Lottery ranking for selective DCPS high schools - match with #3 or #4?

[Anonymous]

my friend is insisting high schools know if you put them #1 or #3 but I thought schools don't get that information

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The hard part is figuring out what your preference is, or with siblings, what's best for the family as a whole and how to leverage sibling preference.

Sibling preference does not apply to application high schools. Take your bad advice back to the PK3 thread.

It’s not bad advice. Someone might prefer Latin over Walls for their DC1 because Latin has sibling preference and therefore it will open a high school pathway for younger siblings as well, whereas if DC1 goes to Walls, which does not have sibling preference, the younger siblings will have no pathway.

This. It's not bad advice at all.

If you have a rising 5th grader and a rising 9th grader, if the 5th grader gets Latin that could pull in the 9th grader. Or imagine you have an 8th grader at Latin who wants to go to Banneker instead, but that means that your 4th grader would lose their sibling status. Different kids, different needs, different academic profiles, commute, school year calendars-- there's a lot to consider.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:my friend is insisting high schools know if you put them #1 or #3 but I thought schools don't get that information

I haven't had visibility into this for 5 years or so, but I believe schools are told what percentage of their applicants ranked them in the top 3 spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:my friend is insisting high schools know if you put them #1 or #3 but I thought schools don't get that information

You are correct, schools do not learn how you ranked them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my friend is insisting high schools know if you put them #1 or #3 but I thought schools don't get that information

I haven't had visibility into this for 5 years or so, but I believe schools are told what percentage of their applicants ranked them in the top 3 spots.

But that doesn’t give them any information about any individual applicant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The hard part is figuring out what your preference is, or with siblings, what's best for the family as a whole and how to leverage sibling preference.

There is no sibling preference for application schools.

Right, but when doing the 9th grade lottery there may be a sibling at Latin or DCI or somewhere, or there may be younger siblings to consider. People who apply to application schools can also apply to lottery schools at the same time.

It is extremely unlikely that a family would have a child in HS at Latin or DCI and not already have the younger sibling enrolled in the MS, negating the need to lottery into those programs. Those schools offer so few seats for 9th (only the French track offered any lottery spots for 9th last year, both Latin campuses combined offered only 16 seats for 9th) that this just isn't really a thing.

So while I'm sure plenty of families will rank a lottery charter like DCI or Latin alongside application schools for 9th, the number of these people for whom sibling preference would come into play is so small (if it even exists) as to not matter.

Oh please. All it takes is having one kid in 9th plus a 4th grader (5th in the case of DCI)? Not that rare for siblings to be 3-4 years apart.

Also, your data is wrong. Please do not mislead people! DCI made 12 waitlist offers for 9th grade Spanish last year. 20 seats for French. Zero seats but then 20 offers for Chinese.

For Latin you neglected to include the Equitable Access category. 2nd St offered 10 9th grade seats and made 15 offers, plus 5 seats and 6 offers Equitable Access. Cooper offered 6 seats and 32 offers(!) plus 2 seats and 14 offers Equitable Access.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/aaron2446/viz/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData_draft/MSDCPublicDisplay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son matched at #3. It was actually his preferred school and has been a good fit.

Thank you! Just to be clear- this was #3 among selective/application high schools, not just the general lottery?

Correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son matched at #3. It was actually his preferred school and has been a good fit.

Thank you! Just to be clear- this was #3 among selective/application high schools, not just the general lottery?

Exact same for my kid re: selective schools. #3 has turned out to be a terrific fit. New friends. Mostly great teachers.

No idea how picks 1 or 2 would have turned out, but he's very happy where he is. I'd wanted him to go with pick 1 or 2, and I'm grateful that they didn't pan out!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The hard part is figuring out what your preference is, or with siblings, what's best for the family as a whole and how to leverage sibling preference.

Sibling preference does not apply to application high schools. Take your bad advice back to the PK3 thread.

It’s not bad advice. Someone might prefer Latin over Walls for their DC1 because Latin has sibling preference and therefore it will open a high school pathway for younger siblings as well, whereas if DC1 goes to Walls, which does not have sibling preference, the younger siblings will have no pathway.

This. It's not bad advice at all.

