Reply to SWW interviews

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "SWW interviews "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]No one is saying that the Walls kids don't deserve to be there. Where was this said at all? They deserve to be there. However, the other kids with equivalent GPAs who were not admitted deserved to be there too.
The kids who were admitted didn't do anything exceptional or distinguishing from an academic or character standpoint to be there.

Listen, it was either pure luck or a looks/charisma thing. You can't convince any of us that a 5 minute interview done by a teenager had any hope of teasing out academic merit. I know you want to believe that your Walls child has some sort of intrinsic merit that was sussed out by a 16 year old interviewer in 5 minutes. But no, this didn't happen.
[/quote]

I'm the previous poster you are responding to here. You're right, deserve is probably not the right word for any of these students - ones who are there or ones who were not admitted, and it was me that used that term first, not stated that way earlier, so my bad. I do believe my two children who are at Walls are there because they did get good grades (I know, all grades are inflated, so they didn't really earn those either), they are competent and able to hold a conversation with an adult for 10 minutes (there were actually no students in my 2nd child's interview, so that actually doesn't apply here), they expressed an interest in wanting to be there during the interview, and are independent learners whose parents are actually pretty hands off with regards to school. So yeah, while I get there is a lot of luck involved, I'm not willing to chalk it up to just being luck or a looks/charisma thing, and the continued (false) narrative that the student interviewers are running the show here and only deciding who they want there based on how they look is doing no one any service - particularly the ones who didn't get admitted! I'm really sorry that your child did not get admitted to Walls and that you are still holding a lot of resentment about that. But you coming on here again and again saying that the ones who are there were just the good looking ones isn't really helping anyone looking to apply now - but maybe your goal is to encourage people not to apply? I really just don't get it...

For those who do have upcoming interviews and have come here with questions - the school will actually send you/your child some tips for interviewing, including attire. Our first kid's interview was in person and our 2nd was online. Both met with the student first for about 10 minutes and then with us for about 5 minutes. I did feel that in the parent interview they are trying to get a sense of how "involved" you are with regards to your child's education. The school communicates very clearly that they expect students to be self-advocates and this has been demonstrated since our kids have been there, so as someone else asked, it does seem like they are trying to suss out how much of a helicopter or snow plow parent you are. I have also heard that some kids have said in interviews that they are interested in Walls because their parents want them to go there, so I think there is some sussing out of the kid's desire to attend themselves. I think that both of my kids were asked to share about a book they had recently read or their favorite book, or something like that. I really think they are asking this type of question to gauge the student's communication skills rather than judging them on the book specifically.

And up until now, our experience has been fine. Walls is not perfect, or even great to be honest. It is fine. My kids are happy, they work hard but are not stressed by the amount of work, and are engaged socially. I have been a little disappointed at the amount of college counseling my junior has received up to now, but he has also not sought this out, which again, has been communicated clearly that the students need to do this. My kids are not big partiers and are still home or hang out with smaller groups of friends on the weekends. They know of kids who drink or smoke/eat weed, but I am fairly certain they are not engaging in that now and have not shared that they feel pressure to do so - we do talk about this quite a bit actually. The teachers have ranged from bad (unresponsive to emails, late in submitting grades, pretty unengaging) to great (engaging, communicative, challenging). Administration does send out fairly regular communication but I have not really had to engage much with them, so can't speak too much to that.

I think that the past 2 years admission process has been a big challenge, due to Covid, dropping the test, figuring out how to do online interviews, losing the long term principal mid-year, etc. Remember that there is no "admissions department", like most private schools have, so all of the interviews are being done by staff and students outside of their regular work, so extending a little grace to an extremely frustrating and opaque process might be at least slightly warranted. Good luck!
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics