High school shutouts-- what's the plan?

[Anonymous]

Archbishop Carroll could be convenient but I know nothing about its academics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Elizabeth Seton isn't too hard to get into.

Yep, but not in the city. Also Dematha.

It's a realistic option for some (it was the backup to our backup) to move and rent IB for Jackson Reed for a year. (It's dumb, but it's allowed by the rules and we live in a dumb city in which kids with great grades can't necessarily access their first or second choice selective school.) Even with all the associated costs, a one-year 2BR rental (we would have actually moved some portion of our family and kept our EOTP rowhouse as well) is WAY less expensive than 4 years at even the most affordable private school (by my calculation, $100k).

[Anonymous]

Repeating the advice, because it bears repeating, that any family who isn't wealthy needs to establish residency before the end of high school, elsewhere than DC, to pay in-state tuition for college. Some states have a look-back period, so don't wake up in 12th grade.

In-state colleges are 30-40K/yr right now total cost of attendance. Out of state costs rise to 50K-60K.

Private colleges and universities are moving towards the 90K-100K/yr.

Financial aid comes mostly in the form of loans, and don't even cover half of the total costs. There is no such thing as a full ride anymore, except in very unusual circumstances.

Merit aid is a straight-up discount, but it's hard to get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Elizabeth Seton isn't too hard to get into.

Yep, but not in the city. Also Dematha.

It's a realistic option for some (it was the backup to our backup) to move and rent IB for Jackson Reed for a year. (It's dumb, but it's allowed by the rules and we live in a dumb city in which kids with great grades can't necessarily access their first or second choice selective school.) Even with all the associated costs, a one-year 2BR rental (we would have actually moved some portion of our family and kept our EOTP rowhouse as well) is WAY less expensive than 4 years at even the most affordable private school (by my calculation, $100k).

you don't even need to move for a full year. a few months and then move back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Elizabeth Seton isn't too hard to get into.

Yep, but not in the city. Also Dematha.

It's a realistic option for some (it was the backup to our backup) to move and rent IB for Jackson Reed for a year. (It's dumb, but it's allowed by the rules and we live in a dumb city in which kids with great grades can't necessarily access their first or second choice selective school.) Even with all the associated costs, a one-year 2BR rental (we would have actually moved some portion of our family and kept our EOTP rowhouse as well) is WAY less expensive than 4 years at even the most affordable private school (by my calculation, $100k).

you don't even need to move for a full year. a few months and then move back.

Not true. I have friends who tried just moving for a few months but someone called the hotline and reported them for attending a school outside of their boundary and they had to move back again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Repeating the advice, because it bears repeating, that any family who isn't wealthy needs to establish residency before the end of high school, elsewhere than DC, to pay in-state tuition for college. Some states have a look-back period, so don't wake up in 12th grade.

In-state colleges are 30-40K/yr right now total cost of attendance. Out of state costs rise to 50K-60K.

Private colleges and universities are moving towards the 90K-100K/yr.

Financial aid comes mostly in the form of loans, and don't even cover half of the total costs. There is no such thing as a full ride anymore, except in very unusual circumstances.

Merit aid is a straight-up discount, but it's hard to get.

Is the DC TAG program still around? Is it expected to be in the future?

[Anonymous]

TAG is still around. It's a $10,000 per year award if your kid attends a public school OOS and $5,000 per year if kid attends a private school in the DC metro area or an HBCU. People at very high income levels (>$575k AGI) are not eligible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our family is not shut out, but we may well could have been as we are zoned for Coolidge (not an option) and our son got a terrible lottery number.

He will be attending McKinley Tech. He is someone who does extremely well on standardized tests and, previous to the change in admissions requirements, would have had a great chance at getting into Walls which was our plan.

My takeaway is that I'm very grateful that we put ALL of the schools we would be willing for our son to attend on the application. All of them. It's a true lottery now as it always was.

