Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

WTF dude - talk about lack of evidence for these emphatic statements! "Fact"?? "Many, if not most"? You have no clue if this is true or not, and no way to possibly measure it. My kid is a 9th grader there under the new admission standards and scored 99th percentile on 9th grade PSAT and is acing all classes (now, I don't think the classes at Walls have been particularly challenging in 9th grade, but that is another topic for discussion). I assume kid would have also gotten in under old admission process as well (but of course could never know that for sure).

Fact is, for every kid like your at Walls there's a B+ student who sailed in for reasons unknown. The current admissions process doesn't separate the sheep from the goats. That's why New York City has stuck with the brutal SHSAT high school admissions exam for decades, Boston Latin and Cambridge Rindge and Latin given an equally tough homegrown exam, and many high school magnets around the country go with the PSAT 8/9 in admissions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

Thanks for confirming that you don't have evidence. I also think it's pretty gross to call children "not as sharp" but even worse when you have nothing but a feeling and hearsay to back that up.

The proportion of students failing to pass the Geometry and Algebra II PARCC rose significantly from 2018-2019 to 2023-2023. The figures were 17% and 15% and now they're 33% and 26%. (Algebra I numbers weren't reported in 2018-2019.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

WTF dude - talk about lack of evidence for these emphatic statements! "Fact"?? "Many, if not most"? You have no clue if this is true or not, and no way to possibly measure it. My kid is a 9th grader there under the new admission standards and scored 99th percentile on 9th grade PSAT and is acing all classes (now, I don't think the classes at Walls have been particularly challenging in 9th grade, but that is another topic for discussion). I assume kid would have also gotten in under old admission process as well (but of course could never know that for sure).

Fact is, for every kid like your at Walls there's a B+ student who sailed in for reasons unknown. The current admissions process doesn't separate the sheep from the goats. That's why New York City has stuck with the brutal SHSAT high school admissions exam for decades, Boston Latin and Cambridge Rindge and Latin given an equally tough homegrown exam, and many high school magnets around the country go with the PSAT 8/9 in admissions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

WTF dude - talk about lack of evidence for these emphatic statements! "Fact"?? "Many, if not most"? You have no clue if this is true or not, and no way to possibly measure it. My kid is a 9th grader there under the new admission standards and scored 99th percentile on 9th grade PSAT and is acing all classes (now, I don't think the classes at Walls have been particularly challenging in 9th grade, but that is another topic for discussion). I assume kid would have also gotten in under old admission process as well (but of course could never know that for sure).

+1. Walls obviously still has lots of kids who would have gotten in under the previous admissions process. The applicant pool is doing a lot of the work here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

WTF dude - talk about lack of evidence for these emphatic statements! "Fact"?? "Many, if not most"? You have no clue if this is true or not, and no way to possibly measure it. My kid is a 9th grader there under the new admission standards and scored 99th percentile on 9th grade PSAT and is acing all classes (now, I don't think the classes at Walls have been particularly challenging in 9th grade, but that is another topic for discussion). I assume kid would have also gotten in under old admission process as well (but of course could never know that for sure).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

WTF dude - talk about lack of evidence for these emphatic statements! "Fact"?? "Many, if not most"? You have no clue if this is true or not, and no way to possibly measure it. My kid is a 9th grader there under the new admission standards and scored 99th percentile on 9th grade PSAT and is acing all classes (now, I don't think the classes at Walls have been particularly challenging in 9th grade, but that is another topic for discussion). I assume kid would have also gotten in under old admission process as well (but of course could never know that for sure).

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

Anonymous wrote:Which doesn't alter the fact that many if not most current Walls students would not have been admitted via the pre-Covid admissions process because they weren't adequately prepared and are insufficiently academic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

Thanks for confirming that you don't have evidence. I also think it's pretty gross to call children "not as sharp" but even worse when you have nothing but a feeling and hearsay to back that up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

Thanks for confirming that you don't have evidence. I also think it's pretty gross to call children "not as sharp" but even worse when you have nothing but a feeling and hearsay to back that up.

Why do I get the feeling that you don't have teens at Walls, never have and never will?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

Thanks for confirming that you don't have evidence. I also think it's pretty gross to call children "not as sharp" but even worse when you have nothing but a feeling and hearsay to back that up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is bizarre, including OPs post. I don't know why a question about a school someone is considering would be juxtaposed by boosters v haters, when for most schools it's a lot of in between. DCUM is a place of extremes and not one I'd go to for actual feedback on a school.

These Walls posts are so predictable. You could play a drinking game off of them. Key phrases include: admissions are a lottery/crapshoot, the school is going downhill, crew team woes, and bonus points for the amazing kid who got into every selective private school but rejected from Walls.

+1

Meanwhile all these parents are upset their kid didn’t get into Walls. If it’s going downhill and so on, why would you want your kid to go there?

The rub is that Walls is going downhill. I know this because I have a kid who graduated pre-Covid and another who attends now, making me a rare Walls parent. The students being admitted without the exam and standardized test score just aren't as sharp overall as the current crop. The principal just isn't half as effective as the old one. And so on. Pretending that Walls isn't going downhill may make you feel good, but it's not reality.

This is obviously, empirically going to be true.

What can be done?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My younger child is more capable than my older where STEM work goes and would undoubtedly have done well on the Walls entrance exam. Younger scored in 700s on the SAT freshman year for CTY. Older never qualified for CTY. Falling standards are obvious if you have your eyes open. There aren't as many Walls students who can handle the most advanced math taught as there were pre-Covid. From what we hear, kids don't score as high on APs overall or take as many on average. There aren't as many seniors cracking Ivies and top SLACs. There are (minor) discipline issues in classes that we didn't hear about before. Humanities assignments get dumbed down a bit comparatively, because there aren't as many advanced humanities students. If you don't want to believe it, fine, but this is what's happening. Hint: Yale, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown etc. haven't brought back the SAT post Covid for no reason.

The 2023 class was the last to come in through the old way (entrance exam and interview).

Are you claiming to know the college outcomes of every kid for the class of 2024 when I would imagine a fair number have not even yet decided on their college?

I know a few 2024s at Walls (don’t have a kid there) and their college outcomes seem great. Maybe I just know the only 3 going to Top 20 colleges.