Data on Wilson graduates' admissions to university

[Anonymous]

Last year was really bad. Just look at 2018:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/721690.page

Harvard, Yale, Princeton all had admits from Wilson. Plenty of lesser ivies and top LACs/publics. It really looks like last year was bad. The bigger question - is this a one time thing or not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s amazing all the mental gymnastics on display here from the Wilson parents explaining away the Wilson college admissions.

And I'm still not clear on what the snarky crowd thinks is wrong with Wilson admissions that should have all Wilson parents freaking out. A year without any top Ivies isn't a shock for a public high school that loses most of its best students to the nearby public application high school. Is it your position that there are exceptional students at Wilson who aren't getting in to HYPS-MIT and that it's the school's fault? Or that there are very good students ending up at not-very-good schools because they're getting bad advice at Wilson?

And saying that most of the best upper NW students end up at Walls just further trashes Wilson students. You're an asshole.

OK, switch "most" to "a portion of" if the former is offensive to you. I still think the list the PP put up is not cause for panic. And I noticed you didn't answer my question about what you think is wrong with that list.

DP: As a parent with kids in a Wilson feeder elementary, I worry that Wilson kids of all academic levels are not able to access to best opportunities available to them.

It is very difficult to get any view as to how a HS does getting typical students into college. It is much easier to see if any kids are getting into the most competitive colleges. That statistic therefore serves as an imperfect proxy for assessing the overall performance of Wilson outplacement.

If Wilson lags MoCo schools or others, I don’t know what the cause is. Are there no highly competitive students at Wilson? (I doubt that’s the answer.) Does Wilson have a bad rep with colleges? Is the college counseling subpar? Is Honors for All an obstacle? Or is the overall education provided actually subpar?

I want my children to get a great education, and I want them to have great college opportunities that meet whatever their desires are at that time.

I don’t want to send my kids to Wilson if it will handicap them. So that’s why this discussion interests me.

This makes a lot of sense to me--thanks for such a thoughtful post PP. I'd be really curious to hear from parents or students who went through the process at Wilson--it feels like there's a lot of speculation on this thread. Are the families happy with the support they got? Are the top students thrilled to be headed to UVA and Hopkins? Or are there a lot of great students going to their safety schools because Wilson let them down somehow?

Wilson parent here. One kid now in college, the second on the way. I'm really happy with their experience. Was it always perfect? No. They had some bad teachers, and the guidance counselors were stretched, and DCPS in general is kind of chaotic. But we had the resources to get them help when needed - we hired the occasional tutor, and an outside college counselor, and that allowed them to easily overcome barriers. The upsides of Wilson? A diverse and interesting study body, some great teachers, and a school that had activities and interested peers for everything my kids loved and wanted to do. I am 100% confident that my kids would have been no more successful academically, or in gaining life skills, had they gone to school anywhere else.

PP who is worried about Wilson "handicapping" your kid: it will not. But you should go talk to actual Wilson parents and students to learn about Wilson, not base your opinion on the rants of anonymous know-nothings on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last year was particularly weak for Wilson. The Brown and Cornell admits (about 2 each) were all crew admits (one female Brown, one male Cornell) or legacy. no one else.
No HYPS. no duke or Chicago or northwestern, etc.
if you care about such things, it was not great

\



This not accurate. Not all the Brown admits were from crew.

They were either crew or legacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last year was particularly weak for Wilson. The Brown and Cornell admits (about 2 each) were all crew admits (one female Brown, one male Cornell) or legacy. no one else.
No HYPS. no duke or Chicago or northwestern, etc.
if you care about such things, it was not great

\



This not accurate. Not all the Brown admits were from crew.

They were either crew or legacy.

No they were not.

[Anonymous]

I have a theory.

The Honors For All, AP for all at Wilson could be affecting their acceptances to highly competitive colleges. How? A little one-pager called a School Profile. When your student submits an application and the school needs to send along a transcript, the guidance department includes this one-pager that briefly describes the academic program, grading policies and most difficult classes offered in each department.

