How big are the student body and individual grades now? It's never published, and boosters here claim some internal site closed to the public has accurate figures, but of course there is nothing to measure that against. Did they announce numbers for this year? |
I don't know who the "boosters" are, but I don't think BIM hides the school size. If you ask when you contact the school, they will tell you. We never felt like they hid anything from us when we went through the admissions process. To answer your question though, the 12th grade is 25 students this year, but the 9th grade is 50 students. The size of the graduating class has been steadily growing each year, so I would guess the high school will be at least 200 kids when my child graduates. BIM has had some pretty good success with college admissions, which seems to be increasing interest in students entering in middle and high school. |
BIM is one of the only privates that doesn't post enrollment data on its website at all. If they did, people could track it year to year and see the erratic growth. That senior class is not much different from right before Covid, which you would see if there was trackable data. The real tell is they keep paying rent on 100K sq ft of space that they have never used because they don't have the revenue to justify building it out. Money talks. |
DJO. BIM way too small, very limiting socially. You can take AP at O’Connell to be challenged and have a more normal high school experience. |
How about some real numbers. The class of 2020 had 28 seniors. More interesting, the 8th grade that year had 55 students. So 25 left to graduate now is more than 50% attrition. Want to guess why BIM doesn't publish its enrollment stats? |
If BIM published its various numbers online in a manner similar to other local privates, they would have more credibility than they do have right now.
They have been selling the story about senior class growing each year for a while now, yet graduating class size is not materially larger. If the graduating class size story really were true, probably they would publish the numbers online (like other schools) to show the trend. Ditto with college matriculation transparency. As near as we can tell, there is a mass exodus annually after students complete 8th grade, not to TJ, but to public or to other privates. They also have had higher levels of staff turnover and leadership turnover than is typical at a good private, both of which are negative indicators. Do whatever you think best for your DC, because you are the expert on your kids. |
Other privates publish that data online. Anyone can plot the actual trends from the online data.
Again, this claim about BIM is not so clear or obviously true. Perhaps the difference lies in what one considers “pretty good success” ? One can look online at Potomac for example, and get the past few years of every matriculation, along with indications where multiple students attended the same college. Other good local privates also have similar quality data online for recent years of matriculations. BIM is substantially less transparent than other local privates. They need to be more honest and more transparent, showing warts and all, not just marketing, if they really want to be taken seriously by the community at large. I know a bunch of folks who drive past BIM and have a longer commute for their DC to/from school because of BIM’s credibility gap. |
Well for one thing don’t call it Bishop. Bishop O’Connell, O’Connell, or DJO (for Denis J O’Connell) but never Bishop. There’s also Bishop Ireton, which is Bishop Ireton, Ireton, or BI, but also never just Bishop. |
It’s literally right there on their website. They post this every year. https://basisindependent.com/schools/va/mclean/about/blog/class-of-2024-acceptances-to-date/ |
They must be pretty transparent if you’re able to deduce all that (I’m sure you’re not some disgruntled former employee who had all this information which is clearly pre-2021). There hasn’t been any change in leadership or high teacher turnover since 2021 when teacher turnover was making national news all over the place. |
Oh the Basis troll is back. Pathetic. Troll and the school. |
I don’t actually think OP is a BIMbot, if only because they put Independence rather than Independent in the subject line. A true Basis troll would get the name right, or more likely just call it BIM or Basis. |
If BIM has entered a new golden age since 2021, why is the senior class of 2024 smaller than 2020? Clearly, the retention in the upper grades still lags behind the top privates. Anybody know how many sophomores and juniors they have this year (not on the website of course)? That would be an indicator that new management started to make a difference. That said, BIM has been open since 2016 and still seems to be struggling to get its act together. |
The website does make it easy to track faculty turnover. The new HOS in 2021 must have really cleaned house because only 20 of the current 76 faculty were at the school in spring 2020.
Could that happen again in five years? Based on the track record, who knows? Stability at BIM lasts until it doesn't. That's the history. PS They turned over most of the deans and directors too. We'll see how long that bunch lasts. It's clearly a revolving door. |
25 seniors, 30 sophomores, 44 sophomores, 50 freshman. Nobody said BIM entered a golden age at 2021. There just hasn’t been the alleged turnover since then. It’s not like magically a school improves and everyone starts enrolling. But it’s clearly trending from the size of each class moving up. |