Reply to applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We just applied for private middle school from DCPS.  
I had hoped my child would get in but he/she did not get in to any of the schools we applied.  We did apply to competitive schools because our "safety" is DCPS middle school.   
I know a lot of other kids in this situation this year and wanted to share our admissions experience.

My kids attends one of the JKLMM schools, 99% PARCC scores (98% at her/his school), excellent SSAT score, great grades, elite level athlete (on the top level 
travel team in the DMV and has competed at regional level events). 
Lots of varied extracurriculars  (music lessons for years, student council, math club, musical,) etc.  Years of language lessons.  
Blah, blah--the whole package.  Great teacher recs, great essays, great interview.  We even had families at the private schools 
who know our child well write on our behalf.

Nothing.

It's a harsh reality.  It is NOT easy to to go from DCPS to one of the prominent privates despite what everyone on here says "well, we could always switch my child to private 
school".  I'm here to say, if this is your plan or desire---do it early!!  Apply for PK or K or 3rd or 4th (or whenever the earliest entry years are).   It gets harder as the kids get older
and middle school is particularly difficult.

You may say to yourself, "well my kid is special! He or she will get in!"  Well, I know (and I've learned further) that there are a ton of AMAZING kids in this area and these schools have 
so few spots.  As a DCPS applicant, your are simply (in the minds of the privates) a "public school applicant" and are competing against kids coming from the magnet and gifted programs
in Montgomery and Fairfax, etc.   The kids who have been doing math 2 years above grade level (in the classroom) for years.    It's difficult to compete from DCPS and honestly I don't 
get the feeling that the privates have any allegiance to DCPS and pretty much view it as a dysfunctional system.

Middle and high school applicants have to take either the SSAT or ISEE test.  These are knowledge based (and not intelligence) tests.  My kids (who loves math and is at the top of her/his 
DCPS class) started taking practice tests and getting around 30% (after a 99% PARCC)  We studied for that test for 6 months and got her/his score up to 80-90%.  It was a long and painful slog.  Every other DCPS applicant
we know did the same thing---I can think of 15 kids off the top of my head.  We were the only one who didn't get a tutor for months.  The rest spent a lot of money to get their kid up to speed on the material.

There is another window of admission (9th grade) and some DCPS kids (from Deal etc) do get into the top private schools for high school because it's a bigger expansion year.  
But again, it's a small number.    And some (not all) of the successful applicants at any point are legacy kids or under represented minorities (both are "hooks" for admission that we didn't have).

Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience.  This is not a brag on my kid's accomplishments at all (and again, this kid didn't get in).  It's meant simply as an "FYI" to others who may be going down this road in the future.

Lastly, we applied because we thought the smaller class sizes in private (among other things) would be a better fit for THIS child than our DCPS middle school.   We have one child in DCPS middle and now this kid 
will attend as well.   Ultimately we're fine with that but I wanted to share this to other families.

[/quote]

Thank you!! We were wondering whether to apply to private for third grade (from a charter) or stick it out for a few more years. This is very helpful, if sobering.[/quote]

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