If you have a rising 5th grader and a rising 9th grader, if the 5th grader gets Latin that could pull in the 9th grader. Or imagine you have an 8th grader at Latin who wants to go to Banneker instead, but that means that your 4th grader would lose their sibling status. Different kids, different needs, different academic profiles, commute, school year calendars-- there's a lot to consider.

Yes, this type of situation is real and happens much more often than PP thinks. I will say, the myschooldc people are really helpful and can help you figure out how best to play the lottery if you are in this situation. They did exactly that for me and told me that do it for a lot of people.

[Anonymous]

There was a thread recently where someone had one child trying to get into Walls from a charter, but they needed the charter sibling preference to get the younger one in, so everyone advised them to enroll the younger one first to get sibling preference, then enroll the older one into Walls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a thread recently where someone had one child trying to get into Walls from a charter, but they needed the charter sibling preference to get the younger one in, so everyone advised them to enroll the younger one first to get sibling preference, then enroll the older one into Walls.

Actually this turned out to be the wrong advice -- once the sibling is enrolled at Walls, the younger sibling loses sibling preference and is at risk of losing the spot. The thread got there eventually. Honestly for that family the best outcome would be for both kids to stay at the charter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The hard part is figuring out what your preference is, or with siblings, what's best for the family as a whole and how to leverage sibling preference.

Sibling preference does not apply to application high schools. Take your bad advice back to the PK3 thread.

It’s not bad advice. Someone might prefer Latin over Walls for their DC1 because Latin has sibling preference and therefore it will open a high school pathway for younger siblings as well, whereas if DC1 goes to Walls, which does not have sibling preference, the younger siblings will have no pathway.

This. It's not bad advice at all.

If you have a rising 5th grader and a rising 9th grader, if the 5th grader gets Latin that could pull in the 9th grader. Or imagine you have an 8th grader at Latin who wants to go to Banneker instead, but that means that your 4th grader would lose their sibling status. Different kids, different needs, different academic profiles, commute, school year calendars-- there's a lot to consider.

Yes, this type of situation is real and happens much more often than PP thinks. I will say, the myschooldc people are really helpful and can help you figure out how best to play the lottery if you are in this situation. They did exactly that for me and told me that do it for a lot of people.

It does not happen "often." That would indicate that this is a common problem for parents in the DC school lottery system. It's not. It's a super bespoke issue for a tiny minority of people.

But agree on using the myschool.com resources. They will mostly just tell you the same thing: rank schools in order of genuine preference. But they can explain stuff like when sibling preference applies or doesn't, the difference between "sibling attending" versus "sibling admitted" which can come into play, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a thread recently where someone had one child trying to get into Walls from a charter, but they needed the charter sibling preference to get the younger one in, so everyone advised them to enroll the younger one first to get sibling preference, then enroll the older one into Walls.

Actually this turned out to be the wrong advice -- once the sibling is enrolled at Walls, the younger sibling loses sibling preference and is at risk of losing the spot. The thread got there eventually. Honestly for that family the best outcome would be for both kids to stay at the charter.

DCUM parents HATE hard situations where the "right" answer is a compromise, though. The reason people give bad advice on here is often because they just can't imagine a scenario in which they don't get everything they want.

[Anonymous]

OP, schools do not know how you rank them. Your ranking of the schools has no bearing on whether you are accepted to an application school.

If your kid does what you suggested and ranks them: Banneker, Walls, McKinley Tech, Duke Ellington, they will match with the highest ranked school that they are accepted into. In this scenario, if they were accepted into all of them, they'll only get matched with Banneker. If they are accepted into Walls and Duke, they will match with Walls and possibly be waitlisted at Banneker depending on if Banneker put them on a waitlist or denied them.

As many others have said, you should rank the schools in the actual order of your preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son matched at #3. It was actually his preferred school and has been a good fit.

Thank you! Just to be clear- this was #3 among selective/application high schools, not just the general lottery?

Exact same for my kid re: selective schools. #3 has turned out to be a terrific fit. New friends. Mostly great teachers.

No idea how picks 1 or 2 would have turned out, but he's very happy where he is. I'd wanted him to go with pick 1 or 2, and I'm grateful that they didn't pan out!

Thanks!