PK4 wait list math
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Anonymous
(OP here) Thank you for being normal. I didn't think that needed to be spelled out, but for anyone else on this forum who is either typing drunk or lives under a rock - since one assumes the person you responded to falls in one of those categories or the other - hundreds/thousands of the individuals most likely to be overrepresented in these specific NW neighborhoods and public school districts (highly educated working-age professionals in the government and nonprofit sector) were laid off with no warning this year ... some before the school lottery deadline, some after. Will it make them more likely to send their kids to local public schools, vs shelling out for private - or less likely, because they'll have to leave the DC area to find new jobs? Will it make schools less likely to make early WL offers, because of the uncertainty around this question - or more likely to end up making more offers overall, as they discover names on their wait lists as living down the block now live in Illinois or Maine or wherever? For now, it all makes past lottery year offer data much less of a guide than usual... Sorry to belabor the obvious. It literally did not occur to me that any sentient adult human would need this explained. |
Anonymous
Or they decide to attend their IB instead of private. |
Anonymous
I have absolutely no data to support my hypothesis BUT I wonder if it will be equal - some kids not going to private and going IB instead, and some families will leave town all together. Maybe it'll be a wash and it'll be business as usual for the wait lists? |
Anonymous
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In terms of the math I think you need to break down the problem. Here is my train of thought:
What was the probability of getting into the set of schools in the last 2-3 years? This should be further broken down into: - What was the probability of getting into any one of the schools in the last 2-3 years? You said 5/6 = 83% got to your # on the waitlist. - But we need to lower this estimate as we know that in bound students that lottery after waitlist day and siblings of out-of-bound students who got in for other grades are added before you. I have no good estimate of how many people are added (you might be able to estimate based on your movement on the waitlists i.e. how often did your number go up). So let's lower this to 60%. - Then we know that your kid is on multiple waitlists, should this improve their probability? If the events were independent it should improve the probability considerably (60% to (100% - 40%^6) = 99%)! But most likely the probability is much closer to fully dependent than independent. For two reasons. 1) many people lotterying out of bounds are going to have the same schools on their list (e.g. JR feeders), 2) general environmental conditions are likely shared by all the schools since the neighborhood have a similar composition (e.g., people moving in or out of the neighborhoods). So I would keep the probability closer to 60% than 99%. How does this years conditions affect the probability? That is, is this year fundamentally different from the last 2-3 years? - I don't think anyone knows this or has good estimate for this. People may be more likely to leave. More likely to stay. More likely to choose public over private. So we aren't even sure about how it would change the direction of the probability. |
Anonymous
| The other thing I’ll note with no data to back it up (though presumably someone could by looking at last years PK3 numbers): My strong suspicion is that this coming year’s PK4 class, city/nationwide, will be small. I have a rising PK4 - these are kids born Oct 2020-Sept 2021. So in most cases, these are pregnancies that started during the pandemic, before vaccines. A LOT of people, especially those who already had a kid, put off having a baby that year. Overwhelmed with childcare closures, economic uncertainty, health uncertainty… Certainly my daughter’s PK3 class last year was less in demand, and just anecdotally around our neighborhood, there are way more kids my sons’ ages (one older, one younger, my rising PK4 is the middle child). So that may also be working in your favor, OP. |
Anonymous
| Based on the data you cite (these schools have historically accepted a volume of waitlist kids that is higher that your kid's waitlist number), the odds sound pretty damn good. Sounds like you're understandably very anxious and looking for any reassurance. Totally normal. Try to trust the historic data; even if there are variations for this year, you have eggs in multiple school baskets. Good luck! |
Anonymous
| I think at the preK4 level more kids who might have started in private will start in public. due to general uncertainty, 2nd lower earning parent job losses, reluctance to commit to a full-year private school contract when it is possible to postpone the initial entry year by first trying the IB public etc. |