I also wonder if we should have applied for private schools, but my son's strong preference was that the money that would go to Private school instead go to Graduate School or a down payment on a home. For us, this is an actual pot of money that is for our kids, so it's not conceptual and we left this choice up to our son. Because, ultimately it's his choice which school he attends.

Now, we did not have our son apply for the early college program at Coolidge, and in retrospect, I wish we had. Things turned out fine, but our safety schools were McArthur and Sojourner Truth and they had many, many applications this year so I doubt our son would have lotteried in.

Our son is interested in Engineering, we loved the open house and this truly is a happy ending for us, but if it had been a different year (or a different interview day where he had been in a bad mood and not gotten in?) then we could have been shut out. In that case, I would have called around to all the high schools we would consider to see if anyone happened to have any spaces open up.

My point is, please don't count on getting into anywhere other than your zoned school, because things change. Apply to all schools you would consider, and, probably, at least a couple of private schools even if paying the tuition would be a stretch.

McKinley Tech is an excellent school for engineering, and your son sounds like a wise kid! Congratulations!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Maret and GDS are difficult to get into....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TAG is still around. It's a $10,000 per year award if your kid attends a public school OOS and $5,000 per year if kid attends a private school in the DC metro area or an HBCU. People at very high income levels (>$575k AGI) are not eligible.

Thanks. Has anyone out there done a recent comparison between instate vs OOS costs for those OOS schools? My impression was that the cost difference was more in the 20-30k range paying OOS, so TAG would only close half or a third. Wrapping back to this thread, I'm trying to work through whether moving to VA or MD means 10-20k/yr savings later at a state school there vs staying in DC with TAG.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Elizabeth Seton isn't too hard to get into.

Yep, but not in the city. Also Dematha.

It's a realistic option for some (it was the backup to our backup) to move and rent IB for Jackson Reed for a year. (It's dumb, but it's allowed by the rules and we live in a dumb city in which kids with great grades can't necessarily access their first or second choice selective school.) Even with all the associated costs, a one-year 2BR rental (we would have actually moved some portion of our family and kept our EOTP rowhouse as well) is WAY less expensive than 4 years at even the most affordable private school (by my calculation, $100k).

you don't even need to move for a full year. a few months and then move back.

Not true. I have friends who tried just moving for a few months but someone called the hotline and reported them for attending a school outside of their boundary and they had to move back again.

I would have challenged this. For good or bad, there are no rules in the enrollment handbook on how long a DC resident has to reside in a boundary to enroll in a school as an in bounds school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TAG is still around. It's a $10,000 per year award if your kid attends a public school OOS and $5,000 per year if kid attends a private school in the DC metro area or an HBCU. People at very high income levels (>$575k AGI) are not eligible.

our DC house appreciated enough to close the gap between TAG and in-state tuition. I’m more worried about actual
admissions though …

[Anonymous]

I’m assuming we will get shut out. Will be moving to NW for JR. I like that MacArthur is small, but the transit there is a problem even though there are plenty of rentals in Glover Park. I want my kid to be able to walk to school and easily socialize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What private schools can you realistically get into for 9th grade? Catholics?

Catholics like St. John's, Gonzaga, and St. Anselm's. and also independent schools like Maret, GDS, Burke, and Field.

Maret and GDS are difficult to get into....

For sure. List was just meant to include some of the private schools in DC that I know of kids getting into for 9th over the past few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TAG is still around. It's a $10,000 per year award if your kid attends a public school OOS and $5,000 per year if kid attends a private school in the DC metro area or an HBCU. People at very high income levels (>$575k AGI) are not eligible.

our DC house appreciated enough to close the gap between TAG and in-state tuition. I’m more worried about actual
admissions though …

Since your past appreciation is already yours (on paper), seems like what matters on appreciation for your future net worth is what happens going forward from here & whether your current house or the one you'd own in Arlington/MoCo/wherever would appreciate faster. With remote work and DC crime, some of those may be better investments than parts of the city.

Agree on the benefits of in-state admissions standards