You assume that every kid who matched at either Latin II or Basis had both schools on their lists. That's simply not the case. It is possible that people listed Basis and not Latin II, matched at Basis thereby filling Basis' slots. People who listed both would then have matched at Latin II and been WL at Basis. This is even more possible given that although there were more slots at Basis, 46 of those slots when to sibs/staff so that the delta between no preference slots at Basis and Latin II was not that far off. You wanted an observed result, so here's mine. We did not include Latin II but did list Basis...and matched. |
| No, I wasn’t assuming that, although I did assume there were a lot of people who listed both. Your observation doesn’t really address what was asked since you didn’t list Latin 2. |
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We listed Basis and matched.
Did not bother listing Latin. |
| basis is more conveniently located and less of a commute for a lot of people |
| We listed Latin II above Basis. Waiting for WL movement. |
Sigh. You miss the point. Your assumption was that Latin II filled first because it had fewer spots. There's a hole in your logic that is filled with people who didn't list Latin II. Have the decency to just go away quietly. |
| We won't know which school (BASIS vs LatinII) is easier/harder to get into for quite some time, as we don't know which school will come closer to clearing its waitlist.... |
This is us as well. Although we are declining the BASIS spot and staying at our Hardy feeder |
| It was not a typical lottery as several PPs are describing. Latin Cooper had an "equitable access" preference so regardless of whether you ranked it lower than another, e.g., BASIS, you may still have been offered a spot if you were part of certain demographic groups. We ranked Cooper third after Latin 1 and BASIS and ended up with a match at Cooper and high waitlist numbers at the other two. |
| I hadn’t realized Latin II was so small. Anyone know if they’re planning on staying that size? |
No, they are not. The 5th grade class is smaller than it will be; next year they are adding seats. Same with 6th grade class. The idea (as I understand it) is that because the culture needs to be set from scratch they want a smaller group that can then reinforce the expectations/culture next year when the classes grow to full size. |
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So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!
Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted. So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper. This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers. Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV. |
| And of course, waitlist movement is its own beast... |
It’s all about waitlist movement. |
NP. I really really doubt there are meaningful numbers of people who applied to Latin I/BASIS and didn’t throw Latin II onto their lottery application even if they had no intention of taking a spot. |