I'M STILL UPSET . . .

[Anonymous]

After recently completing the process for high school admittance, what surprised me afterwards is the amount of time we spent applying to the schools. For each school I took off work for the: in-session school tour; taking DC to the required shadow visit; participating in the required parent interview with administration; and taking DC for his/her individual school interview. My child took off two days of school for each school for the shadow visit and the school interview. Our DC spent the week day reviewing for the entrance tests (ISEE, SSAT, HSPT, or the individual school’s test) to determine what was expected and writing the essays (that are different for each school). Also, weekend family plans, lessons, and teams were affected by the process for both DC and siblings because there are weekend open houses to visit and DC needed to take the required entrance tests. It’s a huge amount of time that effects the whole family. I wish the entrance stats would be available for all schools (some do post them). They are available for colleges.

[Anonymous]

Not a particularly interesting discussion (although admittedly better than the dueling trolls) because abstractly, you do already know the "odds" -- these are division problems with fairly predictable numerators and denominators (applicants/slots). But it's not random selection, so to be more illuminating than that, you'd have to individualize the odds -- white/boy/WPPSI of 97/feeder preschool but not glowing recs/lives in DC/no sib/legacy/staff connection/parents aren't famous. Given how many different profiles there are, what a colossal waste of resources it would be for the school to produce such "odds." Which is why there's a whole cottage industry of consultants who claim to have enough experience to make judgments at that level of detail.

If you want one quick question that might shed more light on how difficult admissions might be for your kid, ask how many sib/staff kids there are of the same gender competing for slots in that particular grade this year. Parents of kids already in the school, especially those with kids applying, will often know the (approximate) answer, so you don't necessarily have to ask the AD.

[Anonymous]

There is a 1/100 chance that u will get in to a car accident. Does that stop u from driving. You people r so stupid. U are looking to statistics to lick your wounds & believe that somehow u deserve to know what your chances are; yet I am sad & pathetic.

Gloating is a normal human reaction. What you all are blithering on about amounts to nothing more than an elite pity party. Your DC didn't make the cut. NEXT!!!!!

[Anonymous]

I'm not talking about individualized scores for the white boy with SSATs in the 94% percentile and travel soccer but no musical instrument.

I think it would be useful to know some very basic and already existing facts:
(1) how many openings, especially for entrance years like preK, K, 6th, 9th or other entrance years (it's tougher to tell for non-entrance years until February or March when parents don't send those renewal forms in). Mostly this first one is available, but not what follows:
(2) what percent of openings generally go to siblings, which is probably fairly constant from year to year
(3) what percent of openings generally go to minorities (actually, you might be able to figure this out just by looking at the school's stats page, although I don't know the rate of minority turn downs)
(4) what percent were accepted last year

This would be a great start, and it's way more than is available now.

Also, I'm pretty sure that almost any admissions officer of every school knows these basic stats off the top of his or her head. So not a waste of resources -- they just have to post these stats on the web (pretty unlikely, although it would be really useful to families) or at least mention them during the open house.

As I said before, I'm all for transparency. The way the system is run now, it's all for the schools' benefit -- to the maximum number of applicants. What about helping the families make more informed choices?

Oh, and for the troll: my DC did get into an elite private. Unlike yours, which seems impossible given your obviously low IQ.

[Anonymous]

It's true you can ask a parent at the school, but not everybody has this resource. In fact, going into pre-K or K, I bet the majority don't already know other families already at every school they are applying to.

[Anonymous]

I'd think it would be to the school's advantage to have some self-winnowing. It's a PITA/expense to do parent interviews, playdates, and read applications.

And siblings aren't at all constant from year to year -- especially the gender mix. At our school, there have been years when all the sibs are boys and there are enough of them to fill every pre-K spot. Whether they all apply (or whether some families decide to wait until K (or to red shirt) and others decide it's not the best school for this kid) is unknown until the deadline, as are the kids' scores.

When you are dealing with such small numbers and so many factors shaping admissions decisions, formulas and percentages don't have a lot of predictive value in individual cases. The big picture's obvious -- odds are, your kid won't get into certain schools if you're a new family. But some new families do get in each year, so if you really are interested in the school you apply and hope you're one of them. If you're ambivalent enough that you want more specific odds before you decide whether it's worth applying, don't bother to apply.

[Anonymous]

I disagree that the big picture is obvious, unless you actually ask an AD and you actually get a helpful response, like one PP did. Or if you are a DCUM addict, which probably doesn't describe most families in DC. I bet a lot of families are afraid to push too hard with the admissions folks, for fear of coming off as pushy....

