th standard is they interview the 500 students with the top GPAs. Under the old standard they interviewed the students with the top 250 test scores. In both cases, what that means in terms of grades or scores cannot be known ahead of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Terrible analogy because SWW bar is not very high and demand far outstrips space. GPA cutoff for top 500 applicants and no other considerations, including weighting GPA by academic course demands or degree of challenge, standardized tests, teacher recommends, etc. DESA leans too much on audition even if academic record does counts -- more in LMC than performing arts -- but many students have to demonstrate ability to perform.

SWW acceptance seems far more random than DESA. DESA gets plenty of students who also qualify for SWW but got bad lottery luck or just ranked DESA higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Terrible analogy because SWW bar is not very high and demand far outstrips space. GPA cutoff for top 500 applicants and no other considerations, including weighting GPA by academic course demands or degree of challenge, standardized tests, teacher recommends, etc. DESA leans too much on audition even if academic record does counts -- more in LMC than performing arts -- but many students have to demonstrate ability to perform.

SWW acceptance seems far more random than DESA. DESA gets plenty of students who also qualify for SWW but got bad lottery luck or just ranked DESA higher.

.

The SWW bar is not very high? It seems high enough to any kid with less than an A- average 😂

I do know kids who’ve passed their DESA audition but ranked SWW higher and ended up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a line from School without Walls admissions:

SWW is an academically challenging, college preparatory school. All students are eligible to apply. However, only students that meet the eligibility requirements will be invited to interview.

If that's fair (and it is, as it is at the other magnets), why the criticism for DE doing the same within the context of its focus? Yes, talent is subjective and maybe that makes it seem fuzzy pyschologically since every parent thinks their kid is talented, but seems to me that looking just at talent without regard to grades and other factors, is a lot more fair.

As seen in other recent threads about SWW, their eligibility requirements (namely GPA cutoff) change each year based on the applicant pool. In other words, they are trying to be sure to fill all spots with those who apply for the school.

Terrible analogy because SWW bar is not very high and demand far outstrips space. GPA cutoff for top 500 applicants and no other considerations, including weighting GPA by academic course demands or degree of challenge, standardized tests, teacher recommends, etc. DESA leans too much on audition even if academic record does counts -- more in LMC than performing arts -- but many students have to demonstrate ability to perform.

SWW acceptance seems far more random than DESA. DESA gets plenty of students who also qualify for SWW but got bad lottery luck or just ranked DESA higher.

.

The SWW bar is not very high? It seems high enough to any kid with less than an A- average 😂

I do know kids who’ve passed their DESA audition but ranked SWW higher and ended up there.

There's LOTS of grade inflation. Exam used to weed out less advanced students. An A- average is no big deal