I'M STILL UPSET . . .

[Anonymous]

I agree with the two previous posters. I will use PK as an example. You know there are something like 24 spots. From those spots, there will be 12 boys and 12 girls..

From there, you have the priority pools: siblings, children of faculty and staff, alumni, etc. Some schools ensure that at least 50% of the make up of the class are new families, so that leave 6 boys and 6 girls who will be new families (assuming priority applications are balanced).

From there, you have to look at the socio-economic, racial and other diversities such as learning styles, and personalities which make a room interesting.

So if you are a new family, based on this, it gives you a sense of the odds.

As others have said, there are many more qualified applicants then there are spaces in these schools, and it certainly is no reflection of the kids or their parents in terms of an admit or rejection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Not so much. Our child is going into the 4th year at what some on this board consider a top school. There has never been anywhere near 30% racial minorities in DC's class or grade. If you're including other types of diversity like GLBT, socio-economic or religion, then perhaps. Otherwise, I think not (atleast at DC's school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Honestly I'm getting the feeling that there is only one, maybe two, posters who are actually opposed to making the information available. Look at the times on the posts. It really looks like sock puppets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Honestly I'm getting the feeling that there is only one, maybe two, posters who are actually opposed to making the information available. Look at the times on the posts. It really looks like sock puppets.

I'm the PP you quoted, and I am not anyone's sock puppet. So screw off.

[Anonymous]

the sock puppet = the troll. What a marvelous development....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

The idea of "qualified" 4-5 year olds is ludicrous. The schools use various measures to attempt to predict which children might be a good fit.

Pre-k and K kids are not "qualified" for anything but their parents' love.

If more people accepted this basic fact, perhaps there would be less ego wrapped up in this process, and they would be happy to get high-quality school #5 on their list even if there are no presidential offspring there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

And there are secondary factors, such as temperment. All the PreK boys may be rowdy, so the school may be looking for a few quieter boys for the K slots for the following year. Or they want to balance with kids who just always have seem to have a sunny disposition. Schools can't necessarily know what balance they are looking for from year to year. Some folks here argue that the big pix is not obvious, but I think it is pretty obvious: admission to metro DC private schools, especially for PreK/K, is very competitive. Do your homework, hope for the best, but have a Plan A, B, C, D, etc. If your local public is not acceptable, than have a plan to move if you are not admitted to any school. We applied to independents (our top choices as well as what we hoped were safety schools) and charters, registered for DCPS lottery, discussed possible MoCo neighborhoods, and agreed that we would send our DC to our local school if required. And we always talked about the range of possibilities with DC. We did not want to come out of March clueless and reeling from rejection. We wanted a narrative for our DC as the preschool wrapped and DC was moving to next phase and not one tinged with anger or bitterness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

How do parents get their hopes up falsely? Don't they see all the parents queuing at the open house or dropping their kids off for the playdate? While we were wooed, no one falsely promised us anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

The idea of "qualified" 4-5 year olds is ludicrous. The schools use various measures to attempt to predict which children might be a good fit.

Pre-k and K kids are not "qualified" for anything but their parents' love.

If more people accepted this basic fact, perhaps there would be less ego wrapped up in this process, and they would be happy to get high-quality school #5 on their list even if there are no presidential offspring there.

I don't think the idea of a "qualified" 4-5 year old is ludicrous. There are a lot of kids out there who are sweet, fun, and with high WPPSI scores - there are more of these children than the school has spaces. How does that not make them qualified?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I posted this yesterday and now it looks like I am being accused of being a sock puppet. I have never quite understood what sock puppet means (i admit since I have HS age kids I am probably older than many of you so maybe I am not current on language) but I cant imagine why my post would qualify.

[Anonymous]

The "sock puppet" charge is the suggestion that a bunch of different posts that express complementary points of view were actually all authored by a single individual trying to represent her viewpoint as more widespread than it actually is.

Count me as (at least) the third distinct poster (i.e. not 10:50 or 19:26) to have argued that there's no real mystery here at the level of the big picture and that the actual odds for an individual kid would be overly burdensome to calculate and would vary dramatically from year to year (e.g. depending on things like the gender distribution of sibs applying).

No sock puppetry here -- just the injection of a little more rationality and experience into the discussion. Sometimes such posts will cluster because when you finally read someone talking sense in a wilderness of collective neurosis, you tend to want to back the sensible person up.

[Anonymous]

"talking sense" - by this you apparently mean your know-it-all snobbery. Plus one of you admits to having high school kids, so of course at this point you've figured a lot of stuff out.

Why on earth would you want to make things easier for new parents? From the snarky tone in your messages it's obvious you wouldn't.

I'm underwhelmed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"talking sense" - by this you apparently mean your know-it-all snobbery. Plus one of you admits to having high school kids, so of course at this point you've figured a lot of stuff out. Why on earth would you want to make things easier for new parents? From the snarky tone in your messages it's obvious you wouldn't. I'm underwhelmed.

Well, a post like this is not going to encourage anyone to help you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Why on earth would you want to make things easier for new parents? From the snarky tone in your messages it's obvious you wouldn't.

Actually, I (and several other posters) offered fairly detailed and concrete accounts of how admissions works and why computing the odds doesn't really get you anywhere. It's only when those substantive posts got dismissed as sock puppetry that I offered an alternative explanation as to why a series of posts with a similar POV might clump together. I lead with substance not snark, but I'm tired of the name-calling, so I rebutted it.

[Anonymous]

Wow. Just wow.