Bullis culture

[Anonymous]

Say what you want about the head, and honestly this sounds like one mad teacher or former teacher, but we love him. Next year all of the kindergarten first and second graders are getting free aftercare and four weeks of free camp to help busy parents. If that makes the head of school wrong, I don’t want him to be right. So excited about all of this built-in care for my kid who wants to be at bullis all the time anyway!

[Anonymous]

Our family started there with the old Head of School and after the new head. We didnt necessarily like either head of school, but we preferred the community feel of the school with the old. It actually felt like a community back then and now it feels like it has no identity.

The senior class this year has 160 students! When we started we were told there would not be more than 120 per class in the upper grades. I used to tell people that Bullis is not the "public school you pay for", but I will say that it's starting to feel like it. Our tuition keeps going up and I am not at all feeling where that is being invested in other than a new building which is of no use to us. The teachers that we loved, and who are the reason we went with Bullis, have all left. They were excellent, engaging teachers, who our kids still speak about to this day, and they tell me often that they wish they were still there so they could go say hello. I cannot speak to all the new teachers as we do not know them, but the ones who left were incredible. Personally, I am always wary of a school that has a lot of teacher turn over and I hope that Bullis can see how that does not look good for them.

There are pros and cons to all schools, but the amount of money we are now spending in tuition, in my opinion, is beginning to not feel worth it. I'm sure there will be another increase this year as well.

[Anonymous]

I think that multiple things can be true. He can be great to families and also shitty to teachers. I've met lots of people who have two sides to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our family started there with the old Head of School and after the new head. We didnt necessarily like either head of school, but we preferred the community feel of the school with the old. It actually felt like a community back then and now it feels like it has no identity.

The senior class this year has 160 students! When we started we were told there would not be more than 120 per class in the upper grades. I used to tell people that Bullis is not the "public school you pay for", but I will say that it's starting to feel like it. Our tuition keeps going up and I am not at all feeling where that is being invested in other than a new building which is of no use to us. The teachers that we loved, and who are the reason we went with Bullis, have all left. They were excellent, engaging teachers, who our kids still speak about to this day, and they tell me often that they wish they were still there so they could go say hello. I cannot speak to all the new teachers as we do not know them, but the ones who left were incredible. Personally, I am always wary of a school that has a lot of teacher turn over and I hope that Bullis can see how that does not look good for them.

There are pros and cons to all schools, but the amount of money we are now spending in tuition, in my opinion, is beginning to not feel worth it. I'm sure there will be another increase this year as well.

Funny you see it that way. Our DC will graduate next year and has been at Bullis since 2nd grade, so we also had both head of schools, and our experience is completely reversed. The school is night and day better than it was under the old head. Our DC loves going to school every day, even in their Junior year! The faculty changes have only been for the better because of the extremely high standards set by the current head of school. Frankly, most of the faculty who have left had been major underperformers. Maybe you are one of them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family started there with the old Head of School and after the new head. We didnt necessarily like either head of school, but we preferred the community feel of the school with the old. It actually felt like a community back then and now it feels like it has no identity.

The senior class this year has 160 students! When we started we were told there would not be more than 120 per class in the upper grades. I used to tell people that Bullis is not the "public school you pay for", but I will say that it's starting to feel like it. Our tuition keeps going up and I am not at all feeling where that is being invested in other than a new building which is of no use to us. The teachers that we loved, and who are the reason we went with Bullis, have all left. They were excellent, engaging teachers, who our kids still speak about to this day, and they tell me often that they wish they were still there so they could go say hello. I cannot speak to all the new teachers as we do not know them, but the ones who left were incredible. Personally, I am always wary of a school that has a lot of teacher turn over and I hope that Bullis can see how that does not look good for them.

There are pros and cons to all schools, but the amount of money we are now spending in tuition, in my opinion, is beginning to not feel worth it. I'm sure there will be another increase this year as well.

Funny you see it that way. Our DC will graduate next year and has been at Bullis since 2nd grade, so we also had both head of schools, and our experience is completely reversed. The school is night and day better than it was under the old head. Our DC loves going to school every day, even in their Junior year! The faculty changes have only been for the better because of the extremely high standards set by the current head of school. Frankly, most of the faculty who have left had been major underperformers. Maybe you are one of them?

Same exact experience here but one grade above. 👋!

