Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there was a test, people would complain about the test. I’m sure there are kids who would have gotten glowing letters last year, but there were no recommendation letters required. I have friends whose daughter got into walls last year. They felt they had “no options” with their inbound school and felt the admission process was fair. Anyone would feel good about a process that selects their child. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world.

Heh. My older kid is in 11th grade at SWW. The admissions process was a sh*tshow.

Well yes. This was the first test optional year and the one that had some kids with 2 minute interviews.

However, looking back it was better than this year because at least they interviewed all the straight A kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC is not trying to be Boston or NYC. And applications to Walls keep rising.

Ha, of course they do. With opaque and subjective admissions criteria, EVERYONE has a shot!

Boston and NYC very seldom change their admissions processes for magnet HS entry, or even tweak them. They've essentially kept the same admissions processes in place for over half a century. The constancy and clarity in the processes in those cities promotes confidence on the part of ed stakeholders, who get the sense that the admissions systems, while imperfect tools, are fundamentally fair in support of clearly articulated goals. One Boston and NYC administration after another has come under strong pressure from civil liberties groups to change the process over the years without that happening. The system doesn't change because the results have been consistently good, leading most voters and ed stakeholders to support, or at least tolerate, the system.

By contrast, it's amateur hour in admissions in DCPS. A different approach, an even more experimental approach in Walls admissions, every year or two. All the flip flopping is a political issue stemming from low DCPS capacity and increasingly weak leadership that isn't being addressed by our politicians, or voters. Maybe we get what we deserve as a city. We don't advocate effectively for much needed change so we don't get it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way admissions are being handled this year will not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students.

My kid didn't get a spot either, but please don't rain on a bunch of hard working middle school kids who got an opportunity.

+100

Comments like PP are just gross. You can be upset your kid didn’t get an interview and think the process is unfair. Fine. Claiming that the kids who did get an interview are not high achieving makes you an a**hole.

Notably, PP didn't say this. PP didn't say none of the kids who got interviews are high-achieving. Just that the process does not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students. It doesn't. It is likely that many of the kids being interviewed (and who will eventually take places at the school) are in fact high-achieving, but the process does nothing to exclude kids who are below grade level, and it doesn't necessarily result in the 300 highest achieving students in the applicant pool being interviewed.

And I would argue the admissions test did not ensure the 300 highest achieving students were interviewed. Or that the class was 150 high achieving students. There were years when the test cutoff for an interview was 50% on the math test.

Still, you’d probably rather have someone on the right side of that 50% in the class than on the wrong side.

All in all, I think testing is the best way to do admissions to a selective school. Grades and GPA mean totally different things at different schools. The finterviews were clearly silly. The letters of rec process they came up with is bizarre. These could all be components of admission, but they shouldn’t have more weight than an admissions test.

True.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a written statement released by the university that Yale had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.

“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”

I am so pleased with my alma mater. Their statement also said that, unexpectedly and unintentionally, the admissions data showed that going test optional hurt kids from the poorest backgrounds. So there's also that. Testing of some kind should 100% be at least a significant consideration in admissions to a magnet school. PARCC or independent test. You can have lower standards for at risk kids or kids who attend T1s. You can also reserve a portion of the class for at risk kids. There are ways to ensure diversity and a qualified class. Pretending that a 4.0 at BASIS is the same as a 4.0 at Wheatley is not it. Allowing LORs -- which were mandated as coming from particular teachers -- to be the deciding factor is also not it.

Yeah, having a type of quota system is far preferable to upending your entire admissions system. There's no reason why, within a particular demographic category, you shouldn't be taking the highest-performing kids who will benefit the most from what SWW has to offer, and the current system is not set up to do that.

Anonymous wrote:If there was a test, people would complain about the test. I’m sure there are kids who would have gotten glowing letters last year, but there were no recommendation letters required. I have friends whose daughter got into walls last year. They felt they had “no options” with their inbound school and felt the admission process was fair. Anyone would feel good about a process that selects their child. It’s an imperfect system in an imperfect world.

