Anonymous wrote:

1SWMom wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can any lottery veterans please shed light into when the waitlist moves? Obviously there would be movement by the enrollment deadline (May 1) but hopefully I don't manically check every day before then..

Please don’t check until May!
Unless you have a connection the list will not update until right before that date or even 2 days after.
After May the list will update regularly all the way until October.

This is the correct advice and yet I will check many times between now and May, as though by some magic I can will the lists to move early. I know I'm not alone, too. Some of us are crazy.

lol, I’m telling you all the paperwork is
Processed by central at the same time they don’t do the first update until May 1st or even right after people who had properly enrolled didn’t see their account info update for over a week in some cases and were going crazy, good luck on movement and getting a the choice you desire.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a Spanish Dominant PK3 student..

#11 waitlist at Tyler- Spanish Dominant
#4 waitlist at Bruce Monroe- Spanish Dominant
#33 waitlist Marie Reed Spanish Dominant
#47 waitlist Bancroft Spanish Dominant


I’m honestly shocked that we waitlisted at Tyler. Last year they didn’t even fill their Spanish dominant seats…

In the past year a lot of Spanish dominant children have arrived in DC.

But do they all know how to play the lottery?

I think the real answer is last year was Tyler/Chisolm’d first year with the Spanish program, many didn’t know or were weary.
Also they did equitable access this year which may have cost overall seats to be diverted.

Anonymous wrote:Honest question: we matched at Sela (we put it lower on our list but we speak the language at home, so that would actually be a bonus) and got #15 WL at SWWFS. Prior years suggests little movement off the list before August or even October, but that this result is fairly likely to get an admissions offer. SWWFS is slightly easier from a commute perspective, though not necessarily enough to make a difference, especially with the van service from our neighborhood to Sela.
A few questions for the hive mind:

--This is our first lottery. How secure is a "match" if we don't enroll until much later?

--if the WL offers go as late as October...what do people tend to do in August and September?

--most importantly - feeder status aside for a moment - is there a clear academic choice at the PK and elementary level? are there any issues with either that would give the other an advantage? Looking at the rankings and assessments (such as they are), I'm not sure ...

If you do not enroll by the enrollment deadline at your match, you lose the seat. You will stay waitlisted at any schools above the school where you enroll, so it's not like you'd lose your waitlist spot at SWWFS if you enroll at Sela.

I don't know the answers to your first or last questions, so can't help with those ones -- sorry!

1SWMom wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can any lottery veterans please shed light into when the waitlist moves? Obviously there would be movement by the enrollment deadline (May 1) but hopefully I don't manically check every day before then..

Please don’t check until May!
Unless you have a connection the list will not update until right before that date or even 2 days after.
After May the list will update regularly all the way until October.

This is the correct advice and yet I will check many times between now and May, as though by some magic I can will the lists to move early. I know I'm not alone, too. Some of us are crazy.

Anonymous wrote:Honest question: we matched at Sela (we put it lower on our list but we speak the language at home, so that would actually be a bonus) and got #15 WL at SWWFS. Prior years suggests little movement off the list before August or even October, but that this result is fairly likely to get an admissions offer. SWWFS is slightly easier from a commute perspective, though not necessarily enough to make a difference, especially with the van service from our neighborhood to Sela.
A few questions for the hive mind:

--This is our first lottery. How secure is a "match" if we don't enroll until much later?

--if the WL offers go as late as October...what do people tend to do in August and September?

--most importantly - feeder status aside for a moment - is there a clear academic choice at the PK and elementary level? are there any issues with either that would give the other an advantage? Looking at the rankings and assessments (such as they are), I'm not sure ...

You register for Sela now, and you remain on the waitlist at Francis Stevens. If you get a waitlist offer at some point you can decide between the schools then. If you do not register by May 1 you lose your slot.

For a September/October waitlist offer your kid would start at Sela in September and then move schools once the offer is received. Lots of people decline those offers because once you've got your kid going to one school and know teachers, friends, etc., you're less likely to change. That's why the waitlists move a lot by October: switching after the first day of school is less attractive.

Anonymous wrote:Honest question: we matched at Sela (we put it lower on our list but we speak the language at home, so that would actually be a bonus) and got #15 WL at SWWFS. Prior years suggests little movement off the list before August or even October, but that this result is fairly likely to get an admissions offer. SWWFS is slightly easier from a commute perspective, though not necessarily enough to make a difference, especially with the van service from our neighborhood to Sela.
A few questions for the hive mind:

--This is our first lottery. How secure is a "match" if we don't enroll until much later?

--if the WL offers go as late as October...what do people tend to do in August and September?

--most importantly - feeder status aside for a moment - is there a clear academic choice at the PK and elementary level? are there any issues with either that would give the other an advantage? Looking at the rankings and assessments (such as they are), I'm not sure ...

You need to enroll at your match now. If you get a waitlist offer at a school you prefer later, you will just enroll at that school and let Sela know you are withdrawing enrollment.

