Help me understand PreK 3 lottery

[Anonymous]

I attended many open houses and found it a helpful exercise. The school we ended up at we would never have put on our list otherwise. Some were more helpful than others. At
Lamb and Yu Ying we were not offered tours, even though school was not in session, which bothered me. Instead they were question and answer sessions. We got in to our last choice in March. In May we got in to our sixth choice and are happy there. So many factors went in to the rankings, including commute. We are in upper NW and there is no pk 3 in Ward 3. For now the commute has been ok. We plan on continuing next year as well. We only listed language programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with many of the prior posters.

1. Just in the interests of managing your time and stress, I think it's important to go into the process with a strong fallback plan -- whether it's your in-bound school or a charter that always gets through its waitlist but that you can live with for a year or two, or even deciding that by year x, you'll head for the suburbs. This gives yourself a couple of years until you find your way into a longer term solution -- or even to allow your "safety school" to become your longer term solution. This will let you play the lottery from a position of relative "strength" and safety and avoid devastating yourself if you aren't lucky the first round.

2. Others will disagree, but unless you have a lot of time on your hand and are unusually good at compartmentalizing your feelings, I suggest skipping the open houses and multi-school fairs. From my perspective, having skipped them myself and hearing other parents who spent a lot of time on them, any benefit these events offer are often offset by causing parents to fall in love too soon with "dream" schools that they never even get into, as well as to reject as "unacceptable" schools that you might seem to compare unfavorably due to false comparisons with dream schools (see above), when they might be the school you could get into later. Instead, I found it beneficial to stick to online information that I could more efficiently and objectively rank while keeping at a healthy emotional distance, until after each round of the lottery was over and I could devote a more focused burst of attention on those schools where we had an actual likelihood of admission. Many schools are pretty good at offering last-minute open houses and tours to help low-waitlist-numbered and recently-admitted parents make a decision.

3. Prepare for the long haul, including the prospect of at least one if not two or three moves for your child. I know many parents think this is damaging to kids, but we did it with no apparent ill effects. And even assuming it isn't ideal, that might be the price worth paying in the long run. Also at least prepare for the likelihood of spending summers and even early fall following up with higher demand schools as their waitlists move. If you are prepared for that ahead of time as part of playing the game, you'll be able to handle the stress of it and take advantage of slots that open up late and when waitlists speed up after other families who aren't willing to stick it out and decide to cut bait.

4. Try to remember that as an involved parent who values your child's education, whatever warts or flaws your school might have can be significantly compensated by what you add to their educational experience through being involved, giving them supplemental enrichment, and so on. Just look at test scores for high SES students across the District, who not only outperform high SES students elsewhere in the country, but are consistently and similarly high whether your child is at Janney/Deal /Wilson or at an EOTP charter or DCPS alternative.

Good luck.

We too, did not attend any open houses and I don't regret that decision. For us, commute was a huge deal so we only listed those schools with realistic commutes for our family (can we walk or bike to the school)?

Why wouldn't they want to get as much info as possible? Your post is strange, the one above inane. Don't go to open houses because you might learn things about a school that make you fall in love with it and then you will be disappointed? Instead be ignorant of facts (good and bad) because then you can protect yourself? It's a brave new world where everyone gets a trophy...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to the open houses - I felt that was my best source of gut information on each school. Understand that it really is a lottery and that while there's a small chance you can get in somewhere fabulous, you can also be hugely prepared and not get in anywhere.

I did not find the open houses helpful at all. They take up tons of time, and for the hugely popular schools they're a clusterf*ck. Plus many schools don't really care what the huge crowds of prospective kids experience during the open house. I distinctly remember taking a whole day off of work to attend two open houses only to find out at each that there were only going to have room for maybe 5 non sibling spots. Great. So I would go to EdFest to talk to the schools that are hugely popular and get some literature on their teaching style. Then I would attend only the open houses of your "safety" schools. Those will almost certainly have a spot for your kid, and you need to know whether to look at private options or not.

I really wouldn't waste your time too much on the LAMBs and Mundo Verdes because they probably won't have any spots and if you are lucky enough to get in you can take a tour before you accept.