Heh. My older kid is in 11th grade at SWW. The admissions process was a sh*tshow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way admissions are being handled this year will not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students.

My kid didn't get a spot either, but please don't rain on a bunch of hard working middle school kids who got an opportunity.

+100

Comments like PP are just gross. You can be upset your kid didn’t get an interview and think the process is unfair. Fine. Claiming that the kids who did get an interview are not high achieving makes you an a**hole.

Notably, PP didn't say this. PP didn't say none of the kids who got interviews are high-achieving. Just that the process does not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students. It doesn't. It is likely that many of the kids being interviewed (and who will eventually take places at the school) are in fact high-achieving, but the process does nothing to exclude kids who are below grade level, and it doesn't necessarily result in the 300 highest achieving students in the applicant pool being interviewed.

And I would argue the admissions test did not ensure the 300 highest achieving students were interviewed. Or that the class was 150 high achieving students. There were years when the test cutoff for an interview was 50% on the math test.

Still, you’d probably rather have someone on the right side of that 50% in the class than on the wrong side.

All in all, I think testing is the best way to do admissions to a selective school. Grades and GPA mean totally different things at different schools. The finterviews were clearly silly. The letters of rec process they came up with is bizarre. These could all be components of admission, but they shouldn’t have more weight than an admissions test.

True.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a written statement released by the university that Yale had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.

“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”

I agree. How did SF bring back the test for Lowell -- who was pushing back? Can parents start to advocate for a return of the test?

They ousted three school board members through a recall.

The recall was not just about Lowell, though. SFUSD was maybe the last major school district in the country to go back in person after COVID, a long time after DCPS. They weren’t in the habit of announcing the school calendar, including the first day of school, until about a month before the school year began. Stuff that got a lot of people involved who didn’t care about Lowell.

Anonymous wrote:It is interesting - last year the cutoff was 3.88 (approx) to get an invterview - and they interviewed 500 (so you needed a 3.88 to be in top 500 group). This year, the cut off GPA was 3.7 - at which point they looked at letters of rec/scored those letters and added that score to GPA score. I wonder how many kids were in the 3.7 and above pool. This probably expanded eligible numbers by a lot. 1000? 750?

I have wondered about this too. I wonder if they used the 3.7 GPA because GPAs 3.7 and above received the same 'score' so then the way to distinguish was by looking at teacher recs. It's also possible that it's a lower GPA because the school reported receiving about 200 fewer apps than prior years (but still over 1700).

If because GPAs 3.7 and higher received the same score, then this version helps those kids who had a class that they didn't do so well in for whatever reason - harsh teacher, multiple substitutes, etc.

Unfortunately, this version does not help my kid who would have met the 3.88 cutoff but did not meet the teacher rec cutoff. I've been thinking about why I've been struggling with this. I think it comes down to two reasons 1) teachers 'rate' kids in different ways - some more generous than others, some may be more accustomed to filling out this form (since they'd been using it for Banneker in past years) and some are new to filling it out (I do also worry, granted in a paranoid way, that for schools that have a high school (like BASIS, DCI, Latin) that they want those kids to continue so don't rate as high). And this just feels out of the kid's control. 2) I don't see how this approach helps them to serve kids from all eight wards - which has been a stated goal (at least verbally) and a goal that I do support.

I wonder about how to counter that sense of being out of the kid's control because it's not reasonable to expect them to read thousands of essays. I do think they could read hundreds of essays (which is what they are planning to do this go-round) so then maybe they could have an onsite (so you don't have kids getting excessive external help) essay day or two and just cut out the interview part of the process so then they could read the essays of all the kids who receive the top score for GPA. This way you'd have two factors within the kids control before they get 'cut.'

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way admissions are being handled this year will not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students.