Technically you have until the deadline to enroll at a matched school, but there is no reason to wait. Enroll so it's done, and so that the school knows you (at least for now) want the spot. That keeps everything moving. And then if you get an offer elsewhere and decide you want it, you need to let them know immediately and submit paperwork quickly, because once waitlists start moving, schools need to know if you are taking a spot or not so that they can move onto the next person on the list if you don't.

You do everyone a favor, and build good will at schools, by being prompt with responses to enrollment offers. There is no good reason to delay unless you are taking concrete action to make a decision. My recommendation if you are really unsure about taking an offer is to ask for a tour at the school. They will usually try to accommodate this for an offered family and just walking around the school and getting another feel is usually what you need to push you one way or another. If you're truly on the fence between schools, tour both. You will usually get a gut feeling about which feels more right.

As for those two schools, I have no advice, being unfamiliar with either.

You can ask for your lottery number! They will tell you.

1SWMom wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know how to find out what the overall lottery number was and whether that number was high or low???

You will never know! It will eat you alive thinking about it! Let it go, lol

I mean, this is not totally true. You'll never know your exact lottery draw, but pretty much every year we've done the lottery, we've ultimately figured out generally where we landed. I mean, impossible to even guess at an exact number because even if you knew how many kids entered the lottery for that grade, it's not like every single kid ranks the same schools, plus preferences muck up everything, so who knows. But we know we had a very bad number for PK3 (huge waitlist numbers, in the 300s for everything except our IB which was guaranteed, even mediocre programs that go deep into the waitlist), a medium good number for PK4 (made it into the top 10 for multiple highly sought after programs but didn't get in anywhere), and a very good number for K (didn't get in anywhere in the lottery but wound up getting three offers at hard to get into schools of the waitlist thanks to expanded K rosters despite no preferences). We've never scored a truly great number, but also maybe our K year was a great number and we wound up waitlisted due to sibling preference.

Point is, eventually you start to figure out what good and bad numbers look like and can tell by looking at a lottery results list where you shook out generally. And that's good enough. I actually think knowing your exact number would be torment because it would make someone like me look at all the waitlist data for all the schools we DIDN'T lottery for that maybe be didn't like quite as much or were a longer commute but maybe with our lottery number might have gotten into and had a better year... I don't really need that level of second guessing in my life!

Anonymous wrote:Can any lottery veterans please shed light into when the waitlist moves? Obviously there would be movement by the enrollment deadline (May 1) but hopefully I don't manically check every day before then..

Please don’t check until May!
Unless you have a connection the list will not update until right before that date or even 2 days after.
After May the list will update regularly all the way until October.

Honest question: we matched at Sela (we put it lower on our list but we speak the language at home, so that would actually be a bonus) and got #15 WL at SWWFS. Prior years suggests little movement off the list before August or even October, but that this result is fairly likely to get an admissions offer. SWWFS is slightly easier from a commute perspective, though not necessarily enough to make a difference, especially with the van service from our neighborhood to Sela.
A few questions for the hive mind:

--This is our first lottery. How secure is a "match" if we don't enroll until much later?

--if the WL offers go as late as October...what do people tend to do in August and September?

--most importantly - feeder status aside for a moment - is there a clear academic choice at the PK and elementary level? are there any issues with either that would give the other an advantage? Looking at the rankings and assessments (such as they are), I'm not sure ...

Anonymous wrote:Ok...what are our odds?

1 Deal Middle School Waitlisted - #10
2 DCI (Spanish Language Program) Waitlisted - #18
3 DCI (French Language Program) Waitlisted - #12
4 BASIS DC PCS Waitlisted - #23
5 Washington Latin PCS – Middle School Waitlisted - #32
6 Washington Latin PCS – Cooper Campus Waitlisted - #24
7 DCI (Chinese Language Program) Waitlisted - #11

If I'm reading the data correctly, Deal hasn't taken anyone off the waitlist in many, many years.

Anonymous wrote:if you accept an enrollment, do you retain your waitlist number at schools you ranked higher?

Yes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok...what are our odds?

1 Deal Middle School Waitlisted - #10
2 DCI (Spanish Language Program) Waitlisted - #18
3 DCI (French Language Program) Waitlisted - #12
4 BASIS DC PCS Waitlisted - #23
5 Washington Latin PCS – Middle School Waitlisted - #32
6 Washington Latin PCS – Cooper Campus Waitlisted - #24
7 DCI (Chinese Language Program) Waitlisted - #11

What grade, 6th?

I saw. 7th. No chance at any.

Anonymous wrote:Ok...what are our odds?

1 Deal Middle School Waitlisted - #10
2 DCI (Spanish Language Program) Waitlisted - #18
3 DCI (French Language Program) Waitlisted - #12
4 BASIS DC PCS Waitlisted - #23
5 Washington Latin PCS – Middle School Waitlisted - #32
6 Washington Latin PCS – Cooper Campus Waitlisted - #24
7 DCI (Chinese Language Program) Waitlisted - #11

What grade, 6th?

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know how to find out what the overall lottery number was and whether that number was high or low???

You will never know! It will eat you alive thinking about it! Let it go, lol