The college admissions officer uses this document as context as they score your kid’s application. They want to see that the applicant was academically ambitious and challenged themselves with difficult classes. They prefer Bs in honors classes to As in regular classes. They won’t penalize a student for not taking APs if they aren’t offered at the sending high school—which they know from this one-pager.

I imagine Wilson’s one pager explains their Honors for all/AP for all situation and this makes it hard for a student to show they have challenged themselves beyond their classmates. The application is set aside or the reviewer is not able to award points for that category.

Somebody should get a hold of Wilson’s School Profile they send with transcripts and see what it says

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s amazing all the mental gymnastics on display here from the Wilson parents explaining away the Wilson college admissions.

And I'm still not clear on what the snarky crowd thinks is wrong with Wilson admissions that should have all Wilson parents freaking out. A year without any top Ivies isn't a shock for a public high school that loses most of its best students to the nearby public application high school. Is it your position that there are exceptional students at Wilson who aren't getting in to HYPS-MIT and that it's the school's fault? Or that there are very good students ending up at not-very-good schools because they're getting bad advice at Wilson?

And saying that most of the best upper NW students end up at Walls just further trashes Wilson students. You're an asshole.

OK, switch "most" to "a portion of" if the former is offensive to you. I still think the list the PP put up is not cause for panic. And I noticed you didn't answer my question about what you think is wrong with that list.

DP: As a parent with kids in a Wilson feeder elementary, I worry that Wilson kids of all academic levels are not able to access to best opportunities available to them.

It is very difficult to get any view as to how a HS does getting typical students into college. It is much easier to see if any kids are getting into the most competitive colleges. That statistic therefore serves as an imperfect proxy for assessing the overall performance of Wilson outplacement.

If Wilson lags MoCo schools or others, I don’t know what the cause is. Are there no highly competitive students at Wilson? (I doubt that’s the answer.) Does Wilson have a bad rep with colleges? Is the college counseling subpar? Is Honors for All an obstacle? Or is the overall education provided actually subpar?

I want my children to get a great education, and I want them to have great college opportunities that meet whatever their desires are at that time.

I don’t want to send my kids to Wilson if it will handicap them. So that’s why this discussion interests me.

This makes a lot of sense to me--thanks for such a thoughtful post PP. I'd be really curious to hear from parents or students who went through the process at Wilson--it feels like there's a lot of speculation on this thread. Are the families happy with the support they got? Are the top students thrilled to be headed to UVA and Hopkins? Or are there a lot of great students going to their safety schools because Wilson let them down somehow?

Wilson parent here. One kid now in college, the second on the way. I'm really happy with their experience. Was it always perfect? No. They had some bad teachers, and the guidance counselors were stretched, and DCPS in general is kind of chaotic. But we had the resources to get them help when needed - we hired the occasional tutor, and an outside college counselor, and that allowed them to easily overcome barriers. The upsides of Wilson? A diverse and interesting study body, some great teachers, and a school that had activities and interested peers for everything my kids loved and wanted to do. I am 100% confident that my kids would have been no more successful academically, or in gaining life skills, had they gone to school anywhere else.

PP who is worried about Wilson "handicapping" your kid: it will not. But you should go talk to actual Wilson parents and students to learn about Wilson, not base your opinion on the rants of anonymous know-nothings on DCUM.

How do we get in touch with current Wilson parents to talk to them? I'm the pp with the 8th grader in boundary for Wilson. Last year Wilson didn't even bother with a virtual open house even though others public schools offered it. I feel like I'm flying blind deciding Wilson or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s amazing all the mental gymnastics on display here from the Wilson parents explaining away the Wilson college admissions.

And I'm still not clear on what the snarky crowd thinks is wrong with Wilson admissions that should have all Wilson parents freaking out. A year without any top Ivies isn't a shock for a public high school that loses most of its best students to the nearby public application high school. Is it your position that there are exceptional students at Wilson who aren't getting in to HYPS-MIT and that it's the school's fault? Or that there are very good students ending up at not-very-good schools because they're getting bad advice at Wilson?

