Actual admissions rates

[Anonymous]

Can anyone speak to actual admission (acceptance) rates at DC and MoCo private — but not parochial — schools at K, 3rd, and 6th grades please?

[Anonymous]

The schools don't release the number of applications they receive, so anything you see here is a complete guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The schools don't release the number of applications they receive, so anything you see here is a complete guess.

Because it’s a measure of the effectiveness of an Admissions offices, they work hard to increase the number of applications. They will always encourage people to apply regardless of their view of how likely the applicant’s chances of Admission are.

[Anonymous]

When we applied last year, most of the admissions offices said on tours or interviews what the usual number of applications were per grade and the usual number of spots. Last year, the usual number of spots varied both up and down for a few schools after acceptances were all in, but that is to be expected based on previous years’ yields being a little off or a few more kids staying or leaving than usual. We know the actual numbers because kids from our school went to most of the schools in town. Ask on tours and they will ballpark it for you.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Grateful for anyone working in the admissions offices to chime in, too.

[Anonymous]

K-12 doesn’t have to report this the way colleges do. It’s simply not available - the “information” is all guesswork (sometime educated guesswork, but still guesswork) and ballpark figures at best, and pure speculation in many cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Grateful for anyone working in the admissions offices to chime in, too.

You’re simply not going to get accurate information. The most competitive schools seemingly range from 20s or 30s% at the lowest grades to 8%-15% in high school. This is simply based on a combination of what admissions offices have said and educated guesses - I am not claiming to have inside info or be “in the know” beyond what I have heard from tours.

[Anonymous]

Complete data set is unavailable.

[Anonymous]

I was on a board of one of these schools in the 2010's and the admission rate was around 10% then. I suspect it is lower now.

[Anonymous]

I would say about 20-30% in the K pools

Once you get to typical expansion years like 4th grade and 6th grade, we have seen it be around 10-15%


9th grade is much tougher as there are recruits that come in and everyone from a k-8 is applying. Most likely 7-12%

[Anonymous]

Average rate doesn’t tell you much.

There are attributes that applicants have that put them into groups that have much higher acceptance rates.

Legacies, graduates of feeder schools, gifted students, impact athletes, and full pay applicants have much better odds. Candidates with a number of these attributes have even higher odds.


It’s an unfair game.

[Anonymous]

While I'm all for transparency, I can see why this isn't something most schools release. It's just going to be more confusing than helpful:

- Compared to colleges (and maybe some boarding schools), private day schools still are in the realm of small numbers. Even relatively minor changes in application pool #s can have this outsized-looking effect on the admit %.
- Non-entry grades can drive the admit % way down because maybe there's no attrition and they admit one sibling. By comparison, entry grades in the same division where the yield is super uncertain can drive the rate up. So do you aggregate or disaggregate those? I could argue both ways.
- Not all schools handle financial aid and admissions decisions the same way, which can make comparing admit rates between schools functionally impossible.

(And this is just off the top of my head.)

[Anonymous]

10%??? I had no idea. That's lower than many selective colleges.

[Anonymous]

The most competitive schools (SFS, GDS, NCS, STA, Maret, Potomac) are almost definitely sub-15% and likely 10% or so for 9th grade.

Others schools, I sense, are harder to predict. Schools like Field, Burke, Bullis, St. Andrews have gone from relatively easy admits to markedly more competiive.

Again, all of this is in reference to 9th grade which is the most competitive entry point.

[Anonymous]

It's kind of relative too. Our AD told me once that while they got a lot of applications, the actual pool of candidates they deemed qualified was about 10% of the total. The admissions rate among that group was about 80% (and they hated to WL any of them, but there are only so many seats in the class). So, if you are considered highly qualified, your chances are great. If you aren't (90% of applicants), your chances are zero.