More competitive year than usual?

[Anonymous]

I’ve see numbers from a bunch of schools that indicate they have been getting more and more applicants each year post-Covid. I think it’s a reflection of how bad the publics are getting, even in wealthy areas with “good” schools. A huge number of people we know didn’t plan on private, but are there now because they just couldn’t take MCPS anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in admissions - not in a Big 5 - but in a school in the DMV. I have mentioned this before, but a trend we have noticed is families with more children (3-4) in the younger grades that result in over half of our kindergarten slots being taking by siblings. These families are also more likely to have high levels of continued enrollment. If they have several children enrolled and happy, they are less likely to leave on a whim. This results in fewer openings in non expansion years (natural churn rates are at an all time low for us).

Another trend we have noticed with schools in similar size and philosophy is that they are shrinking grades by a seat or two to bring teacher ratios down. I’ll note these were already low but parent surveys have indicated it was a priority. We had to up tuition to cover 2 less seats per grade. These seats were removed due to attrition; we didn’t kick people out just for lower ratios.

Our applications were also at record high numbers. Not all were good fits, but as others have mentioned, we could have filled new classes with excellent candidates we just didn’t have room for.

This is unfortunate. It just makes the schools more and more insular.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve see numbers from a bunch of schools that indicate they have been getting more and more applicants each year post-Covid. I think it’s a reflection of how bad the publics are getting, even in wealthy areas with “good” schools. A huge number of people we know didn’t plan on private, but are there now because they just couldn’t take MCPS anymore.

Same with DCPS. Families who were very committed to public education just 5 years ago are all of a sudden getting a wake-up. It must be really bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hearing similar from DD's classmates families. This is DCPS. I also think the fact many competitive schools did not accept testing also hurt because it made the process that much more random.

Everyone coming from DCPS that we know had all As which makes that part more difficult to assess. We get that academic achievement and potential is just one part of the whole picture but it is an important part.

One school did have to introduce their own in-house test at the last minute this year for math because the teachers complained that in the previous 2 years there were kids coming in with shaky basic math knowledge and were having trouble keeping up.

Lol no. Teacher rec and grades are all they need. Also many school still required test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve see numbers from a bunch of schools that indicate they have been getting more and more applicants each year post-Covid. I think it’s a reflection of how bad the publics are getting, even in wealthy areas with “good” schools. A huge number of people we know didn’t plan on private, but are there now because they just couldn’t take MCPS anymore.

Same with DCPS. Families who were very committed to public education just 5 years ago are all of a sudden getting a wake-up. It must be really bad.

This. We weren’t considering private until DD went months without teachers at her public middle school when the kids went back in-person

[Anonymous]

Parent here with kids in both private and public for the past 16 years. Yes, admissions for private high school are much more competitive this year. Pre-pandemic, many 9th graders came from privates to our MCPS "W" school due to a perception that it had better offerings (more APs, extracurriculars, etc.). Not the case anymore. I think people are keeping their high schoolers in private if at all possible (as we are doing with our last kid).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve see numbers from a bunch of schools that indicate they have been getting more and more applicants each year post-Covid. I think it’s a reflection of how bad the publics are getting, even in wealthy areas with “good” schools. A huge number of people we know didn’t plan on private, but are there now because they just couldn’t take MCPS anymore.

This was us. We moved from DC to MoCo, thinking we’d do MCPS. We ended up starting DC out in private in K after hearing about how bad MCPS was from friends and doing research around the Hopkins audit and other issues. This was before COVID, but now I’d say 98% of our friends with kids in MCPS have asked us about the private school scene because they are considering it for their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in admissions - not in a Big 5 - but in a school in the DMV. I have mentioned this before, but a trend we have noticed is families with more children (3-4) in the younger grades that result in over half of our kindergarten slots being taking by siblings. These families are also more likely to have high levels of continued enrollment. If they have several children enrolled and happy, they are less likely to leave on a whim. This results in fewer openings in non expansion years (natural churn rates are at an all time low for us).

Another trend we have noticed with schools in similar size and philosophy is that they are shrinking grades by a seat or two to bring teacher ratios down. I’ll note these were already low but parent surveys have indicated it was a priority. We had to up tuition to cover 2 less seats per grade. These seats were removed due to attrition; we didn’t kick people out just for lower ratios.

Our applications were also at record high numbers. Not all were good fits, but as others have mentioned, we could have filled new classes with excellent candidates we just didn’t have room for.