[Anonymous]

We recently applied to Bullis for high school and had a very nice tour. The Head of School greeted us in the admissions office and shared his vision. Our child is going to shadow in a few weeks as well. We have been able to get access to the campus and met people. We have been impressed with the warmth of the experience

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not being able to tour the school before the VIRTUAL interview is bizarre to me. Not only do I loathe the virtual format, but how is a kid supposed to really speak to their "why Bullis" when haven't had a chance to get a feel for the school beyond brochures and some videos online? Not being able to shadow until after acceptance is also a massive no thanks for our family. If my kid can't go and experience the school for a few hours, I'm not putting in the time and money to apply. And this policy at Bullis has been in place for awhile so I don't know that it is related to construction PP mentioned. DS shadowed at another school that has a big construction project going on.....

WOW, didn't realize you couldn't shadow until after acceptance. So in the 2 weeks you have to make a decision before the deadline, they fit in all the accepted kids into shadow visits? That's insane!

Bullis does offer shadows before acceptance, on their website it says shadows start in November. We toured before our interview, and honestly, the virtual aspect made it far more convenient for my husband and I to make it work with our schedules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree that the visiting situation is not ideal, but I wrote the responses and was able to schedule a tour before an interview. Not too far off from (GDS - virtual open house and can tour and interview at the same time, but not tour without an interview, and Sidwell - pretty arduous parent essays required to move forward with the application).

Would love to hear what moving away from athletics to more academics looks like. Any examples? Or just trying to recruit more students with higher GPAs?

Just an FYI, I am applying for LS and was able to tour GDS without submitting an application or interviewing. I did the virtual open house two weeks after the tour. Assuming the format is different for MS and US.

I have looked at almost all of the top independents in DC & MD (with the exception of all boys schools) and been able to tour them all. Bullis is the only one I have found that had this requirement for LS.

My search of schools has shown there is a very mixed approach to visits/tours and the submission of applications prior. Many schools require an application before a tour and interview. I imagine much of it has to do with the volume of applications being processed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We recently applied to Bullis for high school and had a very nice tour. The Head of School greeted us in the admissions office and shared his vision. Our child is going to shadow in a few weeks as well. We have been able to get access to the campus and met people. We have been impressed with the warmth of the experience

So you got the tour after application?

[Anonymous]

I was told that Bullis is changing their application process this year and will be offering visits prior to acceptance. Not sure if that’s for all grades or if it’s actually happening.

[Anonymous]

My children have very different interests and we feel Bullis will allow each of them to find their place and grow. The most important thing for us as parents is for them to be challenged, happy and safe. The admission process and the admission counselors have helped us get a better feel for that.

[Anonymous]

I recently did a lower school tour and we met a lot of friendly teachers who stopped to talk to us and answer our questions. We like that the parent interview was virtual because it allowed me and my husband to log on from our workplaces. It would have taken a lot of time from our day to go for the interview in person, so we appreciate that a virtual interview allowed us to talk about our child and get our questions answered without the travel time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We recently applied to Bullis for high school and had a very nice tour. The Head of School greeted us in the admissions office and shared his vision. Our child is going to shadow in a few weeks as well. We have been able to get access to the campus and met people. We have been impressed with the warmth of the experience

So you got the tour after application?

Is this for LS? US? The application for US is not on Ravenna (it’s on Veracross) and has a ton of parent questions—significantly more than the other schools we are looking at. Once you get through all of those you have to pay the fee which is more than the application fees for older DS’s college apps. THEN you can schedule a virtual tour. I have not made it that far because we aren’t sure Bullis is a good fit and we’ve been able to tour and see with our own eyes that other schools are likelies for DS. After you’ve passed the interview hurdle you can tour. After acceptance you can shadow—and I don’t understand to reiterate PPs point how they fit those all in for accepted students in the two week decision window. DS is not a recruited athlete but is interested in playing sports. He emailed the coach of his primary sport and got no response. I emailed the AD and got no response. The emails we’ve received are all impersonal form responses (a stark contrast to the personalized notes from other schools).

I think it’s great that people are having positive experiences there but all of the above adds up for us as signs to look elsewhere. Maybe I’m overthinking or overreacting and Bullis would be an amazing place for DS, but this process is awful and experiences like the above matter.

[Anonymous]

We are currently touring and applying for 9th grade. We found all the admissions offices welcoming and responsive - with the exception of GDS. They just don't seem to care at all! They take forever to get back to us - and then it's often a condescending answer to (what we thought) legitimate questions. Very disappointing. But guess not surprising (we had heard this through the rumor mill before).

[Anonymous]

Classes in the upper school are waaaaay too large. Not for almost $60k/year.