How many schools to apply to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you everyone! So in the absence of test scores or similar, are the letters of recommendation from current school the most important thing?

There is no one thing that matters most as frustrating as that is. The schools are trying to create a balanced class with enough kids to support activities, have diversity, be academically strong, and gender-balanced if a coed school. So it’s really the whole package - grades, recommendations, interviews, whether your kid is a strong athlete, whether your kid is strong in another activity (art, performing arts, music, robotics, etc.), whether you are a URM, whether you otherwise have a compelling story. That is why people spread applications around several schools. It is really difficult to predict admissions at any one school because there aren’t test scores or grade cutoffs.

So if you have an otherwise strong student (strong grades and recs) the typical pattern is to apply to 2-4 schools with competitive admissions and then 1-2 that you are pretty sure you’d get into so you have a choice.

Thanks, this is helpful. I know that some schools we are thinking about - GDS and Maret - are the “competitive admissions” schools but not sure which are the ones that I’d be pretty certain of getting into. I’m sorry I’m asking all these basic questions - I’d love to be pointed to a website with all this info in it but I am not sure this exists!

[Anonymous]

That’s kind of a loaded question since people often mistakenly take difficulty of admissions as a proxy for education quality which is not always correct.

But in general for independent schools people would tend to consider Sidwell, Maret, GDS, St. Albans, NCS, Potomac, and Holton the most competitive.

Then more doable admissions would be schools like Landon, St. Andrews, Bullis, St Stephens St Agnes, Flint Hill, Burke, Field, etc. Admissions to many of these is by no means guaranteed anymore even for a good student post-covid and people might disagree on the individual schools.

There are also many very good catholic schools but those are a different animal and admissions works pretty differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s kind of a loaded question since people often mistakenly take difficulty of admissions as a proxy for education quality which is not always correct.

But in general for independent schools people would tend to consider Sidwell, Maret, GDS, St. Albans, NCS, Potomac, and Holton the most competitive.

Then more doable admissions would be schools like Landon, St. Andrews, Bullis, St Stephens St Agnes, Flint Hill, Burke, Field, etc. Admissions to many of these is by no means guaranteed anymore even for a good student post-covid and people might disagree on the individual schools.

There are also many very good catholic schools but those are a different animal and admissions works pretty differently.

Thank you. We are not interested in Catholic schools, but will check out the schools you listed.

[Anonymous]

If you are moving from abroad, also look at WIS, they are used to international applicants.