This is unfortunate. It just makes the schools more and more insular.

Strongly disagree. As a parent with 4 kids, I would argue it is good business. I would be furious if my 3rd or 4th didn’t get into kindergarten at a school to which we have committed so much time and money. Of course, this is assuming the siblings are all qualified.

[Anonymous]

I have 1 child that was happy in a highly rated DCPS but struggled during the pandemic so we switched them to private in person school. I was committed to the public, never researched privates before, and was honestly shocked at how much better the private was. So it’s going to be hard to go back to public, but that’s so far the plan for middle school.

I’ve met a lot of private school lifers l would never have met if not for the pandemic. As someone who was totally committed to public and comes from a LMC family, it’s been a major learning experience for me. Most of these people would never consider public, they’ve been paying for private school since their kids were 18 months or 3 years old. Since they’re having bigger families now these lifers will be even more dominant in the privates.

Some theories and predictions. Private school admission is so much more competitive now and that will continue, due to the pandemic and after effects that will continue in public schools for years ( teacher burn out, quitting, no failing grades etc) and the lifer larger families trend. The competition will cause more families that are unable to get in to private for middle / high school only to stay in public. This will increase the quality of the public schools that traditionally are high private feeders (say Deal for example), as high stats high resource (but not high enough to be private school lifer) families stay in public. Expect even fiercer competition for application publics like SWW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in admissions - not in a Big 5 - but in a school in the DMV. I have mentioned this before, but a trend we have noticed is families with more children (3-4) in the younger grades that result in over half of our kindergarten slots being taking by siblings. These families are also more likely to have high levels of continued enrollment. If they have several children enrolled and happy, they are less likely to leave on a whim. This results in fewer openings in non expansion years (natural churn rates are at an all time low for us).

Another trend we have noticed with schools in similar size and philosophy is that they are shrinking grades by a seat or two to bring teacher ratios down. I’ll note these were already low but parent surveys have indicated it was a priority. We had to up tuition to cover 2 less seats per grade. These seats were removed due to attrition; we didn’t kick people out just for lower ratios.

Our applications were also at record high numbers. Not all were good fits, but as others have mentioned, we could have filled new classes with excellent candidates we just didn’t have room for.

This is unfortunate. It just makes the schools more and more insular.

Strongly disagree. As a parent with 4 kids, I would argue it is good business. I would be furious if my 3rd or 4th didn’t get into kindergarten at a school to which we have committed so much time and money. Of course, this is assuming the siblings are all qualified.

I agree with you 100% that if you were that invested the school absolutely should take younger siblings.

Although I do think that the previous poster could also be right.

These things can coexist. Meaning you can be both right.

[Anonymous]

It was extraordinarily harsh this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in admissions - not in a Big 5 - but in a school in the DMV. I have mentioned this before, but a trend we have noticed is families with more children (3-4) in the younger grades that result in over half of our kindergarten slots being taking by siblings. These families are also more likely to have high levels of continued enrollment. If they have several children enrolled and happy, they are less likely to leave on a whim. This results in fewer openings in non expansion years (natural churn rates are at an all time low for us).

Another trend we have noticed with schools in similar size and philosophy is that they are shrinking grades by a seat or two to bring teacher ratios down. I’ll note these were already low but parent surveys have indicated it was a priority. We had to up tuition to cover 2 less seats per grade. These seats were removed due to attrition; we didn’t kick people out just for lower ratios.

Our applications were also at record high numbers. Not all were good fits, but as others have mentioned, we could have filled new classes with excellent candidates we just didn’t have room for.

This is unfortunate. It just makes the schools more and more insular.

Strongly disagree. As a parent with 4 kids, I would argue it is good business. I would be furious if my 3rd or 4th didn’t get into kindergarten at a school to which we have committed so much time and money. Of course, this is assuming the siblings are all qualified.

Good for business, bad for diversity. Totally understand that you would be furious, but your family is taking all the good stuff for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the flight from public school has ramped up another level. It happened in the 21 and 22 cycles, related to the pandemic and we all thought some kids would leave private when things went “back to normal” (which some did). But this feels like a new wave of people leaving public school and trying for private spots.

This year's 6th and 9th applicant pool got hammered by the pandemic. It'll be bad again next year but should return to normal after that.

[Anonymous]

This is a every year occurance.

Nothing new move along.

[Anonymous]

One of the top schools where I know the AD said “record numbers” and “candidate pool stronger than ever”