How much do school staff members read our threads?

[Anonymous]

I hope that they do, but someone posted an interesting question about it. I think that they should read away, but I'm just curious.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure they do. If I could make a suggestion to those with fake waitlists:

1. Please stop the fake waitlists. We're all adults and can handle a little rejection.

2. Please indicate in the reject or waitlist letter whether or not you would encourage the child to apply in a later year or not. These fake waitlists, which we don't find out are fake until a forum like this is up, give parents a false sense of hope for the following year. And that is really unfair and mean.

3. At least a few of you (NCRC, Maret) write hand-written notes on the waitlist letters for the true waitlist kids, which we later find out about through this Forum or friends and classmates. Spare everyone the agony and please be upfront. If you just want the subsequent application fees, then just raise the application fees and discount the second time for those kids you are truly interested in seeing again.

4. Be upfront: we have many sibling applicants, we want to fill x priority spots, and we have two faculty children applying = this leaves x number of spots realistically available.

[Anonymous]

PP Here: One more thing -

5. Don't allow any letters from current parents, faculty, board members, etc. You all say those letters only count if they give new information about the child, but you know that's BS.

Level the playing field.

[Anonymous]

You can also have a silbling application deadline as at least a few schools already do (Beauvoir, NPS), so you cannot hide behind the "well, we don't know how many siblings will be applying this year".

Same goes for faculty children.

This way more of us would apply to more schools, leveling the playing field for everyone (less hype about one or three particular schools, and more realistic chances for families to get into other equally good schools that don't get as much recognition because some of you are better at marketing and perpetuating the hype and hoodwinking us into thinking you might actually accept our child when you know from the first meeting that it highly unlikely given point number 4 above.

[Anonymous]

pp, what does that have to do with the op?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:pp, what does that have to do with the op?

Who cares? It's hysterical. Thanks PP!

[Anonymous]

OP, what are you referring to?

[Anonymous]

As long as we're naming names here, I want to single out and congratulation the admissions director of Washington International School for being extremely upfront with parents about the chances of new families entering a particular grade this year. She was very blunt: we have an unusually high number of sibling applications for this grade and we will be only taking one or two new families. Case closed. Of course we did not get in, but then we did not expect to, and had additional time to make other plans.

This is in contrast, I might add, to the admissions director at Beauvoir who seemed to take great pleasure in being cagey about the whole thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP Here: One more thing -

5. Don't allow any letters from current parents, faculty, board members, etc. You all say those letters only count if they give new information about the child, but you know that's BS.

Level the playing field.

Sigh. The playing field is like life. It will never be level. You just need to accept this and work with it.

[Anonymous]

This is in contrast, I might add, to the admissions director at Beauvoir who seemed to take great pleasure in being cagey about the whole thing.

I am not affiliated with the school, but I do think it is unfair to assume that the AD at Beauvoir or any other school for that matter takes pleasure in such things. Beauvoir does fill more spaces than most other schools at Pre-K and K. So, at that school, it is more difficult to determine whether a space will become available or not. If a school only fills one class, and many siblings apply at that entrypoint, then it is much easier to determine the actual number of available slots each year. That is not the case at Beauvoir because their sibling entry point is PreK which also happens to be the largest overall entrypoint (3 classes) for the school. Therefore, there are many non-sibling applicants getting in at PreK and K each year.

Also, the ADs are not the decision makers in this process. They may be the gatekeepers, but there are higher powers that make the ultimate decisions on who gets in. So, if they don't give you a straight enough answer it may be because they can't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP Here: One more thing -

5. Don't allow any letters from current parents, faculty, board members, etc. You all say those letters only count if they give new information about the child, but you know that's BS.

Level the playing field.

Sigh. The playing field is like life. It will never be level. You just need to accept this and work with it.

Can't this start when the kids are just a wee bit older than 4 or 5? We teach them to be fair in their play why not ours?

[Anonymous]

I'm with 13:05 on the sham wait lists. If you aren't "in the know" about how these things work in DC (say, you just moved here and aren't obsessing on this board) then you might think you actually have a chance. As parents, we talk to our children early on to prepare them for what is ahead. If you are in limbo (or think you are b/c of a wait list), it's harder to start preparing your child. (Well, Johnny, we don't know about School X yet.) Sending rejection letters is the responsible thing to do. Then the parents could simply tell the child that school X isn't an option, they just had too many kids this year and not enough spaces but School Y is perfect and has a cubby with your name on it, waiting for you). So these soft rejections are affecting the kids themselves, because it has an impact on how we are parenting (in terms of preparing our child for what will come in the fall).

In our case we have made a decision and aren't paying attention to the bogus wait lists (and we are on three). We've taken "Johnny" to his new school to look around and play on the playground, we talk about it all the time, look at it on the computer, etc. - whatever we can do so that he feels comfortable when the time comes to actually start there.

So, if there are school administrators out there reading these threads: Think of the impact of the soft rejection on the kids!

[Anonymous]

Um..PP...does your child read the letters the school sends to you? How about you just make a decision for your young child, don't tell them exactly what the letters say, and be a responsible parent without dumping the blame on a piece of paper sent by a school?

You have control to ignore the waitlist letters, tell the child that those schools aren't an option, and move on. It sounds like you are looking to blame the soft rejection letters for your own discomfort with the uncertainty of wait list letters.

[Anonymous]

One of pp's points is that the sham waitlists are especially unfair for those who don't know they are fake. It's perfectly reasonable for a child to wonder if she is going to k in the white cottage. Mine certainly did and asked each time we drove by the school. I take a different route now but you get the point.

Maret is especially guilty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: It's perfectly reasonable for a child to wonder if she is going to k in the white cottage. Mine certainly did and asked each time we drove by the school.

I feel for you, PP. In our case, our daughter has started saying that her imaginary siblings go to Beauvoir. And we haven't discussed the process with her or in front of her at all. But we live so close to the school, and a lot of the neighborhood kids go there.