Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Truly the dumbest post I've ever seen.

Walls has a self-selected group of kids, combined with a screening from DCPS. Wilson has none of those things and is more reflective of a larger swath of kids in DC. Those rankings are based on academic performance...if you only looked at the academic performance of the subset of Wilson students who looked like Walls kids, I'm guessing their academic achievement would be similar.

It's like if you ranked how good a hospital based on mortality rates...low and behold, the hospitals serving the healthiest populations would rank highest but it would not necessarily reflect the quality of care.

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Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

I was the one who made the comment about ED acceptances being a poor measure of school quality. I've never posted about Walls before and I have no dog in this fight (am trying to evaluate high school options like others). I'm not saying Walls in mediocre--I have no idea--I'm just saying that pointing to ED acceptances for a handful of kids at a school that draws from at least some wealthy parts of the city is, frankly, meaningless. On other threads, I've seen people bashing Wilson as the worst school on the planet...I don't know a ton about that school either other than the fact that: 1) it's pretty diverse but also draws, in part, from the wealthiest parts of the city; and 2) they have a ton of kids getting in ED to top-notch schools. My guess is that if the Walls kids who got into those ED schools went to Wilson (and vice versa) you'd get the same/similar results. You need to show other indicators of school quality to convince me that schools are good.

You are correct. Most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls are doing it for some combination of the “cohort,” which is to say whiter and wealthier, and the size. I’ve never heard someone say that they think going to Walls will get their kids into a better college (except as related to the cohort/size question, meaning that they’re worried their kid will get “distracted” or “lost” at Wilson and thus not perform as well).

Who appointed you spokesperson for "[m]ost people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls"? Do know all these people personally? Did they share their motivations with you? Did you go around NW DC and conduct a survey? Where is your information coming from?

Oh, right, you have "never heard" people contradict your views, so you know what all these people are thinking.

Plus, are you even zoned for Wilson with a kid at Walls? You didn't say. I would bet that you probably don't even have a basis for your claims for yourself, let alone for the hundreds of families zoned for Wilson who have chosen Walls over the years.

SMH

I'm not the person who made the claim about "most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls...." BUT this jives with what I've heard about families in the Wilson zone whose kids get into Walls and then have to decide where to send them...that it's less about which is a "better school" and more about which is a "better match" for their kids (i.e., smaller/quieter/fewer opportunities vs bigger/more chaotic/more opportunities). It's also why I know a lot of families with kids at both schools.

I am the person who made the claim and find the PP’s response to be quite defensive without actually saying anything that counters my contention.

I do live in the Wilson zone, have kids at Wilson, and have had many conversations about this with people over the years. This is uniformly what I hear. “I’m worried X will get lost.” “Y does better in a smaller environment.” “Wilson has too many out of control kids.” Never, ever has someone said, “Walls has better college admissions” or any version of that. (And I know an admissions officer at a top 25 university who knows DC public schools well and said she thinks Wilson applicants are stronger overall than Walls. N=1, of course! But I thought that was interesting.)

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

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Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

I was the one who made the comment about ED acceptances being a poor measure of school quality. I've never posted about Walls before and I have no dog in this fight (am trying to evaluate high school options like others). I'm not saying Walls in mediocre--I have no idea--I'm just saying that pointing to ED acceptances for a handful of kids at a school that draws from at least some wealthy parts of the city is, frankly, meaningless. On other threads, I've seen people bashing Wilson as the worst school on the planet...I don't know a ton about that school either other than the fact that: 1) it's pretty diverse but also draws, in part, from the wealthiest parts of the city; and 2) they have a ton of kids getting in ED to top-notch schools. My guess is that if the Walls kids who got into those ED schools went to Wilson (and vice versa) you'd get the same/similar results. You need to show other indicators of school quality to convince me that schools are good.

You are correct. Most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls are doing it for some combination of the “cohort,” which is to say whiter and wealthier, and the size. I’ve never heard someone say that they think going to Walls will get their kids into a better college (except as related to the cohort/size question, meaning that they’re worried their kid will get “distracted” or “lost” at Wilson and thus not perform as well).

Who appointed you spokesperson for "[m]ost people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls"? Do know all these people personally? Did they share their motivations with you? Did you go around NW DC and conduct a survey? Where is your information coming from?

Oh, right, you have "never heard" people contradict your views, so you know what all these people are thinking.

Plus, are you even zoned for Wilson with a kid at Walls? You didn't say. I would bet that you probably don't even have a basis for your claims for yourself, let alone for the hundreds of families zoned for Wilson who have chosen Walls over the years.

SMH

I'm not the person who made the claim about "most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls...." BUT this jives with what I've heard about families in the Wilson zone whose kids get into Walls and then have to decide where to send them...that it's less about which is a "better school" and more about which is a "better match" for their kids (i.e., smaller/quieter/fewer opportunities vs bigger/more chaotic/more opportunities). It's also why I know a lot of families with kids at both schools.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

I was the one who made the comment about ED acceptances being a poor measure of school quality. I've never posted about Walls before and I have no dog in this fight (am trying to evaluate high school options like others). I'm not saying Walls in mediocre--I have no idea--I'm just saying that pointing to ED acceptances for a handful of kids at a school that draws from at least some wealthy parts of the city is, frankly, meaningless. On other threads, I've seen people bashing Wilson as the worst school on the planet...I don't know a ton about that school either other than the fact that: 1) it's pretty diverse but also draws, in part, from the wealthiest parts of the city; and 2) they have a ton of kids getting in ED to top-notch schools. My guess is that if the Walls kids who got into those ED schools went to Wilson (and vice versa) you'd get the same/similar results. You need to show other indicators of school quality to convince me that schools are good.

