DCPS HS Interviews

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

There was a ton of 7th grade grade inflation in the 1st pandemic year, and even into the second. Limiting applicants for Walls to any GPA standard did a real disservice. No consideration of recommendations, personal essays, or past standardized results (PARCC, lexile, iReady) . Any kid who just showed up basically had a shot at Walls. I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

There was a ton of 7th grade grade inflation in the 1st pandemic year, and even into the second. Limiting applicants for Walls to any GPA standard did a real disservice. No consideration of recommendations, personal essays, or past standardized results (PARCC, lexile, iReady) . Any kid who just showed up basically had a shot at Walls. I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

Omg let it go! Carrying around this bitterness isn’t healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

There was a ton of 7th grade grade inflation in the 1st pandemic year, and even into the second. Limiting applicants for Walls to any GPA standard did a real disservice. No consideration of recommendations, personal essays, or past standardized results (PARCC, lexile, iReady) . Any kid who just showed up basically had a shot at Walls. I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

Omg let it go! Carrying around this bitterness isn’t healthy.

It's not bitterness. SY20-21 still required exam and recs and thus had a significantly smaller pool who cleared the first cut to enter the lottery (1/2 size of current pool). Rising 9th grade families should know what they're in for. There's no reason this needs to persist. It accomplished in the way of economic diversity

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

There was a ton of 7th grade grade inflation in the 1st pandemic year, and even into the second. Limiting applicants for Walls to any GPA standard did a real disservice. No consideration of recommendations, personal essays, or past standardized results (PARCC, lexile, iReady) . Any kid who just showed up basically had a shot at Walls. I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

Omg let it go! Carrying around this bitterness isn’t healthy.

It's not bitterness. SY20-21 still required exam and recs and thus had a significantly smaller pool who cleared the first cut to enter the lottery (1/2 size of current pool). Rising 9th grade families should know what they're in for. There's no reason this needs to persist. It accomplished in the way of economic diversity

^^accomplished nothing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

There was a ton of 7th grade grade inflation in the 1st pandemic year, and even into the second. Limiting applicants for Walls to any GPA standard did a real disservice. No consideration of recommendations, personal essays, or past standardized results (PARCC, lexile, iReady) . Any kid who just showed up basically had a shot at Walls. I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

Omg let it go! Carrying around this bitterness isn’t healthy.

It's not bitterness. SY20-21 still required exam and recs and thus had a significantly smaller pool who cleared the first cut to enter the lottery (1/2 size of current pool). Rising 9th grade families should know what they're in for. There's no reason this needs to persist. It accomplished in the way of economic diversity

^^accomplished nothing

If it were an actual HS kid posting, I would be ok with your post. But you’re an adult, act like one! SWW made their decision. Move on with your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If walls will no longer require a test it seems they really ought to raise the GPA minimum. Unless they are not actually looking for kids bright studious kids.

They essentially have. They interview the top 500 GPAs. The 3.0 minimum comes into play only if they have fewer than 500 applicants. I’ve heard that last year the cut score was 3.7.

The bigger issue was once they used the cut-off to get the 500 to interview, the interview counted for "31 out of the 36 points"...these interviews, which were supposed to last all of 10 minutes and, as another poster put it, were conducted by two students and one staff member, lasted only 2-3 minutes for many kids. It was a truly absurd process and made SWW look pretty terrible (I say this as a parent of a kid who got in but saw many of his very smart friends get put on the wait list after getting one of these sham interviews)....they would have been better served taking the 500 kids and putting them in a lottery.

For those of you who are considering SWW, our kid is there now. It is nothing special.

[Anonymous]

^^Cool, then go home and give that spot to someone who is needing/wanting to escape their in-boundary school.^^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^Cool, then go home and give that spot to someone who is needing/wanting to escape their in-boundary school.^^

We are considering it...there are extenuating factors that we don't need to go into here. My point is only to give a realistic picture of the process and the school itself to to folks who have decent in-boundary options (Wilson) or who may be looking at other application schools (Banneker) to understand what SWW is and is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^Cool, then go home and give that spot to someone who is needing/wanting to escape their in-boundary school.^^

We are considering it...there are extenuating factors that we don't need to go into here. My point is only to give a realistic picture of the process and the school itself to to folks who have decent in-boundary options (Wilson) or who may be looking at other application schools (Banneker) to understand what SWW is and is not.

Whether or not any given individual stays at Walls, about 40% of people offered a seat either decline or withdraw after freshman year.

[Anonymous]

My kids are at Wilson and didn’t apply to Walls, so I have no personal stake in this. What gets me about the ongoing upset about the Walls process last year is the sense of entitlement—as if Walls was the birthright of some group of “really smart kids” as judged by random parents.

I’m not saying the Walls process last year was good—I agree that putting so much weight on the interview is terrible—but the idea that the old way resulted in the “right” results is pretty narrow thinking.

[Anonymous]

Hmmm...I don't think that many kids withdraw...very few spots open up for grades 10-12. But it is true that huge numbers of kids get in off the wait list for 9th. Before last year, basically every kid got in off the wait list. This was when they took the 300 or so top scorers from the exam, accepted 150 from the (absurd) interviews and put the others on the wait list...all the kids on the wait list would be offered a spot by the first day of school (now that 500 kids are interviewed based on grades, and 350 kids are waitlisted based on grades, it is no longer the case....though over 100 kids got off last year.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at Wilson and didn’t apply to Walls, so I have no personal stake in this. What gets me about the ongoing upset about the Walls process last year is the sense of entitlement—as if Walls was the birthright of some group of “really smart kids” as judged by random parents.

I’m not saying the Walls process last year was good—I agree that putting so much weight on the interview is terrible—but the idea that the old way resulted in the “right” results is pretty narrow thinking.

No one is saying that the old way was great or even good. No one is saying their kid "deserved" a spot.

The gripe is that spots in an "application or magnet" high school were based on a 2 minute interview.
That's the gripe. Nothing more.

A pure lottery of the top 200 or 500 GPAs would have been better. It's the whole "2 minute subjective interview" that really rubbed people the wrong way.
It was just so incompetent and poorly done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at Wilson and didn’t apply to Walls, so I have no personal stake in this. What gets me about the ongoing upset about the Walls process last year is the sense of entitlement—as if Walls was the birthright of some group of “really smart kids” as judged by random parents.

I’m not saying the Walls process last year was good—I agree that putting so much weight on the interview is terrible—but the idea that the old way resulted in the “right” results is pretty narrow thinking.

No one is saying that the old way was great or even good. No one is saying their kid "deserved" a spot.

The gripe is that spots in an "application or magnet" high school were based on a 2 minute interview.
That's the gripe. Nothing more.

A pure lottery of the top 200 or 500 GPAs would have been better. It's the whole "2 minute subjective interview" that really rubbed people the wrong way.
It was just so incompetent and poorly done.

From the top of this page:

I can't believe some of the kids they turned away, including some who crushed at BASIS for 4 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hmmm...I don't think that many kids withdraw...very few spots open up for grades 10-12. But it is true that huge numbers of kids get in off the wait list for 9th. Before last year, basically every kid got in off the wait list. This was when they took the 300 or so top scorers from the exam, accepted 150 from the (absurd) interviews and put the others on the wait list...all the kids on the wait list would be offered a spot by the first day of school (now that 500 kids are interviewed based on grades, and 350 kids are waitlisted based on grades, it is no longer the case....though over 100 kids got off last year.)

The number of sophomore seats available has been rising. 46 cumulative 10th grade offers over the past three years (19-21), 13 over the previous 3 year period (16-18).