Anonymous wrote:I would mention it to your priest at HT ok Sunday, he can probably give you a good idea and let you know anything you can do to increase your odds of acceptance. Priests generally care that active parishioners get a shot at getting their kid in (and sometimes make the final decisions based on faces they recognize)

This is good advice, and something we also did. We really like our priest and he would come over and talk to me when I took my daughter to the open houses.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other than the above poster, I have never known anyone who has not gotten in to their parish school. Even if you needed a great deal of financial aid, you’d get in. Don’t stress!

St. Mary's in Alexandria is notoriously difficult to get into even for parishioners. For all that we've heard about non-publication of the third trimester honor roll, it's a very popular program. We've got a kid at our daughter's school who did not get into St. Mary's as a parishioner. Turns out our school was a great fit for him though!

This. We were waitlisted as parishioners. DD ended up getting accepted, but we had already signed a contract at another school. All defitinely ended up for the best though.

You honestly never know unless you just apply and see what happens.

I would mention it to your priest at HT ok Sunday, he can probably give you a good idea and let you know anything you can do to increase your odds of acceptance. Priests generally care that active parishioners get a shot at getting their kid in (and sometimes make the final decisions based on faces they recognize)

They take 15 new students at HTS for K so you have a good chance as a parishioner. Most siblings start in PreK so not a guarantee but definitely a strong chance

Anonymous wrote:Other than the above poster, I have never known anyone who has not gotten in to their parish school. Even if you needed a great deal of financial aid, you’d get in. Don’t stress!

St. Mary's in Alexandria is notoriously difficult to get into even for parishioners. For all that we've heard about non-publication of the third trimester honor roll, it's a very popular program. We've got a kid at our daughter's school who did not get into St. Mary's as a parishioner. Turns out our school was a great fit for him though!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For holy trinity, usually half the kindergarten comes from preK and half are new. Kindergarten has 30 total, so there will probably be 15 spots. That’s pretty good odds for a parishioner.

Except some siblings start in K. Not sure why some make that choice but they do.

And some PreK kids move or go elsewhere. I'd still say 15 spots is accurate, from my couple years of paying attention, anyway. Maybe the history before that is different.

I'm envious that your schools are in such high demand. In our 2nd grade class there are 13 girls and 3 boys and they will take anyone with a pulse who is willing to pay (and quite a few who aren't paying at all brcause they are poor on paper.) 5th grade has 17 girls and 8 boys.

Anonymous wrote:For holy trinity, usually half the kindergarten comes from preK and half are new. Kindergarten has 30 total, so there will probably be 15 spots. That’s pretty good odds for a parishioner.

Except some siblings start in K. Not sure why some make that choice but they do.

For holy trinity, usually half the kindergarten comes from preK and half are new. Kindergarten has 30 total, so there will probably be 15 spots. That’s pretty good odds for a parishioner.

Other than the above poster, I have never known anyone who has not gotten in to their parish school. Even if you needed a great deal of financial aid, you’d get in. Don’t stress!

Parishioners and sibling priority make it a crapshoot. You never know when you’re walking into a cohort where 90% of spots will go to parish families that have to have older siblings, especially multiple older siblings.

At our school there seem to be alternating years of impossible admits vs undersubscribed grades, maybe based on how people have spaced their kids out.

We do see families accept one-off spots in a non-intake year for their older kids in the hopes of eventually getting a K kid off the waitlist, so if you have multiple kids and are willing to play the long game after getting shut out, that’s always an option. The school seems to be willing to go 1-2 over headcount if it means getting a boy in a small, girl heavy older grade (or vice versa). We have instructional aides so there is a little room to flex class sizes but it’s not advertised.

You can call the admissions office and ask how many spots are available after siblings are accounted for. They should be willing to share that answer. How competitive a school is will vary each year depending on the number of siblings/facility children and, if the school has a preschool, how many preschool families plan to matriculate. They will also consider gender ratios, so you really can get a better picture by talking to admissions.

I can't comment on the specific Catholic schools you are looking at, but even parishioners have trouble getting in for K in many schools. If you can get your eldest in, you should be in good shape for any others though. My overall impression is that K is generally competitive across the board in non-Catholic as well, as people get in and then can breathe easy until high school.

Anonymous wrote:We're looking at a range of schools for kindergarten for our DC, with a preference for Catholic school. We're active parishioners at Holy Trinity. We're also considering Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of Victory, plus a handful of non-Catholic schools. How hard is it to get a spot at any of these schools? I've heard that siblings tend to fill up all the K spots at OLV and Holy Trinity.

We applied to three schools in Arlington for kindergarten (and toured a fourth but didn't apply because it wasn't a top choice and the application fee was too hefty to justify it). Our daughter was admitted to two, and we withdrew our application from the third once she was admitted at our top choice. We had parish preference at our top choice, but no sibling preference since our daughter is our oldest.

Can't comment specifically on the schools you're considering, but one thing we did was to request individual tours of all four schools we considered. It gave us an opportunity to show the admissions team that our daughter was well-behaved and to demonstrate that we're the kind of parents who are low-maintenance and will back the school up on studying, homework, and discipline. We also attended all the open houses at our parish school to further demonstrate interest.

We're looking at a range of schools for kindergarten for our DC, with a preference for Catholic school. We're active parishioners at Holy Trinity. We're also considering Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of Victory, plus a handful of non-Catholic schools. How hard is it to get a spot at any of these schools? I've heard that siblings tend to fill up all the K spots at OLV and Holy Trinity.