You are correct. Most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls are doing it for some combination of the “cohort,” which is to say whiter and wealthier, and the size. I’ve never heard someone say that they think going to Walls will get their kids into a better college (except as related to the cohort/size question, meaning that they’re worried their kid will get “distracted” or “lost” at Wilson and thus not perform as well).

Who appointed you spokesperson for "[m]ost people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls"? Do know all these people personally? Did they share their motivations with you? Did you go around NW DC and conduct a survey? Where is your information coming from?

Oh, right, you have "never heard" people contradict your views, so you know what all these people are thinking.

Plus, are you even zoned for Wilson with a kid at Walls? You didn't say. I would bet that you probably don't even have a basis for your claims for yourself, let alone for the hundreds of families zoned for Wilson who have chosen Walls over the years.

SMH

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

I was the one who made the comment about ED acceptances being a poor measure of school quality. I've never posted about Walls before and I have no dog in this fight (am trying to evaluate high school options like others). I'm not saying Walls in mediocre--I have no idea--I'm just saying that pointing to ED acceptances for a handful of kids at a school that draws from at least some wealthy parts of the city is, frankly, meaningless. On other threads, I've seen people bashing Wilson as the worst school on the planet...I don't know a ton about that school either other than the fact that: 1) it's pretty diverse but also draws, in part, from the wealthiest parts of the city; and 2) they have a ton of kids getting in ED to top-notch schools. My guess is that if the Walls kids who got into those ED schools went to Wilson (and vice versa) you'd get the same/similar results. You need to show other indicators of school quality to convince me that schools are good.

You are correct. Most people zoned for Wilson who choose Walls are doing it for some combination of the “cohort,” which is to say whiter and wealthier, and the size. I’ve never heard someone say that they think going to Walls will get their kids into a better college (except as related to the cohort/size question, meaning that they’re worried their kid will get “distracted” or “lost” at Wilson and thus not perform as well).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

I was the one who made the comment about ED acceptances being a poor measure of school quality. I've never posted about Walls before and I have no dog in this fight (am trying to evaluate high school options like others). I'm not saying Walls in mediocre--I have no idea--I'm just saying that pointing to ED acceptances for a handful of kids at a school that draws from at least some wealthy parts of the city is, frankly, meaningless. On other threads, I've seen people bashing Wilson as the worst school on the planet...I don't know a ton about that school either other than the fact that: 1) it's pretty diverse but also draws, in part, from the wealthiest parts of the city; and 2) they have a ton of kids getting in ED to top-notch schools. My guess is that if the Walls kids who got into those ED schools went to Wilson (and vice versa) you'd get the same/similar results. You need to show other indicators of school quality to convince me that schools are good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

This forum has lists of college acceptances every year with people hemming and hawing about how ‘bad the acceptances’ were in a given year. Now it’s ‘every school sends kids to these top 20 colleges, what’s the big deal?’ I shouldn’t be surprised but you just want to think Walls is mediocre no matter what.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

Aggressively bigoted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

That's neither here nor there...if they got financial aid at these great schools, good on them. The point is that using where a handful of kids got in via ED is a terrible metric for judging the quality of a school. Kids at Wilson, Banneker, and all of the suburban public schools have some kids getting into the same caliber schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.

+1

They are scholarship recipients.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walls would be better off admitting by lottery for 8th graders with a halfway decent GPA. Firing a respected head and dropping most admissions requirements isn't sending the right message to prospective families.

This is by design -
DC thinks that if they send a message that it is not committed, more who MAY be able to afford private will go in that direction.

Why do you think St. John's is in such high demand? At 22K it is a bargain.

wow ... Catholic AND Junior ROTC. What a bargain!

If you're not OK with Walls letting in more poorly prepared kids are OK with Catholic and co-ed, St. John's offers bang for your buck. Most parochial options in this area are at least 5K more. St. John's student body is only thought to be around half practicing Catholic. Come on, Junior ROTC is optional. Plenty of public schools in VA offer it.

It’s absurd to me that you think St Johns is better. Laughable. Catholic school student are aggressively mediocre, which is why we left. But good luck.

I'm reserving judgment for my MS students on this one, with Walls becoming more "aggressively mediocre" with each passing year.

Aggressively mediocre? Walls college admissions for early decision/action that I know of: Northwestern (full ride), U Chicago (full ride), NYU, Princeton. I wouldn’t describe that as mediocre.

I think the prior poster was calling Catholic schools (not Walls) aggressively mediocre. Which was rude and a stupidly broad categorization.

But re: Walls college admissions, those are very good schools BUT they represent a tiny proportion of the total number of Walls seniors. We know that ED/EA favors UMC kids. I'm guessing that most wealthier public schools in the area have similar ED acceptances. I know for sure that Wilson has Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Barnard, NYU, and Emory among its ED acceptances (and I only know a tiny fraction of ED results for that one school). My point being that such results are more likely a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the kids' families than any metric of school quality.

The Walls "full rides" at Chicago and Northwestern are actually the opposite. Those schools do not offer full rides for merit; those are financial aid kids.