Yorktown parent here. My impression of the school is neutral but I don't see significant issues due to overcrowding in the near future. My kids really felt overcrowding in PE and at lunch in elementary school and gym, particularly at Williamsburg during the construction of Discovery.

I do find that kids at Yorktown are very conformist and don't want to seen as trying too hard (being a "try hard" is the ultimate social disgrace). My kids certainly do not receive much individual attention from their teachers. Also, you see the more intellectual kids going to Jefferson and the nerdier kids (I mean it in a good way as kids who are less conformist) transfer to W&L for IB.

I had looked into O'Connell but I did not see/feel much difference between the teaching and students there versus Yorktown.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interested in this too as YHS seems to be heading toward overcrowding. WMS has been mostly good for our student, but seems to give very little individual attention. Lunchroom is a zoo!

Also curious to know what privates OP applied to?

Is OP around? I asked this question. What privates are you comparing Yorktown to?

OP here. All Catholic one's.

So which way are you leaning based on this discussion and your own research?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interested in this too as YHS seems to be heading toward overcrowding. WMS has been mostly good for our student, but seems to give very little individual attention. Lunchroom is a zoo!

Also curious to know what privates OP applied to?

Is OP around? I asked this question. What privates are you comparing Yorktown to?

OP here. All Catholic one's.

Anonymous wrote:Interested in this too as YHS seems to be heading toward overcrowding. WMS has been mostly good for our student, but seems to give very little individual attention. Lunchroom is a zoo!

Also curious to know what privates OP applied to?

Is OP around? I asked this question. What privates are you comparing Yorktown to?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is plenty of SAT test prep in North Arlington.

You don't live in N. Arlington, do you? Until very recent times, it was a working class neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a taxi driver. A police officer lived a few doors down. We bought our 1959 home from the original owners, who were not college grads. Most of our neighbors a dozen years ago were elderly and none of them educated. It's changed in the last decade. A lot of older homes have been razed and new homes built. A lot of these working class folks are still around. Of course, some of the people who bought those new homes are having their kids take the prep classes but I think their kids are somewhat younger and just now reaching middle school age. That's why the elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. The high schools are just about to reach over-capacity in the next few years. It's really not that hard to believe that the original Arlingtonians did not pay for their kids to take the prep classes.

Are you zoned Yorktown? North arlington was middle class not working class. Yorktown has been a very UMC high school for well over a decade. Maybe more so now, but it's not like 10 years ago it was just a humble blue collar suburb.

Correct. In fact, by some measures, Yorktown did better 40 years ago than it's done lately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1977/09/19/whitman-high-leads-area-in-merit-scholarships/24b77603-0a3c-421a-8739-798a8ce4641b/?utm_term=.002d642e93d3

Anonymous wrote:Yes, Yorktown. And yes working class. If you look at Lee Highway, you will see lots of pawn shops and other remnants of that time. Just talk to some of your older neighbors or folks who actually grew up in Arlington. I'm sure they would tell you all about it.

Ok sure, but Yorktown has been UMC since the 90's. Your older "working class" neighbors were the majority 40 years ago... and I really think it's a stretch. Arlington has always been home to federal workers. Very middle class.

Yes, Yorktown. And yes working class. If you look at Lee Highway, you will see lots of pawn shops and other remnants of that time. Just talk to some of your older neighbors or folks who actually grew up in Arlington. I'm sure they would tell you all about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is plenty of SAT test prep in North Arlington.

You don't live in N. Arlington, do you? Until very recent times, it was a working class neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a taxi driver. A police officer lived a few doors down. We bought our 1959 home from the original owners, who were not college grads. Most of our neighbors a dozen years ago were elderly and none of them educated. It's changed in the last decade. A lot of older homes have been razed and new homes built. A lot of these working class folks are still around. Of course, some of the people who bought those new homes are having their kids take the prep classes but I think their kids are somewhat younger and just now reaching middle school age. That's why the elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. The high schools are just about to reach over-capacity in the next few years. It's really not that hard to believe that the original Arlingtonians did not pay for their kids to take the prep classes.

Are you zoned Yorktown? North arlington was middle class not working class. Yorktown has been a very UMC high school for well over a decade. Maybe more so now, but it's not like 10 years ago it was just a humble blue collar suburb.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is plenty of SAT test prep in North Arlington.

