How to start selecting grade schools?

[Anonymous]

How did everyone find out about schools beyond prek? There are so many private and charter schools in DC. I am the mother of a 3 year old and have been told I need to start thinking about grade schools NOW. I am overwhelmed. I am not sure I want to read all the posts about all the private schools? How did you find out the different "personalities" of the schools? Can some answer with a "cliff notes" version of some of these private schools? Like what type of students go to each school. I hear all the names on this site but am looking for what would fit my son's personality (or rather what I think he might want). For example, I get the impression that St. Albans attracts wealthy, WASP-y boys who would go on to Harvard or Yale for say a business degree. Do preschools help you narrow things down? Thank you for your help.

[SAM2]

Everyone has their own method of getting organized. For me, I just started making a list of every school that sounded potentially interesting. I focused on those close to my house and my office, or ones that offer bus service. For each school, I wrote down the cost, the location, the grades offered, and any other key details. Then, I started gathering info -- whenever I heard anything interesting about a school, or read something here, or saw something on the school's website, I added it to my notes. When open house season started, I spent a few Saturday mornings visiting schools. It's time consuming, but it helped keep me organized, and eventually I was able to create a good short list of 3-4 schools that our family applied to.

Here's one list of local independent schools: https://www.aisgw.org/parent_information/schools.aspx?pageaction=list&LinkID=

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

There are a couple of guides to independent schools in the DC/VA/MD area (just search on Amazon) that are a good one-stop-shop place to start your research. But nothing is better than visiting the websites and schools yourself!

[Anonymous]

You can go to the Parents Council of Washington website - all private independent schools are listed there and get your master list. They also list all admissions events, too.

For us, we got the list of all schools from Washingtonian's list of all private schools in the region. We then eliminated based upon size and location and came up with a nice edited list from which we furthr eliminated until we got our list. Has phone numbers, websites, etc. on it, too.

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone who replied!