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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Get the requests for LORs in early and provide some info in the email request. Make sure she asks the teachers herself, in person and then she follows up with the thank you for agreeing email with the extra info. Look at the forms posted in the current Walls admissions thread.

Then spend a little time prepping for the interview - what sorts of Qs, use someone familiar to her but not you.

Then she will have more confidence and if she doesn’t get in, she will know she did her best. Looking at some of the results for my kids’ years, it’s a crap shoot. 
[/quote]

Prepare her to talk fast in the interview right out of the gate, since she's only going to get about 5 minutes to talk, 10 tops. The ridiculously brief/cursory Walls interview can be a disaster for shy kids who take time to warm up. We learned this the hard way for our eldest.

If you want my two cents worth, nobody in your family should think in terms of Walls being a dream school. The head is a dingbat (yes woman for DCPS, not more), the building run down, the academics not as robust as they were pre Covid (mainly because the Walls specific test and a standardized test score were dropped during Covid).  The English lit curriculum is weak, and a mess.  AP sciences aren't always taught in a given year. [b]College admissions are clearly slipping[/b]. I could go on. It's still a decent school, but hardly a....dream.[/quote]

I agree with all of these critiques except the college admissions statement. This year's seniors have early acceptances (that I know of, so this is a small fraction) at at least three t20s, Wisconsin-Madison with a full ride, and a bunch of impressive small colleges including Oberlin, Wellesley, and Swarthmore. Those are some pretty great schools, and lots more will come out of the woodworks in the coming weeks and once regular decisions come out in the spring.[/quote]

I'll give you Swarthmore, but Wisconsin, Oberlin, Wellesley?  Come on, if you can pay full fare to the tune of more than 80K+, they're just not terribly difficult to crack these days. If you were talking about Ivies, Stanford, Amherst, Pomona, Univ of Chicago etc. for non-legacies and non-athletes, I'd be cheering for Walls this admissions season.

The facts are undeniable: Bowser shamelessly dumbed down Walls admissions during the pandemic for political reasons, and embarrassing development for DC. [/quote]

Especially given one of these is a free ride it's entirely possible that the student wanted to go there. Not every kid wants to go to Harvard. I know lots of kids who could have been Ivy League who wanted to go to places like Michigan and Wisconsin for the experience, and others who did turn down Ivies because of full rides in state. College is a deeply individual choice.

Anyways, Harvard Law admitted it's fewest number of black students since 1965 this past class. Legacy acceptances are through the roof. Scoffing at very good schools is a bizarre flex.[/quote]

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