WIS vs other Top privates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much turnover is there at sixth grade at WIS? It looks like the school has basically 60-70 kids per class from K through 12th, but I have to imagine that changing campuses and ending immersion between 5th and 6th means that a number of kids leave and are replaced by newbies at the beginning of middle school. Is that right? Any idea what the number (or range) is? Many thanks in advance!

The lower school has 60 per class. I have a rising 6th grader. According to their visit to the Middle School last week where they got to meet the new kids coming into WIS, there are only 6 new sixth graders entering WIS this year. There may be a couple more that were not able to come to the student orientation, but probably not more than a couple. The majority of the current students are staying. The only 2 that I know that are leaving the school are moving out of the area.

While the 50-50 immersion program does end after 5th grade, in Middle School they take two to three classes (depending on electives) on an advanced level in their target language. Social Studies, Advanced Spanish or French, and an elective course in Spanish or French that they can choose to add to increase their hours in the target language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much turnover is there at sixth grade at WIS? It looks like the school has basically 60-70 kids per class from K through 12th, but I have to imagine that changing campuses and ending immersion between 5th and 6th means that a number of kids leave and are replaced by newbies at the beginning of middle school. Is that right? Any idea what the number (or range) is? Many thanks in advance!

The year our oldest was in 5th grade, only three children in the Spanish program left. They have larger class sizes in the middle school, so it is more that a number of new students are added to the mix of many returning students. When DC was in 8th grade, only 1(!) child left the school before 9th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, I got interested enough in IB programs to do a little more research. I came across a couple very interesting items. I admire the blogger's tenacious pursuit of data about average IB diploma scores. Unfortunately, since the data is all from Florida, it does not shed too much light on how IB programs in other places might compare.

I did find interesting the comment that "most Ivy League schools want to see a 38 or above, which only 15% of IB diploma candidates in the world achieve."

http://itsassimpleasthat.com/2011/11/10/ib-diploma-schools-in-florida-mean-scores/
http://itsassimpleasthat.com/2011/11/08/the-ib-diploma-school-asking-the-right-questions/

Be wary of Internet "experts'" advice. I don't see how IB scores could factor into college admissions decisions since the IB exams are given at the end of 12th grade -- after college admissions decisions have been made.

[Anonymous]

IB 1st semester grades are issued in December.... during the interim, there are "predicted grades". No IB Diploma student wants to undermine their predicted grade, if anything, it's incentive to work at improving the prediction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very simple - it's a great school but its grads don't have the pedigree of the big 3 in terms of future lawyers/politicians.

Why on earth would you measure a school by the lawyers or politicians it produces? I would much rather look for successful academics, researchers, writers.

[Anonymous]

Maybe all of the above should be included. Whatever criteria you use, STA dominates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe all of the above should be included. Whatever criteria you use, STA dominates.

Nice post. Strike against STA.