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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's interesting--one of the DC council members posted about the lottery results.  A couple people appear to have a good understanding, but several others commented angrily about their results, even posting screen shots of their results.  Many are for popular schools with few slots available (Brent, Janney, HRCS, etc.).  Makes me realize how many people don't understand the lottery process.

Does MySchoolDC offer any tips or strategies these days, for families who are interested in maximizing chances of matching?  Or do they simply tell families to list schools in the order of their true choice?[/quote]

The latter[/quote]

I honestly have no clue how to maximize my chances.  I really struggled w/ prioritizing my choices and ultimately matched w/ first choice.  But I didn’t use any particular strategy.  Simply listed in order of preference.  Would be interested in hearing specific strategies.[/quote]

I'm the OP that raised the question.  I was mostly thinking about the importance of including safety schools if you want to match somewhere, how to determine which schools may qualify as safeties based on last year's waitlists, etc.[/quote]

Absent other circumstances such as an older sibling, OP, the safest school you can pick is your in-boundary school. The instruction is to rank in order of your true preference, because the risk is that [b]if you rank a safety school above a more preferred school [/b]and are admitted, you will not even be placed on the waiting list for your most desired school. That removes any chance of you getting off that wait list. There is no way to game the system other than to include schools where something about your family makes it more likely that you will get in.[/quote]

OP here--so what to do about the many angry commenters I mentioned, who don't appear to understand the odds game when selecting schools?  And when I mention safety schools, it seems the criteria would be 1) a safe bet of getting in, AND 2) a school that is less desirable, but one that you wouldn't mind sending your kids to if any of your higher choices don't pan out.  So safety schools would be at the end of the list, and not ranked above more preferred schools.[/quote]

There is nothing to be done about the angry commenters. The people I've met who fit that bill are people who HAVE been told "rank in order of your true preference" by peers, by lottery staff, etc. and just don't believe it. They think there MUST be some way to game the system, usually because there used to be more strategic, Vegas-style ways to lottery. However, that was before the common lottery, back when there were separate lotteries for every charter school and all the DCPS schools were lumped together. As to your points about what is a safety school, safety schools traditionally have been considered to be schools that have a lot of waitlist movement, such that out of bounds students get in via the lottery or before the school year starts. It used to be that once the year started, there was a bunch of waitlist movement in September-ish as people's lists moved - a person would get off the waitlist at Inspired Teaching and would remove themselves from the waitlist at Stokes and LAMB (or whatever) and then those lists would move. That does not happen anywhere near as much as it did 5+ years ago, but people who participated in the lottery 5+ years ago still comment about how to play strategically. There is no strategy anymore other than to rank schools in order of your true preference. The ONLY thing I can think of is ranking your IB school below schools where you do not have any kind of preference, since your preference there will automatically put you higher on the waitlist.[/quote]

+1. There was a poster (that graduated Penn...yeah i had to look...we also had 6 mutual friends) that got in at #9 and was mad she wasn’t waitlisted at 10-12, but then was relieved to see that she dojo’s add herself to the waitlist to those schools after the fact. Then there was poster that posted her results and was mad about getting into her #4 Thomson (don’t think she realized she was accepted#4 or maybe she was made she didn’t get into 1-3).[/quote]

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