Reply to New Great Schools Ratings Released for FCPS/APS High Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow Yorktown[/quote]Yorktown's college placement is garbage.  I feel so sorry for those kids.  They work hard there, but very little payoff when they come out.   [/quote]

That depends.  If you like UVA, W&M, and JMU, Yorktown is great.  If your kid wants to go to a top 10 USNWR school, it's doable, but they will need to earn their way in...there's no boost/cache coming from Yorktown.[/quote]

I will grant you that -- the APS high schools do place well into UVa, W&M and JMU, but the USNWR Top 25 Universities and Top 25 Liberal Arts colleges (not just the Top 10) are a REAL stretch -- even for kids with weighted GPAs well above 4.0.  W-L and Yorktown are grinders, and the payoff at the end of the tunnel is merely a state university at the outer edges of the USNWR Top 25 (not trying to disparage UVa and W&M in any way; they are very good schools).  I don't get it, because W-L has a fantastic IB program, and Yorktown offers more AP classes than just about any school in the greater DC area; its very impressive.  Both schools use Naviance to help the kids, just like the elite private HS do.  Something doesn't add up, that's all I'm saying.  An admissions director at a top Northeast SLAC told me that he was well aware of the stunt W-L pulled a few years ago, announcing 250 valedictorians.  It watered things down for everyone.  Maybe APS should go back to ranking students?  I know this isn't the trend nationally (even at private HS), but if it results in significantly better college placement I would bet that the top third of students at W-L and Yorktown would be in favor of it. Maybe the top 25s (other than in-state UVa and W&M) view any APS kid who didn't attend TJ as not worth their while.  TJ may be hurting college placement for other NoVa high schools, but Langley and McLean seem to do well, albeit not as well as Whitman, Churchill and BCC in Maryland.  Something needs to change -- way too many bright kids here not achieving what they've earned.      [/quote]

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