Arlington High Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks. OP here. Central VA. My goal isn't UVA. I'd actually like my kid to get out Virginia for college. But they are really into technology. For the people saying Wakefield sucks, is that the AP classes too?

We live in 22202 and have a sophomore at Wakefield. There are strong AP/intensified classes and they also offer the AP Capstone. Our child is a high performing/motivated student and has found a solid group of peers there. The culture is "you do you" and not as focused on status or material items as you may find elsewhere. We are very happy there. We know multiple students from Wakefield who are ar UVA, William & Mary and strong out of state schools. If you are looking for a sense of community w/o a culture of "keeping up with the Joneses" definitely consider 22202. Walkable community, easy access to public transportation and downtown DC. Please ignore the Wakefield haters.

I am the PP and this the complete and utter BS we bought into

First there is the rare student from Wakefield who goes to these good schools and believe me they must have a lot of outside tutoring.
The AP classes suck and my child has been in 3 so far. They involved almost no writing and if my child hadn’t spent hours studying on their own they would have never done well on the exam. The work is by no means rigorous but is a bunch of busy work consisting of cheesy worksheets that require simple one or two sentence answers. If a kid only did the assigned work in the class, they would never do well on the exam. There is no barrier to entry to intensified or AP classes and even if a student is failing they won’t tell them to drop down to the more appropriate level in the name of equity or some nonsense like that. Bette the kids fails and they talk about how many minority kids take AP classes

My child’s entire freshman year they never wrote a single essay not in any intensified courses and not in Ap classes. We pay for a private writing tutor who is shocked by how little writing my child does for their classes. It’s mostly fill in the blank worksheets. Even if a kid manages to get into a competitive college I can’t even imagine the steep and terrible learning curve they have that first year adjusting to learning to write a simple paper.

Lastly that attitude this poster is talking about - not caring about status and so on is true but that’s because the overwhelming majority of the kids are low income and it’s not because they are such cool laid back work people. I guess the pp thinks that poverty is cool or something

[Anonymous]

Huh. OP here. Okay....well I know people have different opinions. I think I understand, and this was what I knew about the schools. I forgot about the third school. My kid would meet all the requirements for IB except the language one...they actually hate foreign language and it wasn't an option to move ahead at our private middle school anyway. Everything else would match, but I'm not sure IB would be the right fit anyway.

I did write to the person in charge of the technology program. I think that is small and new. Right?

I guess we will really need to keep investigating housing and that will clarify things. I had heard both points of view about Wakefield before, and I'm not really sure what to believe. I like the idea of less snootiness, but obviously want my kid to get a solid education. This year has been weird for everyone. Not sure I want to spend 40-50 grand a year on private on top of the much higher cost of living. If my kid was younger, I would consider something like the Howard Gardner school--something a little experimental...but I can't really do that for high school.

It seems like most of the privates in the close are religious, and that's not what we would want.

Thank you! I appreciate the opinions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t anyone apply to be in W-L’s IB program, regardless of their Arlington address? I don’t know what that would look like for a rising sophomore though. I think you may need to start as a freshman.

Agree about 22202 if you want to be close to Amazon and the city. You could walk to work. And even if you can’t do the IB program at W-L, you could definitely take APs at Wakefield.

Yes and then from those applications they remove applicants who don’t have the language requirements and I feel like there’s some other requirement. Then the rest are put into a lottery for the number of seats available.

[Anonymous]

Arlington 3 Neighborhood high schools
Yorktown..college acceptances meh
W-L..better track record of college acceptances
Wakefield
HB Woodlawn..lottery
Arlington tech. ..lottery

[Anonymous]

I have a senior at W-L and a sophomore who was at W-L and transferred to private this year. She was not challenged at all at W-L. She's ridiculously smart and barely studied and had straight A's with little to no work. She took as many AP classes as she could but was still unchallenged. She had no interest in the IB degree.

My senior loves it. She is in all AP and one IB class this year. She did not want to do IB as the workload was not conducive to doing things outside of school. She plays 2 sports. She's an average to good student.

My personal opinion, if you're way above average, go private. You will be bored in APS. This is all before COVID. With the way APS is heading, I would go private in a heartbeat. Good chance they don't get back to normal school any time soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a senior at W-L and a sophomore who was at W-L and transferred to private this year. She was not challenged at all at W-L. She's ridiculously smart and barely studied and had straight A's with little to no work. She took as many AP classes as she could but was still unchallenged. She had no interest in the IB degree.

My senior loves it. She is in all AP and one IB class this year. She did not want to do IB as the workload was not conducive to doing things outside of school. She plays 2 sports. She's an average to good student.

My personal opinion, if you're way above average, go private. You will be bored in APS. This is all before COVID. With the way APS is heading, I would go private in a heartbeat. Good chance they don't get back to normal school any time soon.

What privates would you look at? There aren’t a lot of private schools that I see in the area...I mean in the Arlington/Alexandria areas, especially non religious ones.

