schools where more than 50% of applicants are accepted for 9th?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No dog in this fight, but we know several kids who went to SJC from independents because they were tired of the privileged kids in their small independents and wanted to be around different types of people. It does happen. Parents have been largely pleased and are paying far less than what they paid in independents and kids are happier and enjoy being in the scholars program. They supplement a little but likely would have if in independents as well.

+1 We came from an Independent to SJC as well for exactly that reason. We do not see a need to supplement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In general the admissions rates are highest at the schools with a lot of ninth grade spots to fill. One of the reasons the fancy DC schools are tough admits is because they often only have 10-25 spots. The big Catholics are adding more than 10 times that amount or more.

Catholic high schools in the DC area have large grade sizes but tend to prioritize Catholics, siblings, and sports recruits for admission. For a non-Catholic, non-sports recruit kid coming from a non-Catholic middle school and without a sibling already enrolled in the school, the acceptance rates are much lower.

Some Catholic high schools in the area are large, some are small. They range from 70 high school students to 1200 high school students and everything in between.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That means nothing. Your smartest and most academic child might be dumb as rocks compared to other children. And even if I were to buy into your inference that your child is a genius, so what? St. John will net at least somebright kids. It's just that most of them aren't academic standouts or what one would consider to be the tippy top of their 8th grade classes. It's not bad or good, it just is.

You clearly don’t know anything about SJC. My two SJC students scored in the 98th and 99th percentile on the HSPT. They were both at the top of their 8th grade classes. We didn’t look at any other private schools because 1) they loved SJC and 2) while we wanted them in a private school, we didn’t want them to spend high school in a rarefied, elite bubble.

[Anonymous]

The Barrie School

[Anonymous]

Every child in my son's private school 8th grade class that applied to St. Andrew's was accepted.

[Anonymous]

Bullis? Almost all kids from our K-8 got in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BIM

Not a good choice. Desperate for students because so few want to go.

[Anonymous]

DP. Actually, Basis McLean probably does accept more than 50% of applicants. It might be the only school which does.

We will not be applying there; YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Admission rates wouldn’t be useful even if they were public. I would guess that the rates for 9th at the fancy schools aren’t as low as people would guess because they get fewer applications. For example, at our well known K-8 only a couple of kids applied to Sidwell. I bet their application volume for ninth is nowhere near as high as people would guess and its admissions rate is higher. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get into. Just the applicant pool is self selecting. For K and elementary it would be a different story.

Why would it be a different story for K and elementary? I am asking because we are applying for K

NP. For Sidwell's Upper School, it is a very self-selecting group that will apply: kids who can handle the workload and rigor, who have academic accolades, and are the very highest performing kids in their middle schools. Sidwell is a fit for a very specific sort of student, so many families decide it is not worth their time applying there. A kid who is unlikely to get in and/or a kid who is not going to thrive in that environment is much better off applying to schools that are a better fit.

The lower school is different. Many many many more people apply because of the name, because it's not as academically intense as the upper school yet will still prepare their children for success if they go to a different school later, and because securing a spot at Sidwell for lower school means not having to go through the admissions wringer for upper school if they stay at Sidwell. When going through the K application process for DS, we found a K-8 school we loved, and a K-12 school which was great but we didn't love as much. We spent a lot of time weighing the fact that we'll have to go through the admission process again for upper school if we went with the K-8, vs. having a clear path all the way through 12th grade. Ultimately, we went K-8 because we felt its a better fit but I know a number of people who went K-12 because they wanted that locked-in high school option.

[Anonymous]

SAES. Easy to get in, mediocre academics and struggling with enrollment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SAES. Easy to get in, mediocre academics and struggling with enrollment.

Sorry you had some sort of bad experience with the school, but this is not our experience at all. My kid is getting an excellent education in both honors and non-honors classes and based on the numbers of kids in the class, there's no enrollment issue.

[Anonymous]

Bullis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAES. Easy to get in, mediocre academics and struggling with enrollment.

Sorry you had some sort of bad experience with the school, but this is not our experience at all. My kid is getting an excellent education in both honors and non-honors classes and based on the numbers of kids in the class, there's no enrollment issue.

Your kid just may be getting a good education given his academic profile and zoned public school. But for high achievers, I think your assessment would be a stretch. Instead of arguing with ME about enrollment and admissions stats, ask your school. Ask them what applications were like, how many accepted (anecdotally, all of our K-8 got in but no one accepted), how many acceptances did they yield.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bullis? Almost all kids from our K-8 got in.

Bullis wants to be more selective but not there so it’s a sure thing for most. Especially for full pay, of course.

[Anonymous]

Every kid from our K-8 who applied got into SSFS, SAES, Bullis, Holton, Burke, and Field, so yes, these schools have a greater than 50% acceptance rate from our private.

It does not mean that their overall acceptance rates are over 50%. (They may be, but this data point does not prove it.). I know kids who were waitlisted at each of these schools from both private and public.

The point is that only the schools know their own acceptance rate, and they aren’t advertising them.