Is the lottery more intense than usual this year?

[Anonymous]

This will be my third year to lottery, and it seems like the people I see at open houses (mostly parents of rising PK3-ers) are more anxious than I remember, and the open houses themselves are WAY more crowded. Am I making this up, or is the new common lottery giving people anxiety because they can no longer apply to an infinite number of charters? 12 seems like a lot to me. Or are there just fewer spots than ever before? But how could that be?

[Anonymous]

Yes, the common lottery is making people look like loons because instead of just throwing out applications they have to order their preferences. So much more upfront research is required. Hopefully it will be all for the best, but I recommend more wine.

[Anonymous]

I think it's the new common lottery. People need to choose wisely where to apply but also need to rank within that, and that is why we are fully focused on getting to as many open houses as we can. We haven't played the lottery before (we're a prospective PK3 family), but I am learning a lot and am glad that I'm going to so many open houses. There are definitely schools that I would have applied to last year when you could apply everywhere for charters that would not be a good fit for my daughter. Glad I'm not even considering. Conversely, there are schools that seem great but that we are unlikely to get into this year; however, we will rank high and know that it's worth reapplying if we are not happy with whatever school we do attend. (Our IB school will almost certainly take us--everyone IB got in during the initial lottery last year, so we are almost certain to get matched.)

[Anonymous]

Agree - it's the fact that you need to rank charters and DCPS all on one application. Annoying for those of us who have done the lottery the old way - it's such a waste of time to attend so many open houses where your chances are like 0.5% of getting in.

[Anonymous]

I think the number of charter seats and waitlists for schools even on the margins of our thinking has reached a point that yuppies and buppies like us are thinking that there's no sure thing anymore, anywhere.

[Anonymous]

I don't know the data, but I'm guessing the number of "yuppy buppy" three year olds in the lottery is increasing each year, as more and more families stay in DC? This is our third year (will have a PS3 and K next year) and each year it's seemed to get more frenetic - the new application process only adds to the crazy.

[Anonymous]

Sorry... what does buppy mean?

[Anonymous]

Buppie: Black yuppie. The Internets could have told you that, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buppie: Black yuppie. The Internets could have told you that, though.

Really? Funny, I never realized Yuppie was attached to race. Just thought it was money/social status/attitude. Learn something new every day

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know the data, but I'm guessing the number of "yuppy buppy" three year olds in the lottery is increasing each year, as more and more families stay in DC? This is our third year (will have a PS3 and K next year) and each year it's seemed to get more frenetic - the new application process only adds to the crazy.

ITA, it's both that parents have to learn more and strategize more ahead of the lottery, that the applications are restricted to 12 (+ the few schools not doing the lottery this year), AND that there are more families with school-aged kids (especially young school-aged kids) wanting/needing public school options for their kids.

The demand has gone up way more than the spaces have increased, and the options for applying and getting a bunch of different waitlist numbers have greatly decreased.

In the end I really believe the common lottery is better for everyone, but it does throw a whole other level of stress and scary and no control into it. In the end though, I think it will be fairer and open spots will keep moving down the waitlist much faster.

[Anonymous]

The common lottery has certainly added to the stress but I think it's also the knowledge that boundaries and OOB rights are being examined closely right now. Families are more desperate than normal to get into a school they want this year so that they can hopefully be grandfathered in when the jarring changes occur in the fall of 2015.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to see the stats when this is all over on number of families that come through open houses versus number that actually get spots. And how many 3 and 4 year olds are left with no (or very poor) options. I went to a Ross open house a while back and there were lots of OOB parents there, seemingly clueless that their chances of getting in were zero and not even all of the IB 3 and 4 year olds will be getting spots next year. If you've been following the lottery for several years, this is pretty common knowledge, but some parents were really surprised. I don't know what the solution is, and I do agree with the concept of a common lottery, but the number of hours wasted by families looking at schools that are SO out of reach is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Maybe there is some standard way of informing parents about their chances of getting in BEFORE the open house, and BEFORE they do their lottery selections. Could they add a column on the myschoolsdc site? They have a lot of information on there for all of the schools, but no standard piece of data for % accept rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe there is some standard way of informing parents about their chances of getting in BEFORE the open house, and BEFORE they do their lottery selections. Could they add a column on the myschoolsdc site? They have a lot of information on there for all of the schools, but no standard piece of data for % accept rate.

I think it would be very helpful for each school to state what waitlist # they were on as of count day for each grade, as well as how many IB/OOB/sibs etc. were accepted as of count day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe there is some standard way of informing parents about their chances of getting in BEFORE the open house, and BEFORE they do their lottery selections. Could they add a column on the myschoolsdc site? They have a lot of information on there for all of the schools, but no standard piece of data for % accept rate.

They kind of do that for the DCPS schools, with # of available spaces and # of applicants last year. You can see, at least with Ross, that the number of available spaces (3) and number of applications last year (95) that your chances of getting in are very slim, no matter what.

Last year, for PS3, we went to a lot of open houses because I thought it was the responsible thing to do. Why clog up the application pool if we weren't really interested in the school? Obviously that ended up being really disappointing, because we fell in love with schools that we ended up with triple digit waitlist numbers for.

This year, I feel like we have a much better understanding of the various schools, including how we'd rank them, so we aren't going to any open houses. The places we were interested in last year are still on our list, in the order they were in (since we actually ranked everything by preference in private, like a common application). If she doesn't get in anywhere, we're also fine with where we are.