Reply to Most popular & hardest to get in schools for PK 3

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is misleading because it's a mix of DCPS boundary schools (with IB preference for PK), charters (all lottery), and and DCPS all city (also all lottery).

Mixing schools like Bancroft, Hyde-Addison, Marie Reed, and Maury in with schools like School Within School, Stokes, or DC Bilingual based on applicant to spot ratio gives wrong impressions about all these schools.

If you are IB for any of those DCPS schools, your chances of getting a PK3 spot are way higher than the the applicant to spot ration would indicate. That's because if you are OOB for any of those schools, your chances of getting a spot are zero or close to zero. Many people will throw schools like that on their lottery list just in case, because you get 12 slots and if you live nearby, who knows, maybe it's a weird year and they have fewer than expect IB and sibling applicants. So the applicant to spot ratio is going to be too high for IB families and way too low for OOB families.

Whereas charters and all-city schools that don't have boundary preferences can be more accurately described by the applicant to spot ratio. Though it still ignores sibling preference. With sibling preference, many families would be all but guaranteed a spot at a school like SWS or Stokes, because the siblings don't even have to compete with IB kids -- they jump all the way to the front of the line. And the number of siblings on any given applicant list for these schools can greatly reduce the odds of a family with no sibling preference getting a spot -- there are charters where more than half of all available spots in a class went to siblings some years. So non-siblings are actually competing for a much smaller number of spots.

There are also schools where a lot of people throw them on a lottery list but are not actually hard to get into. They are like safeties. Two Rivers (both 4th and Young get used this way at this point). But their yield is low and they will go deep into their waitlists.[/quote]

+1.  Very true.

The hardest to get into list is useless because OP is including schools with IB preference.  Those families will get in and it’s 100% and not hard at all. [/quote]

I think most of those schools do end up leaving IB students on the waitlist for PK3. More likely to get a spot by PK4.[/quote]

That is true but also neglects another factor: if you are IB for a school and don't get in for PK, you are still guaranteed a spot for K. Many families who miss out on their IB for PK3 or PK4 simply enroll at K and it's a non-issues. At Maury, for example, it can be hard to get a PK spot if you don't have a sibling already enrolled. But lots of families send kids to Miner, Appletree, JOW (maybe less so now because JOW is more competitive for PK than it used to be), and a variety of characters. Or just do private preschool. Missing out on PK at your IB is a bummer but more of a temporary annoyance.

Whereas families lotterying for OOB schools and charters (who are unhappy with their IB) have a lot more on the line with PK3 lottery. Many popular charters are all but impossible to get spots at after PK3. Some schools, including some DCPS, can be a bit easier to get a spot at in K because of roster expansion, but not always true. Some popular schools can be easier to lottery into in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, but the later it gets the more useless this is unless your main goal of going to the school is access to a middle school feed.

So IB and OOB families not only have very different odds of getting spots at these schools, they also have really different things riding on the PK lottery. Lots of families want PK spots at strong neighborhood DCPS schools or one of the better charters, but it's a much more critical situation for families with poor IB options (take it from someone who knows from experience).[/quote]

Mmm, no. As someone who has been in this situation, not getting an IB seat also meant our lottery number was bad enough that we didn't get in anywhere else within reasonable commuting distance or where our kid wouldn't have been the only one of their race and SES. Paying for an extra year of daycare was not a minor inconvenience.[/quote]

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