[Anonymous]

My DD is a freshman at WnL this year and likes it so far - even with online learning. She also enrolled in the FBI-Cyber Stem certificate program through APS - you can apply as an 8th grader. Here's a link to more info: https://www.apsva.us/fbi-cyber-stem-certificate-requirements/ There are credit requirements for the certificate but also a few field trips - unfortunately she hasn't had the opportunity to go yet due to COVID. It's a fairly new program.

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the high schools in Arlington - we have friends with kids at Wakefield, WnL, Yorktown, Arlington Tech, and HB Woodlawn. It's all a matter of finding the right fit for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t anyone apply to be in W-L’s IB program, regardless of their Arlington address? I don’t know what that would look like for a rising sophomore though. I think you may need to start as a freshman.

Agree about 22202 if you want to be close to Amazon and the city. You could walk to work. And even if you can’t do the IB program at W-L, you could definitely take APs at Wakefield.

The IB program is for 11th-12th grades so you might be able to apply for the transfer for pre-IB if coming in as a sophomore and there happened to be space (doubtful). However, there are specific requirements:

Have to have taken "intensified" (what other schools would call "honors") for the core classes in 9th-10th
Be in level 4 of a world language in 10th grade.
Have taken Geometry or greater in 9th grade (so would be in Alg 2 in 10th)
And, kids doing IB take the required US/VA Government class in 10th grade because there is no space for it in the 11th-12th schedule. So, if you transferred in and hadn't started that at whatever school you left I think you'd have to see if you could take it in summer school.

I see. Thanks for clarifying! I did an IB program through an international school, as my family lived in another country when I was in school. The IB program there started in primary school. I’ve never known how it works over here. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I see. Thanks for clarifying! I did an IB program through an international school, as my family lived in another country when I was in school. The IB program there started in primary school. I’ve never known how it works over here. Thanks!

In APS, you could technically do IB all the way through, except there's a weird "pre-IB" gap in 9th-10th. There's at least one elementary IB school and Jefferson Middle has the IB Middle Years Programme. But, you don't have to do those to apply to the HS program. There is a slight advantage in going to Jefferson because it requires world language all 3 yrs (intro, level 1, level 2). You can do level 1-2 at other MS but it's not required so if not thinking ahead for HS IB you might not be on track with language. Jefferson also offers more options for world language.

[Anonymous]

^^^ IB Primary years is just at Randolph
https://www.apsva.us/international-baccalaureate/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a senior at W-L and a sophomore who was at W-L and transferred to private this year. She was not challenged at all at W-L. She's ridiculously smart and barely studied and had straight A's with little to no work. She took as many AP classes as she could but was still unchallenged. She had no interest in the IB degree.

My senior loves it. She is in all AP and one IB class this year. She did not want to do IB as the workload was not conducive to doing things outside of school. She plays 2 sports. She's an average to good student.

My personal opinion, if you're way above average, go private. You will be bored in APS. This is all before COVID. With the way APS is heading, I would go private in a heartbeat. Good chance they don't get back to normal school any time soon.

What privates would you look at? There aren’t a lot of private schools that I see in the area...I mean in the Arlington/Alexandria areas, especially non religious ones.

We looked at Madeira and NCS. Kid wanted all girls school so that limited the search. Ultimately we decided to move out of the area, but would have applied to Madeira if we stayed.

[Anonymous]

In Arlington, there is also the career center that offers DE (Dual Enrollment) and I've heard good things about their computer science and tech classes. I don't know how hard it is to get into those. My child took EMT through the CC and that is one of the most popular (and difficult) classes to get into.

[Anonymous]

My son is at WL and is taking mostly IB classes, not full IB. He is definitely challenged. My other kid who took all AP, learned the material but there is something about the way IB is taught that makes it better and more challenging. He is truly learning the material, adopting and adapting it into his thinking - it's more than memorizing facts and figures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD is a freshman at WnL this year and likes it so far - even with online learning. She also enrolled in the FBI-Cyber Stem certificate program through APS - you can apply as an 8th grader. Here's a link to more info: https://www.apsva.us/fbi-cyber-stem-certificate-requirements/ There are credit requirements for the certificate but also a few field trips - unfortunately she hasn't had the opportunity to go yet due to COVID. It's a fairly new program.

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the high schools in Arlington - we have friends with kids at Wakefield, WnL, Yorktown, Arlington Tech, and HB Woodlawn. It's all a matter of finding the right fit for your kid.

This is great -- thank you for this information!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In Arlington, there is also the career center that offers DE (Dual Enrollment) and I've heard good things about their computer science and tech classes. I don't know how hard it is to get into those. My child took EMT through the CC and that is one of the most popular (and difficult) classes to get into.

Thank you. OP here is that the Arlington Tech Program that I’m seeing? It corresponds a lot to the program my kid is in now.

https://careercenter.apsva.us/arlington-tech/

Saying it’s a career center makes it sound like a trade school, but the classes certainly seemed challenging. Is that within a high school or in its own building?