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[quote=Anonymous]Disclaimer, my kids are still little (PK) but I'm a data nerd and have done a lot of digging on this. A few things:

1) The best way to get into a school you want is to be willing to move in September/October. If you dig through the Tableau dashboard (https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/aaron2446/viz/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData_draft/MSDCPublicDisplay) you'll find that for a ton of schools, it's your absolute best chance to get in. Just for example - ITS 1st grade. They let in a single digit number of kids each year. The last three years they've let in 26-60 kids from the waitlist, the majority of which have been between August and October.

2) Things do get a lot easier in K/1/2. Things really start to loosen up. Try not to bring the PK3/4 emotional baggage, that's a different beast.

3) I think you need to play out your worst case scenario here. The cause of your despair is feeling trapped. So, go through your list of all the elementary schools you'd be happy with for your kid. Then, look at the Tableau dashboard and see if any of them are generally clearing their waitlists by October for 1st or 2nd grade.

If there is no school on your list that basically clears it's waitlist pretty much every year for 1st or 2nd (or 3rd if you're willing to wait that long), then you need to keep looking at more schools until you find a school that's acceptable to you that does. That's your safety school. Then, you decide when you're willing to settle for it. Maybe it's this year, maybe it's next year, maybe it's for 3rd.  But if you have in the back of your mind "well, if none of this works out, then next year we'll put Burroughs at the bottom of our list, and if worst comes to worst, that's where we'll end up." Once you've gamed out the worst case scenario and accepted it as manageable, then you won't feel so trapped. But if you keep putting all your eggs in the "one of these schools that takes half the waitlist will surely work out" then you're going to feel panicky. If you post your full list of acceptable schools, I'm happy to do the research for you.

And related:

4) If there isn't a true safety school that will work for you, start planning for a move now. If that's the case, I agree with other posters that you'll wish you did so earlier. [/quote]

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