Reply to Walls admissions article in the Post

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wanted to revisit this thread now that the 2022-23 Walls admissions process is under way and seats for the incoming freshman class have been offered. What have others observed?

What we’ve seen: A number of academically motivated and high-achieving kids with high GPAs were not offered seats and are in the lower (bottom) rungs of the Walls waitlist. In previous years, these kids would’ve been a good fit for acceptance at Walls. Meanwhile, the kids we know who have been offered seats for next fall are not academically high achieving or particularly inclined. All of the kids mentioned above are White.

The Walls admissions process and criteria were not transparent this year. We attended all of the virtual open houses to hear what the school leadership could offer about admission requirements, since there was apparently a delayed decision from DCPS about what the minimum GPA required would be.

The explanations were vague, and included a mention of a “lottery component” of admission, which was not mentioned in years prior when academic achievement (a certain GPA) was the first criterion, as well as attaining certain PARCC scores, getting a higher score on an entrance exam, having teacher recommendations, and participating in an interview. All of those former requirements, aside from the very brief interview, were gone this year. From this thread, it sounds like that was the case last year as well.

It was not made at all clear how GPA and interview would be weighted in the decision-making process. Hard to believe that GPA, as evidence of student motivation over time, apparently carries so little weight with Walls now.

Finding the utter lack of transparency on the admissions process concerning and would like to see the school publicly share the data on how students were selected for admission.
[/quote]

This happened last year too...the only additional information given last year was that "31 out of 36" points would be given to the interview.  5 points given to 7th grade GPA. When there were ties, it went into the lottery.

But no information on how those 31 points were determined in the interview (as many have noted, the interviews last year ranged from 3 minutes to 10 minutes and were done by students and faculty. Some kids got one question, some got three). An absolute embarassment.[/quote]

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