This poster illustrates why crowd sourcing info is dangerous. Mundo added classes this year so a LOT of people got pulled off a waitlist. No one saw that coming, including the PP who still appears ignorant to this fact. MV appears to have had an effect on other HRCS as with more kids getting accepted to MV more spots opened up at other schools. But if you listened to the PP and didn't research those schools and put them on your list you would never have gotten in. I also find it amusing that people are too busy to find time to attend open houses; what's more important than your kid's education I wonder? Not judging, just asking. That just strikes me as a Generation Me approach. Maybe I'm just old.

It is unlikely that you will have 12 schools that you'd seriously consider so there are no wasted choices.

[Anonymous]

Not sure why people keep saying don't apply to MV other than to scare people. Sure last year there were new classes but even before then a good amount of new kids got it. If anything, I'd say Stokes and Lamb are harder to get into. I remember one year, Stokes had to have a lottery just for siblings. Nonetheless, don't let posters scare you.

[Anonymous]

Attending the open houses can be worth while, to help with ranking the schools and deciding whether to include in your lottery slots. We attended open houses for schools we were on the fence about. Our son is in PK3 this year at a school that we wouldn't have included in our lottery picks if we hadn't attended the open house and got a really good feeling about the school. We love the school and adore his teacher.
You can usually set up a tour of a school after the lottery results come out - so for schools you would definitely send your DC to, may not want to spend the time attending those open houses, but it may be helpful for schools you are not sure about. Don't just go by the school profiles on myschooldc or DCPS when deciding on a school, use that as a starting point to narrow down your list.

[Anonymous]

I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

A little bit of an exaggeration. Only a few schools have that many siblings on waitlists for PK3.

[Anonymous]

I did not attend open houses for a few of the schools I'd been inside for recitals or other events over the years, but still went to half a dozen.

They weren't all the most informative, but I found the experience of driving to the school, parking, going inside, etc. helpful just to get an idea of what I'd be dealing with taking twins to school every morning.

The most valuable part of the EdFest was speaking to parents from the various schools.

Overall, spending the time I did was most helpful for my own piece of mind. I didn't feel as if the world would end if our kids didn't get into our number one choice for PK3 because the open houses and EdFest helped me see that there were multiple schools that would work well for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would recommend EdFest as well, but if at all possible try to attend without bringing your child.

If you are a working parent who will being doing drop off, I would also recommend taking a morning to commute to the schools you are considering by whatever transportation you'll be using with your child and then heading on to work to see what you'll be experiencing on a daily basis.

Completely agree with this. We are in the middle of a traffic nightmare because we did not do this. We accepted a spot at a school that is closer to my job, so ideally it would be a 20 min drive over. But, with construction and other traffic, it is becoming more like 30 mins to school, then another 40 mins to the office. Had we taken the spot at the school closer to home, the commute would be cut by 20 mins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

A little bit of an exaggeration. Only a few schools have that many siblings on waitlists for PK3.

I'm pretty sure this advice is wrong; your position on the school's wait list in relation to others is independent of where you ranked the school compared to others' rankings. For example, if person A ranks their neighborhood school at #1 and person B ranks the same school (also with inbound preference) as # 12, person B will still be above person A on the waitlist it that person's application lottery number is higher than person A's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

A little bit of an exaggeration. Only a few schools have that many siblings on waitlists for PK3.

I'm pretty sure this advice is wrong; your position on the school's wait list in relation to others is independent of where you ranked the school compared to others' rankings. For example, if person A ranks their neighborhood school at #1 and person B ranks the same school (also with inbound preference) as # 12, person B will still be above person A on the waitlist it that person's application lottery number is higher than person A's.

I was simply saying there are only a handful of schools that have waitlist for IB, and especially 40 like PP references above. If the OP is in bound for one of these schools, yes they should rank IB higher. I think the only schools that originally wait listed any IB for pk3 were Brent, Maury, Peabody, Powell, Ross, Shepherd. So OP if you live IB for these schools, yes you should rank IB higher if you want to go to your IB or at least use it as a safety but don't rank it higher for a school you prefer more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

A little bit of an exaggeration. Only a few schools have that many siblings on waitlists for PK3.

I'm pretty sure this advice is wrong; your position on the school's wait list in relation to others is independent of where you ranked the school compared to others' rankings. For example, if person A ranks their neighborhood school at #1 and person B ranks the same school (also with inbound preference) as # 12, person B will still be above person A on the waitlist it that person's application lottery number is higher than person A's.

But if everyone is ranking the school at #12 and person B's number is lower, then they're shut out completely.