You don't live in N. Arlington, do you? Until very recent times, it was a working class neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a taxi driver. A police officer lived a few doors down. We bought our 1959 home from the original owners, who were not college grads. Most of our neighbors a dozen years ago were elderly and none of them educated. It's changed in the last decade. A lot of older homes have been razed and new homes built. A lot of these working class folks are still around. Of course, some of the people who bought those new homes are having their kids take the prep classes but I think their kids are somewhat younger and just now reaching middle school age. That's why the elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. The high schools are just about to reach over-capacity in the next few years. It's really not that hard to believe that the original Arlingtonians did not pay for their kids to take the prep classes.

Not any more.

But we lived there long enough to know people don't refer to North Arlington as a single neighborhood, much less a "working class neighborhood."

This might help: http://gis.arlingtonva.us/Maps/Standard_Maps/Civic_Associations/Civic_Association_map.pdf

Anonymous wrote:There is plenty of SAT test prep in North Arlington.

You don't live in N. Arlington, do you? Until very recent times, it was a working class neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a taxi driver. A police officer lived a few doors down. We bought our 1959 home from the original owners, who were not college grads. Most of our neighbors a dozen years ago were elderly and none of them educated. It's changed in the last decade. A lot of older homes have been razed and new homes built. A lot of these working class folks are still around. Of course, some of the people who bought those new homes are having their kids take the prep classes but I think their kids are somewhat younger and just now reaching middle school age. That's why the elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. The high schools are just about to reach over-capacity in the next few years. It's really not that hard to believe that the original Arlingtonians did not pay for their kids to take the prep classes.

Anonymous wrote:Glad to see that the rude posts were deleted. Thanks, Jeff!

I'm the parent of a Yorktown freshman. I posted earlier but quoted one of those deleted posts, so it went poof too. We don't have a problem with overcrowding but I don't think the freshman class this year has the number of students that next year's class will have.

We have not been impressed with the teachers. My son's French teacher is awful.

I chatted with a neighbor whose daughter is a Yorktown senior about the comments on this post this afternoon. She is a Georgetown grad herself. He daughter is headed to Washington & Lee University next year. My neighbor didn't agree with the comments about JMU. I asked her about the SAT scores (re: one of the posts that Jeff removed). She said it's because students at McLean and Langley take prep classes while students at Yorktown don't. (I'm sharing this simply as an FYI to folks like me who don't follow every debate on this board).

I mentioned my disappointment to my neighbor about the French teacher and she said that the foreign language teachers are not that good at Yorktown.

There is plenty of SAT test prep in North Arlington.

Glad to see that the rude posts were deleted. Thanks, Jeff!

I'm the parent of a Yorktown freshman. I posted earlier but quoted one of those deleted posts, so it went poof too. We don't have a problem with overcrowding but I don't think the freshman class this year has the number of students that next year's class will have.

We have not been impressed with the teachers. My son's French teacher is awful.

I chatted with a neighbor whose daughter is a Yorktown senior about the comments on this post this afternoon. She is a Georgetown grad herself. He daughter is headed to Washington & Lee University next year. My neighbor didn't agree with the comments about JMU. I asked her about the SAT scores (re: one of the posts that Jeff removed). She said it's because students at McLean and Langley take prep classes while students at Yorktown don't. (I'm sharing this simply as an FYI to folks like me who don't follow every debate on this board).

I mentioned my disappointment to my neighbor about the French teacher and she said that the foreign language teachers are not that good at Yorktown.

Anonymous wrote:APS admissions rates to Ivies seem to be below-average except for Cornell and maybe Penn: http://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/September-October-2016/Where-Arlington-Grads-Applied-and-Were-Accepted-to-College/index.php?cparticle=8&siarticle=7#artanc

Brown - 3.6%
Columbia - 4.9%
Cornell - 20%
Dartmouth - 4.5%
Harvard - 2.6%
Princeton - 3.0%
Penn - 7.3%
Yale - 2.8%

These numbers are meaningless without knowing what's happening in FFX.

OP - back to your original question. My son goes to W-L, but I can tell you that the crowding was a factor. If I could do it again with the kid God gave me, I'd choose private. I think my neighbor's kid was unaffected by the crowding. YMMV.

Don't assume IB is the answer to anything. Not everyone who intends to do IB finds that it is a good fit, and it is still housed in a crowded school.

Gym is crazy.

I think you will be disappointed if you are looking to aim higher than UVA. Sorry.