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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Bottom line, choose Basis and high chance it will not be a good fit either in middle or high school.

No guarantee of anything and you take your risk, play lottery, try to get into private or move.

Chances of any of the above options gets lower each year.  The only sure thing is move.

The end [/quote]

Is moving really a sure thing?

We know families that moved from Ward 6 to MoCo, or Arlington, or Fairfax mainly for schools and seem to regret it. We also know people who paid through the nose to send their kids to the perfect seeming DC privates only to find that their children were miserable at these schools. We even know people who nervously sent a kid who was deeply average at math in ES to BASIS only to discover that the kid liked the program well enough to stay through high school.

I'm no BASIS fan; we only lasted a couple years. But I no longer believe in sure things where adolescents and their schools go. [/quote]

So true. Sometimes I think we agonize over school choice because it’s easier than grappling with the real challenges of adolescence. [/quote]

+1. Why is this concept so hard to understand? Pick the school that is best for your kid! For some that will be BASIS, for some it won’t. For some it will work for only middle school, for some it will work all the way through. Deal with it, because that’s what you chose to deal with when you decided to become a parent.[/quote]

If only you could simply pick. Not in DC, with the lottery system and schools that are basically closed out after fifth or sixth grade, due to limited seats and, in the case of Basis, no backfilling. [/quote]

From this thread, most people don't want to send their kid to BASIS anyway, so it should be easy to get a lottery seat if you are one of the few who do.[/quote]

[b]At least 50% of kids who lottery for BASIS don't get spots. [/b]Also, the lack of backfilling compounds this problem because even though some of the kids who DO get spots later decide it's not for them and leave, if you have bad lottery luck the one year you can enter BASIS (5th) then you will never get a spot there again.

The no backfilling is a major reason BASIS attracts a lot of negative attention on these boards. It's important to understand this. And you can defend the no backfilling policy if you want but if you can't understand why it pisses people off, especially given the level of attrition at BASIS and how miserable that 5th grade lottery is for parents thanks to the near impossibility of getting into Latin or DCI, then you don't understand this conversation. Latin and DCI have lower attrition *and* they backfill. All the acceptable DCPS middle and high schools are required to backfill if they have space. Only BASIS doesn't backfill which means it's the one acceptable MS/HS option in the city that you have exactly one chance at. Of course that is going to result in resentment and criticism.[/quote]

How many of these kids are listing BASIS as their number 1 choice? There's no way to tell, but from what I have heard over the years, if you list it as your number 1, you have a high likelihood of getting in. Most people don't list it as number 1, because it isn't their number 1 choice.[/quote]

We know how many students are on the waitlist on match day, which means they didn't match with a school they ranked higher than BASIS. We also know how many waitlist offers BASIS made by October; it's unlikely a student would get a waitlist offer at a higher ranked school before they would get an offer at BASIS. So we have a pretty good, not perfect, sense of the chances of getting an offer if you didn't match with a school you ranked higher.

SY21-22: 80% (76% if no preference)
SY22-23: 65% (58%)
SY23-24: 67% (63%)
SY24-25: 63% (60%)
SY25-26: 54% (49%)[/quote]

Exactly. So about half of students listing BASIS in the lottery get no offer, and even if these families are listing Latin or DCI higher, they aren't getting in there either because it's even less likely.

Listing BASIS as your #1 does not improve your odds of getting a spot there. The only way that your ranking of BASIS would impact your chances of getting in would be if you ranked a school you were more likely to get a spot at higher. So say you ranked Eliot-Hine #1 and BASIS #2. You would very likely get a spot at Eliot-Hine in the lottery, and thus would not even be placed on the waitlist for BASIS. But other than that scenario, your chances of getting into BASIS will be completely dependent on your random lottery draw and whether you have a preference (EA or sibling). That's it. And less than half of kids with no preference who rank BASIS get in either in the lottery or off the waitlist.[/quote]

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