We were the second-to-last on the accepted list at our neighborhood school after getting a five-digit lottery number. It's just a theory, but I don't think we would have made it in if we'd ranked it at #12 instead of #4. That really was our true preference, however, because I'd done the commute calculations and there were only three other schools that seemed worth going out of the way at rush hour.

As for siblings taking slots, people on this forum forget that there are families at these less-than-desirable schools who prefer their neighborhood option and send multiple kids there. You can make assumptions about the availability of seats because "everyone knows it's a terrible school" but you might also find yourself shut out and scraping the bottom of the barrel in round 2.

[Anonymous]

The advice above is wrong. You should list in order of your true preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about open houses and how I did not find them useful. I thought talking to parents and researching the school far more useful than an Open House. Miracles happen. I got my kids in our number one choice school. However, I think it's less wise to plan 17 open house visits. Maybe go to your top choice. Definitely go to your safety school open houses. Another poster described the difficulty of keeping your emotions in check during the open houses, and I agree with them. It's hard going to a great school and getting all worked up and excited to send your kid there only to find there are maybe 2 spots available.

I think the best place is edfest because you can talk to the principle, get the literature, ask your questions, and move on. Drive past the school to see if it looks okay. But sometimes you will go to the open houses, emotionally invest in the school by taking a day off from work, see the happy little kids there, only to find out that your little one doesn't have a chance. That is hard. Go to edfest instead.

I agree about open houses. The three that I've been to turned me off so much that I briefly considered home schooling. But everyone is different.

Definitely check out the neighborhood school, even if you think it's some place you'd never consider. A lot of people are surprised. Talk to parents, who are available to share their experiences at nearly every school. I also agree with ranking in order of your true preference. But if you need to get into a school for financial reasons, consider ranking your neighborhood school a little bit higher than the bottom of the list. DCPS wants to put neighborhood families in neighborhood schools, so make it 3 or 4 to ensure that you're in and not on a wait list behind 40 siblings.

A little bit of an exaggeration. Only a few schools have that many siblings on waitlists for PK3.

I'm pretty sure this advice is wrong; your position on the school's wait list in relation to others is independent of where you ranked the school compared to others' rankings. For example, if person A ranks their neighborhood school at #1 and person B ranks the same school (also with inbound preference) as # 12, person B will still be above person A on the waitlist it that person's application lottery number is higher than person A's.

But if everyone is ranking the school at #12 and person B's number is lower, then they're shut out completely.

We were the second-to-last on the accepted list at our neighborhood school after getting a five-digit lottery number. It's just a theory, but I don't think we would have made it in if we'd ranked it at #12 instead of #4. That really was our true preference, however, because I'd done the commute calculations and there were only three other schools that seemed worth going out of the way at rush hour.

As for siblings taking slots, people on this forum forget that there are families at these less-than-desirable schools who prefer their neighborhood option and send multiple kids there. You can make assumptions about the availability of seats because "everyone knows it's a terrible school" but you might also find yourself shut out and scraping the bottom of the barrel in round 2.

THIS ADVICE IS WRONG!!!!!

In the common lottery, you will be assigned an overall number. Your school will then be assigned based on your overall number and your preferences. Schools have no idea whether you ranked them 1 or 12.

Let's take future PK3 kids, Adam and Betty.

Adam gets an overall number of 190. Betty gets an overall number of 49.

Adam's school rankings are

1. SWW
2. Brent - Inbound preference
3. Miner

Betty's school rankings are

1. Yu Ying
2. Mundo Verde
3. SWS.

Because Betty has a better overall number than Adam, they will try to fill her spots first.

The computer will check Yu Ying for spots first. Let's say there are none. So it will move to her second spot. The computer will then check for spots at Mundo Verde. Let's say there are none, so it will move on to her third choice. When it checks her third choice, let's pretend that they find a spot. So she will be waitlisted for Yu Ying and Mundo Verde, and be matched with SWW.

Adam ranked SWW first, not last, but because he will have a lower overall number, Betty will get a spot before he does. Finally the computer gets to Adam. Unfortunately, Betty took the last spot at SWS. So they will move on to his second choice, Brent. Brent's PK3 class has no spots for non-siblings, so even though he's inbound, he does not get a spot. The computer will then go down his choices until they find a spot or run out of choices. Since Adam did his research, he put Miner as his third choice. Miner has a great reggio PK program, and there tends to be lots of spots.

FIN