And saying that most of the best upper NW students end up at Walls just further trashes Wilson students. You're an asshole.

OK, switch "most" to "a portion of" if the former is offensive to you. I still think the list the PP put up is not cause for panic. And I noticed you didn't answer my question about what you think is wrong with that list.

DP: As a parent with kids in a Wilson feeder elementary, I worry that Wilson kids of all academic levels are not able to access to best opportunities available to them.

It is very difficult to get any view as to how a HS does getting typical students into college. It is much easier to see if any kids are getting into the most competitive colleges. That statistic therefore serves as an imperfect proxy for assessing the overall performance of Wilson outplacement.

If Wilson lags MoCo schools or others, I don’t know what the cause is. Are there no highly competitive students at Wilson? (I doubt that’s the answer.) Does Wilson have a bad rep with colleges? Is the college counseling subpar? Is Honors for All an obstacle? Or is the overall education provided actually subpar?

I want my children to get a great education, and I want them to have great college opportunities that meet whatever their desires are at that time.

I don’t want to send my kids to Wilson if it will handicap them. So that’s why this discussion interests me.

This makes a lot of sense to me--thanks for such a thoughtful post PP. I'd be really curious to hear from parents or students who went through the process at Wilson--it feels like there's a lot of speculation on this thread. Are the families happy with the support they got? Are the top students thrilled to be headed to UVA and Hopkins? Or are there a lot of great students going to their safety schools because Wilson let them down somehow?

Wilson parent here. One kid now in college, the second on the way. I'm really happy with their experience. Was it always perfect? No. They had some bad teachers, and the guidance counselors were stretched, and DCPS in general is kind of chaotic. But we had the resources to get them help when needed - we hired the occasional tutor, and an outside college counselor, and that allowed them to easily overcome barriers. The upsides of Wilson? A diverse and interesting study body, some great teachers, and a school that had activities and interested peers for everything my kids loved and wanted to do. I am 100% confident that my kids would have been no more successful academically, or in gaining life skills, had they gone to school anywhere else.

PP who is worried about Wilson "handicapping" your kid: it will not. But you should go talk to actual Wilson parents and students to learn about Wilson, not base your opinion on the rants of anonymous know-nothings on DCUM.

How do we get in touch with current Wilson parents to talk to them? I'm the pp with the 8th grader in boundary for Wilson. Last year Wilson didn't even bother with a virtual open house even though others public schools offered it. I feel like I'm flying blind deciding Wilson or not.

PP, take some initiative here. Do you know people in your community? Do you have a neighborhood email newsgroup? Do you know families in your current school with older children that attend Wilson? Are you capable of walking yourself over to Wilson and making an appointment with people? Do the teachers at your current school have previous students who attended Wilson?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a theory.

The Honors For All, AP for all at Wilson could be affecting their acceptances to highly competitive colleges. How? A little one-pager called a School Profile. When your student submits an application and the school needs to send along a transcript, the guidance department includes this one-pager that briefly describes the academic program, grading policies and most difficult classes offered in each department.

The college admissions officer uses this document as context as they score your kid’s application. They want to see that the applicant was academically ambitious and challenged themselves with difficult classes. They prefer Bs in honors classes to As in regular classes. They won’t penalize a student for not taking APs if they aren’t offered at the sending high school—which they know from this one-pager.

I imagine Wilson’s one pager explains their Honors for all/AP for all situation and this makes it hard for a student to show they have challenged themselves beyond their classmates. The application is set aside or the reviewer is not able to award points for that category.

Somebody should get a hold of Wilson’s School Profile they send with transcripts and see what it says

This is interesting. The regional admissions reps at elite colleges will know this ins and outs of Wilson's academics. It's their job to keep up on these things. Wilson basically dumbed down the curriculum (or at least the perception is that they did) and more importantly, made kids
indistinguishable from each other. Also, grading in 19-20 and 20-21 was really inflated. 19-20 had those two quarters where every assignment was extra credit and kids ended up with 300% in some classes and 20-21 had no grades lower than a B. All of this is on the radar of admissions
officers. They can't distinguish between a really top student and a student who just sailed through on pandemic grading so they probably just passed on the whole situation.
I bet there is really something to this because Walls kids had excellent admissions results this year. I think colleges WANT to take smart DCPS kids but they're skittish about taking kids who they can't tell apart from one another. Walls kids are a safer bet for an admissions officer because they were screened on admission.