My kid didn't get a spot either, but please don't rain on a bunch of hard working middle school kids who got an opportunity.

+100

Comments like PP are just gross. You can be upset your kid didn’t get an interview and think the process is unfair. Fine. Claiming that the kids who did get an interview are not high achieving makes you an a**hole.

Notably, PP didn't say this. PP didn't say none of the kids who got interviews are high-achieving. Just that the process does not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students. It doesn't. It is likely that many of the kids being interviewed (and who will eventually take places at the school) are in fact high-achieving, but the process does nothing to exclude kids who are below grade level, and it doesn't necessarily result in the 300 highest achieving students in the applicant pool being interviewed.

And I would argue the admissions test did not ensure the 300 highest achieving students were interviewed. Or that the class was 150 high achieving students. There were years when the test cutoff for an interview was 50% on the math test.

Still, you’d probably rather have someone on the right side of that 50% in the class than on the wrong side.

All in all, I think testing is the best way to do admissions to a selective school. Grades and GPA mean totally different things at different schools. The finterviews were clearly silly. The letters of rec process they came up with is bizarre. These could all be components of admission, but they shouldn’t have more weight than an admissions test.

True.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a written statement released by the university that Yale had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.

“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”

I agree. How did SF bring back the test for Lowell -- who was pushing back? Can parents start to advocate for a return of the test?

They ousted three school board members through a recall.

Adding the recommendation letters as a weighted part of acceptance was a terrible idea. The kids should be allowed to sink or swim on their own. GPA, interview, and essay was a better model. I have mixed feelings about testing, perhaps skewed because I work in tech. There's plenty of examples of people in the IT industry that have dozens of certifications and can pass an exam, but put them in front of a keyboard and they have zero skills. Your child's own ambition, motivation, and ability to critically think are the most important factors in learning.

Anonymous wrote:Do you think that Hardy students were at a disadvantage because DCPS wants them to go to MacArthur and therefore didn't offer many an interview? My kid is at Hardy and I have heard of very few who were offered an interview. I'm sure DCPS wants MacArthur to be a success and Hardy is the ONLY school that feeds to it.

This year they still have the choice to attend JR. Locking them out of Walls does not pipeline them to MacArthur yet. Next year, though...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how many of the 4.0 kids who did get offered an interview and end up being offered a spot at SWW will turn it down because the families suspect their kid will not be part of a cohort that is actually motivated, prepared and achieving. Deal and Hardy kids might prefer to take their chances at Jackson Reed...which will be great for the waitlist, I guess.

I'm a parent in the situation above and I can tell you that what I'm reading on DCUM and whether SWW will have a "motivated cohort" is NOT part of our family's decision making. What is part of our calculation is whether my child will thrive in a smaller environment like SWW (compared to JR), whether extracurriculars will be more easily accessed at a smaller school, commute times, etc. I realize we're fortunate to have options, but I'm really focused on what's best for my kid, not hypothesizing about the cohort that will be admitted.

Does your child care whether they have friends also attending SWW? Do they make friends and adapt to new situations easily? Best of luck to your child.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how many of the 4.0 kids who did get offered an interview and end up being offered a spot at SWW will turn it down because the families suspect their kid will not be part of a cohort that is actually motivated, prepared and achieving. Deal and Hardy kids might prefer to take their chances at Jackson Reed...which will be great for the waitlist, I guess.

I'm a parent in the situation above and I can tell you that what I'm reading on DCUM and whether SWW will have a "motivated cohort" is NOT part of our family's decision making. What is part of our calculation is whether my child will thrive in a smaller environment like SWW (compared to JR), whether extracurriculars will be more easily accessed at a smaller school, commute times, etc. I realize we're fortunate to have options, but I'm really focused on what's best for my kid, not hypothesizing about the cohort that will be admitted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way admissions are being handled this year will not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students.

My kid didn't get a spot either, but please don't rain on a bunch of hard working middle school kids who got an opportunity.