I can't see how prospective families would lose from knowing the percent that got in last year. As for siblings, unless yours is one of the sibling families with a boy applicant, the fact that all the siblings this year are boys doesn't really matter for other non-sibling applicants and what does matter is whether the school generally reserves 20% or 50% for all siblings combined. Plus I do think the number of spots reserved for minorities is pretty stable -- we all know that most schools in the area reserve 30-40% for minorities -- so why not just say so?

Using numbers from last year, like colleges do, seems a fair way to go about it. Plus everybody understands that things change from year to year -- I think most folks would be grateful to have even this much information.

Anyway, I don't think that knowing the odds would dissuade too many families from applying. Most families applying to these schools can afford to gamble the application fee to see if they would get in. Instead, the benefits of knowing the odds would be:
(1) families go into this with much more realistic expectations, which means potentially less heartbreak later on
(2) if a rejection comes, they will be less likely to see their kids, or maybe themselves as parents, as failures, as one honest PP said she did.

[Anonymous]

I think it's next to impossible for ADs to give odds in any given year. As PPs have said - some years there are more sibs then others, some years an overwhelming number of those sibs are of one gender or another - thus changing the odds - if it's a year of lots of girl sibs, then getting in as a non sib for a girl will be harder that year, but as a boy, there will be more spaces. But what hasn't been mentioned is the differences in the general applicant pool from year to year that also have to be considered. Genders, races, numbers of applicants, and strength of applicants vary from year to year. The only way we could get real odds would be it if were a lottery and could know that there are 100 girls for 10 girl spots for example - every girl would have the same odds. But since it's not a lottery having even that information doesn't mean much because so many factors are considered.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who sees themselves or their kid as a failure because they didn't get into PK or K needs to get over it. The reality is that there are more qualified applications then spots in all these schools. Some are going to get in and others won't. The majority of the time, I'm sure not getting in has more to do with space and luck amongst those qualified. So unless you've been given reason by an AD or your kid's current teachers/school to think otherwise, just assume your kid was qualified but just wasn't lucky this year and move on.

[Anonymous]

Colleges have much larger data sets (both applicants and number of slots) and rely heavily on two quantifiable attributes (test scores and GPA). When you're talking about a dozen preK'ers from a pool of hundreds of applicants and a bunch of more subjective factors, then numbers won't tell you much.

Why are ADs at private schools responsible for the mental health of parents who are so screwed up that they feel like failures because of a PreK admissions decision?
I find it hard to believe that applicants don't have realistic assessments of their odds of getting in (i.e. it's a crapshoot). C'mon, seriously, does anyone assume that their non-sib applicant has a lock on admission at Sidwell or GDS or Beauvior? So how does it matter if the odds against admission are 6:1 vs. 20:1?

[Anonymous]

Obviously, the odds change from year to year. But you'd have to be really naive to think that nothing will change, and most private school families are much more sophisticated than this.

Most of us know the prospectus phrase, "past performance is no prediction of future returns."

But we still look at past returns. Why? Because it's one data point among many that we use to make our own evaluations.

And past stock/mutual fund returns are more than the schools provide to us. At least we have the SEC to shed some light into investments (they're good for something at least). We don't have anything like this for privates.

And yes, I think it does matter if the odds are 6:1 vs. 20:1.

[Anonymous]

How could more information for families be bad? I don't get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Why are ADs at private schools responsible for the mental health of parents who are so screwed up that they feel like failures because of a PreK admissions decision?

Why on earth are you blaming the parents? Schools tell us nothing, so parents get their hopes up falsely. Schools can fix that, but for some reason you don't want them to. Why is that? Do you work in an admissions office? Or now that your kid is in, you think that everybody else should be in the dark?

[Anonymous]

We've gone through the application process a couple of times now (prek for 2 kids, 9th grade, and going through it again for 9th grade soon). I frankly did not find it that mysterious. In fact Sidwell in particular provided exactly the numbers people seem to want. They were very up front about admission rates for children with preference (alums, siblings, etc) and those without. They said how many applicants they typically get at each entry grade and what the number of openings were. Same at most of the other schools we looked at. I've heard the question asked at open houses and the ADs answered very directly and with specific information. So I really don't think this is top secret information.

[Anonymous]

PP took the words out of my mouth. Many people seem to assume these statistics are secret numbers being kept hidden. I don't think that's correct. I sat through a Sidwell open house where the AD was extremely blunt and clear about the admission statistics for that school. He also was very clear about other demographic characteristics of the school such as siblings, legacies, and ethnic/national origin (although I don't think he was saying the school uses quotas for admissions purposes). I also was at a Beauvoir open house where someone asked a question about admission stats, and the school gave clear and specific numbers. Also, I think general admission stats are available at a few internet sites, and I think they're in the Georgia Ervin book. The information is readily available, so I don't think it's fair to blame the schools for creating false hopes. Indeed, when our family first went through the process, we assumed a lower chance of admission at most schools, so when we looked at the statistics, we were sort of comforted in some respects.