Walls application - quiet kid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should we believe you?

It's fine with me if you don't believe me. I just know that my SWW senior got into their top choice ED, as did most (but definitely not all) of their friends. I've been impressed with the results I'm hearing about, and so happy for these kids! Other adults may be underwhelmed, but it is demonstrably the case that kids are still getting into highly selective schools.

Feel free to watch the SWW instagram "decisions" account if you're curious. Not every kid chooses to report their results, so it will be incomplete--and is probably not worth looking at till spring to get a sense of the overall class results, anyway.

At any rate, college acceptances are just a small part of the school's appeal to families (or lack thereof.) I mentioned I agreed with every single one of the other critiques, but not the one about college results for the class of 2025. The kids are doing really well so far.

Nonsense. UMC parents select high schools largely on the strength of their college admissions track record. There simply isn't any way that Walls can coast on the academic strength of pre-pandemic cohorts indefinitely. Eliminating the entrance exam and standardized test requirement in admissions four years ago was a mistake on the part of DCPS and Bowser. Just how grave a mistake remains to be seen. That's all there is to it.

Well the private school crew says you are wrong! No one is coasting on anything. Same type of kids are there with the same drive. Plenty of people test well but struggle in college. Saw it first hand at my t10 university. Exec functioning is the most important skill in college. No one knows how well the SWW kids(as a group) are performing pre/post entrance exam in college. If the school doesn't fit your standards, tons of other options. People make the choice all the time. It want change in the near term so it is what it is....

Huh? Students at competitive DMV independent and parochial schools generally take entrance exams as part of the application process.

OK, let's assume the bolded is true. So why did MIT reinstate the SAT/ACT in admissions in 2022, after having dropped a standardized test requirement during the pandemic? And why have most of the Ivies followed MIT's lead in the last year, along with Stanford, Georgetown and Caltech. These institutions are wasting their time in reinstating SAT scores as an admissions requirement having failed to notice that exec functioning skills are the most important skills in high school and college?

Utter BS, along with the assertation that there are "tons of other options" for high school in the District EotP. Maybe there are tons if you're wealthy or get lucky in the lotteries for BASIS and the Latins (as long as those programs are a good fit for your children).

+1. It’s a combo of being smart and executive functioning skills. It’s not solely one or the other.

PP is correct. When the schools took out the standardized testing, it actually negatively impacted minority students. The ones that were admitted sans testing struggled much more and did not succeed in graduating. They found that standardized testing scores to be more predictive in low income minorities of who would succeed and graduate in college

[Anonymous]

+100. As a low-income minority student at a NYC magnet high school, teachers taught us that standardized tests were our friends. We gained confidence in learning how to compete with better-off classmates by prepping hard to score high on the SAT and AP exams.

[Anonymous]

Same song,same verse...organize and change it! Focus on the question.....

[Anonymous]

But you can't really answer the question without sidestepping how screwed up the Walls admissions process has become in the last four years. As far as I can tell, the interview is essentially neither here nor there. That's because the process is essentially a lottery for students with a B+ average or better from whatever school, with minor preferential treatment for kids in DCPS middle schools EotP and URMs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But you can't really answer the question without sidestepping how screwed up the Walls admissions process has become in the last four years. As far as I can tell, the interview is essentially neither here nor there. That's because the process is essentially a lottery for students with a B+ average or better from whatever school, with minor preferential treatment for kids in DCPS middle schools EotP and URMs.

You can claim these things but please stop suggesting preferential selection without actual proof. It’s not fair to those kids.

[Anonymous]

No. What isn’t fair to “those kids” is DCPS’ refusal to support ES and MS GT programs and true magnet high schools (with free entrance exam prep provided to ambitious middle schoolers) like those found in many other big US cities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. What isn’t fair to “those kids” is DCPS’ refusal to support ES and MS GT programs and true magnet high schools (with free entrance exam prep provided to ambitious middle schoolers) like those found in many other big US cities.

How charming. Are there any other minor children you’d like to insult this holiday season?

[Anonymous]

Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

Absolutely not. Look at the magnet schools in San Fran and NYC, and how they set up lower-income, highly-intelligent (often first gen immigrant) kids to succeed (by offering free test prep and then sending them to rigorous, challenging schools.)

I'm entirely sure that you are a white liberal woman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

Absolutely not. Look at the magnet schools in San Fran and NYC, and how they set up lower-income, highly-intelligent (often first gen immigrant) kids to succeed (by offering free test prep and then sending them to rigorous, challenging schools.)

I'm entirely sure that you are a white liberal woman.

+100. Exactly right. This NYC magnet high school grad looked into Walls. Kid got a spot but didn't take it. The interview was a complete joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

Absolutely not. Look at the magnet schools in San Fran and NYC, and how they set up lower-income, highly-intelligent (often first gen immigrant) kids to succeed (by offering free test prep and then sending them to rigorous, challenging schools.)

I'm entirely sure that you are a white liberal woman.

+100. Exactly right. This NYC magnet high school grad looked into Walls. Kid got a spot but didn't take it. The interview was a complete joke.

This is not NYC. Why is everyone on this board comparing the two? You all went to Bronx Science. Congrats. Move to NYC and apply there. Some of your kids’ classmates at Ivies will have graduated from Walls.

[Anonymous]

The New Yorker really nailed the way New Yorkers see the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

Absolutely not. Look at the magnet schools in San Fran and NYC, and how they set up lower-income, highly-intelligent (often first gen immigrant) kids to succeed (by offering free test prep and then sending them to rigorous, challenging schools.)

I'm entirely sure that you are a white liberal woman.

+100. Exactly right. This NYC magnet high school grad looked into Walls. Kid got a spot but didn't take it. The interview was a complete joke.

Yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where was the insult? The point is fair. DCPS students should be better prepped for admission to Walls, particularly poor kids. Interviews can't fix weak prep.

Who said they aren’t prepared? You make a lot of assumptions about kids at Walls and yes it is insulting.

Absolutely not. Look at the magnet schools in San Fran and NYC, and how they set up lower-income, highly-intelligent (often first gen immigrant) kids to succeed (by offering free test prep and then sending them to rigorous, challenging schools.)

I'm entirely sure that you are a white liberal woman.

+100. Exactly right. This NYC magnet high school grad looked into Walls. Kid got a spot but didn't take it. The interview was a complete joke.

This is not NYC. Why is everyone on this board comparing the two? You all went to Bronx Science. Congrats. Move to NYC and apply there. Some of your kids’ classmates at Ivies will have graduated from Walls.

I went to Lowell San Fran, my spouse to Brooklyn Tech.

Why compare anything when it's easier not to compare? Why not just whitewash the reality that Walls is seriously second rate as compared to bona fide urban magnet programs in other large US cities if it makes you feel good? While you're at it, wish not away the truth that Walls is on a downward trajectory, graduating the first class comprised without standardized testing in admissions, a shameful, highly politicized development.

The fact that a small number of Walls students crack Ivies and other highly competitive colleges nonetheless, mainly by dint of their hard work outside the classroom, is neither here nor there.