+100

Comments like PP are just gross. You can be upset your kid didn’t get an interview and think the process is unfair. Fine. Claiming that the kids who did get an interview are not high achieving makes you an a**hole.

Notably, PP didn't say this. PP didn't say none of the kids who got interviews are high-achieving. Just that the process does not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students. It doesn't. It is likely that many of the kids being interviewed (and who will eventually take places at the school) are in fact high-achieving, but the process does nothing to exclude kids who are below grade level, and it doesn't necessarily result in the 300 highest achieving students in the applicant pool being interviewed.

And I would argue the admissions test did not ensure the 300 highest achieving students were interviewed. Or that the class was 150 high achieving students. There were years when the test cutoff for an interview was 50% on the math test.

Still, you’d probably rather have someone on the right side of that 50% in the class than on the wrong side.

All in all, I think testing is the best way to do admissions to a selective school. Grades and GPA mean totally different things at different schools. The finterviews were clearly silly. The letters of rec process they came up with is bizarre. These could all be components of admission, but they shouldn’t have more weight than an admissions test.

True.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a written statement released by the university that Yale had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.

“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”

I am so pleased with my alma mater. Their statement also said that, unexpectedly and unintentionally, the admissions data showed that going test optional hurt kids from the poorest backgrounds. So there's also that. Testing of some kind should 100% be at least a significant consideration in admissions to a magnet school. PARCC or independent test. You can have lower standards for at risk kids or kids who attend T1s. You can also reserve a portion of the class for at risk kids. There are ways to ensure diversity and a qualified class. Pretending that a 4.0 at BASIS is the same as a 4.0 at Wheatley is not it. Allowing LORs -- which were mandated as coming from particular teachers -- to be the deciding factor is also not it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The way admissions are being handled this year will not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students.

My kid didn't get a spot either, but please don't rain on a bunch of hard working middle school kids who got an opportunity.

+100

Comments like PP are just gross. You can be upset your kid didn’t get an interview and think the process is unfair. Fine. Claiming that the kids who did get an interview are not high achieving makes you an a**hole.

Notably, PP didn't say this. PP didn't say none of the kids who got interviews are high-achieving. Just that the process does not ensure a class of 150 high achieving, on grade level students. It doesn't. It is likely that many of the kids being interviewed (and who will eventually take places at the school) are in fact high-achieving, but the process does nothing to exclude kids who are below grade level, and it doesn't necessarily result in the 300 highest achieving students in the applicant pool being interviewed.

And I would argue the admissions test did not ensure the 300 highest achieving students were interviewed. Or that the class was 150 high achieving students. There were years when the test cutoff for an interview was 50% on the math test.

Still, you’d probably rather have someone on the right side of that 50% in the class than on the wrong side.

All in all, I think testing is the best way to do admissions to a selective school. Grades and GPA mean totally different things at different schools. The finterviews were clearly silly. The letters of rec process they came up with is bizarre. These could all be components of admission, but they shouldn’t have more weight than an admissions test.

True.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, said in a written statement released by the university that Yale had determined that test scores, while imperfect, were predictive of academic success in college.

“Simply put,” he said, “students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale G.P.A.s, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed.”

I agree. How did SF bring back the test for Lowell -- who was pushing back? Can parents start to advocate for a return of the test?

I am in for this effort!

Do you think that Hardy students were at a disadvantage because DCPS wants them to go to MacArthur and therefore didn't offer many an interview? My kid is at Hardy and I have heard of very few who were offered an interview. I'm sure DCPS wants MacArthur to be a success and Hardy is the ONLY school that feeds to it.

I wonder how many of the 4.0 kids who did get offered an interview and end up being offered a spot at SWW will turn it down because the families suspect their kid will not be part of a cohort that is actually motivated, prepared and achieving. Deal and Hardy kids might prefer to take their chances at Jackson Reed...which will be great for the waitlist, I guess.