They do not try to balance the freshman class. There is just no way to do that. The ratios of which middle schools, gender, race, etc. do not match this assertion.

Anonymous wrote:There’s a literal lottery, a metaphorical lottery, and the priority-match system.

The priority-match system, which is operated by MySchool, is sometimes called a lottery, but does not necessarily include any random element. It’s just the centralized mechanism for matching students to the top-ranked school that has a seat available for them. Still, comments like “lottery results are out tonight!” will be relevant to kids who applied to Walls.

There’s a literal lottery element in the Walls process, but it’s small: if two or more kids apply to Walls, interview, and receive the exact same overall score in the admissions process, the lottery determines the precise order in which those kids will be admitted/waitlisted.

Finally there’s a metaphorical lottery, in that some people, after seeing who is admitted and who not admitted to Walls, walk away feeling that the admissions process is so random as to be somewhat akin to a lottery.

OP here. Thank you, this explanation makes a lot of sense!

I also have a ninth grader who is happy where they landed, but was bummed to not even get an interview at Walls. I think from last year's discussion, it seems there was some preference for kids from DCPS (as opposed to charters; not sure about privates) and kids who are outstanding in the classroom for their community involvement/helpfulness to the teacher/other students.

But even among those, there just weren't enough seats, so lots of kids got waitlisted, even once they interviewed/submitted writing sample, though some of those accepted did choose a private school instead, so there was definitely movement on the waitlist.

TLDR: if your kid is in seventh grade or younger, help them develop close relationships with their math and English teachers in seventh or eighth grades, because the teacher recs weigh A LOT.

HOWEVER, last year was the first year the recommendations were required for Walls, which means the selection process may change again at some future point (though probably not this year, as the open houses have started).

There’s a literal lottery, a metaphorical lottery, and the priority-match system.

The priority-match system, which is operated by MySchool, is sometimes called a lottery, but does not necessarily include any random element. It’s just the centralized mechanism for matching students to the top-ranked school that has a seat available for them. Still, comments like “lottery results are out tonight!” will be relevant to kids who applied to Walls.

There’s a literal lottery element in the Walls process, but it’s small: if two or more kids apply to Walls, interview, and receive the exact same overall score in the admissions process, the lottery determines the precise order in which those kids will be admitted/waitlisted.

Finally there’s a metaphorical lottery, in that some people, after seeing who is admitted and who not admitted to Walls, walk away feeling that the admissions process is so random as to be somewhat akin to a lottery.

Anonymous wrote:I’m the OP, thanks for all of your thoughts! But they raise another question - I thought I understood the lottery part of the process, but maybe I don’t. I thought the lottery part comes at the end, so the school decides whether or not to interview you based on GPA and recommendations (no lottery element). Then if you’re invited to interview, you do that and by the end of that process you are scores and ranked by Walls. But then at this point there is a lottery that decides on your admission? Why, if they have ranked the kids? Why don’t they just admit based on that ranking? Or have I misunderstood?

My understanding is they don't want to do it by ranking, because they want to have a school that's well-balanced demographically and geographically, politically not objectional, but also a reasonable male/female split, and various kids with various interests so it doesn't get out of whack in terms of subject matter. This is just the reality of it, and if they said otherwise I wouldn't believe them.

I think trying to assign numerical ratings to interviews and recommendations is a very squishy thing, and looking at GPA across so many very different schools is also not very empirically precise. So this is how it is and I don't see how it can be otherwise.

As I understand it, the lottery is a factor in that some kids rank other schools higher than Walls, so if they match with those schools, they woudn't get into Walls. And they also wouldn't be waitlisted at Walls.

But there may be more to it than that.

I’m the OP, thanks for all of your thoughts! But they raise another question - I thought I understood the lottery part of the process, but maybe I don’t. I thought the lottery part comes at the end, so the school decides whether or not to interview you based on GPA and recommendations (no lottery element). Then if you’re invited to interview, you do that and by the end of that process you are scores and ranked by Walls. But then at this point there is a lottery that decides on your admission? Why, if they have ranked the kids? Why don’t they just admit based on that ranking? Or have I misunderstood?

Anonymous wrote:There was no interview before. Just the test and your grades.

I interviewed in the late 90s. I'm not aware of a time when there weren't interviews.

Anonymous wrote:How do they score/rank recommendation letters? Is there a rubric?

There is but I don't think they share it. I believe the teachers are asked to give kids a score, 1-4 (or 1-5?), on each of a bunch of different categories. And then they have a short space to write something freehand.

My 9th grader with good behavior and all A's didn't get an interview last year. So clearly it was something in the recommendation letters, but we'll never know what! (He's doing fine at a different school now, but it was definitely a disappointment for him.)

How do they score/rank recommendation letters? Is there a rubric?

Anonymous wrote:Do they try to ensure they have representation from all the zip codes?

That's certainly not part of the official, published process. And I'm not there's even a mechanism for that, unless you think that the interviewers have access to zip code and are using it, which I doubt.

They could have kept an admissions test but then done different cutoffs for different zip codes or middle schools, but they chose to not do that.

Anonymous wrote:Do they try to ensure they have representation from all the zip codes?

If they try, they fail. The school is something like 60% from Deal and Hardy. But no one knows what they’re aiming for.

Do they try to ensure they have representation from all the zip codes?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was no interview before. Just the test and your grades.

Yes, there was. Maybe not from the beginning, but for many years there was a test and an interview. It was lower stakes because it mostly just determined who was waitlisted/the order of the waitlist, and the waitlist often cleared. But there was an interview and it made the difference for some kids.

Like I said, there wasn’t always an interview.

Technically, you didn’t say there wasn’t always an interview. You said there wasn’t an interview “before,” which in this context suggested you meant “before they dropped the exam” rather than “back in the 20th century.”

Thank you for clarifying.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was no interview before. Just the test and your grades.

Yes, there was. Maybe not from the beginning, but for many years there was a test and an interview. It was lower stakes because it mostly just determined who was waitlisted/the order of the waitlist, and the waitlist often cleared. But there was an interview and it made the difference for some kids.

Like I said, there wasn’t always an interview.