[Anonymous]

Does the 4X4 schedule scare anyone else off? If my kid will be handicapped on standardized tests and also will lose so much when they don't have language or math classes, I really have to consider whether wilson makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the 4X4 schedule scare anyone else off? If my kid will be handicapped on standardized tests and also will lose so much when they don't have language or math classes, I really have to consider whether wilson makes sense.

It's not great coming off the pandemic especially.

My Wilson kid has no math or ELA this fall.

So (for example) he's going May-->Jan with no math, after 18 months of crappy virtual math. Then he's expected to learn a year of honors pre-calc in 5 months.

How is this supposed to work? It will take him a few weeks to just turn on his math brain.

In contrast, his private school sister is learning Calc over the course of a year with no massive break. I try not to worry about it.

[Anonymous]

I am a Wilson parent. My DC is not yet in the thick of college admissions, but is so far happy at Wilson. I went to a famous university, and I’m impressed by most of the teachers.

But if you are an eighth grade parent, and Wilson's 2021 college admissions list is not up to your standards, why *wouldn’t* you send your child to a DCPS selective school or try for private high school?

The college admissions game is pretty tough these days; and it’s unclear how much even private secondary schools can do to place students at the mist elite universities. Even private school parents sometimes resort to private counselors.

Given this challenging context, if it’s your sense that your student will be at a relative disadvantage coming from Wilson —everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if simply based on gut instinct — then you owe it to your child and your own peace of mind to make a different choice. It’s so not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the 4X4 schedule scare anyone else off? If my kid will be handicapped on standardized tests and also will lose so much when they don't have language or math classes, I really have to consider whether wilson makes sense.

It's not great coming off the pandemic especially.

My Wilson kid has no math or ELA this fall.

So (for example) he's going May-->Jan with no math, after 18 months of crappy virtual math. Then he's expected to learn a year of honors pre-calc in 5 months.

How is this supposed to work? It will take him a few weeks to just turn on his math brain.

In contrast, his private school sister is learning Calc over the course of a year with no massive break. I try not to worry about it.

Wow -- how is it possible that there is no math or ELA in the fall? (Sorry if answer is obvious -- elementary school parent here)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the 4X4 schedule scare anyone else off? If my kid will be handicapped on standardized tests and also will lose so much when they don't have language or math classes, I really have to consider whether wilson makes sense.

It's not great coming off the pandemic especially.

My Wilson kid has no math or ELA this fall.

So (for example) he's going May-->Jan with no math, after 18 months of crappy virtual math. Then he's expected to learn a year of honors pre-calc in 5 months.

How is this supposed to work? It will take him a few weeks to just turn on his math brain.

In contrast, his private school sister is learning Calc over the course of a year with no massive break. I try not to worry about it.

Wow -- how is it possible that there is no math or ELA in the fall? (Sorry if answer is obvious -- elementary school parent here)

Wilson now has block scheduling: the kids take 4 classes in the fall, 4 different classes in the spring.

This means that all kids only have 1/2 year of math and 1/2 year of ELA.

[Anonymous]

Even Walls kids had some disappointments last college admission cycle. Several I know did not get into their 1st or 2nd pick.

[Anonymous]

This whole thread is stupid. Wilson didn't bother to make a big public list of where their seniors are attending college because, frankly, with COVID, they have lots of other things to do besides compile and produce this list so that a bunch of anonymous folks on DCUM can chew it up. All this speculation is a waste of everybody's time and does nothing to unearth any actual information.

I mean, this is all a small sample size problem. If in an average year they have 3 kids gets into Ivies (1% of their graduating class), in some years they will have one kid, in some they will have five or six. You are all endlessly regurgitating theories about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.