Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:39
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It is disheartening to read that, in sum, nothing has changed at DCPS for 40+ years.
I’m not sure you can conclude that from one post.
Another anecdote: my DD and a couple of her friends were all admitted to privates from their EOTP school last year, including one to a “Big 3.” It’s hard to draw conclusions without knowing all the info.
P.S. I’m not trying to argue that it’s easy to get into private from DCPS. I’m simply saying it’s tough to draw conclusions with incomplete data—specifically, you’d need the rate of application and acceptance from DCPS students in a given year. Any you’d probably want to compare it to similar data from MoCo and NoVa school systems. OP said she aimed high; so in this case we’d have to know this info at the top privates in the area. I’m not sure if this sort of info is available anywhere.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:26
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Our experience was similar to OP's when applying to 6th last year.
DC with 5 on PARCC got 30% on SSAT and had to go to a tutor.
Shut out of everywhere except school where sibling is. We had moved sibling in an earlier grade when it was easier.
Feedback from private this year is that DC is very weak on grammar and punctuation rules, does not know how to take notes, and does not know how to study.
We are dreading the process for our youngest DC next year.
Most 6th graders have no clue on notes or study skills....
You'd better believe that 6th graders at the 2 DC independent schools I know do have study skills. Because these 2 schools have been teaching them routinely and pointedly for years. I think that may be OP's point. Education is not some fungible good that you can just switch out and a dcps (or mcps or Arl or ...) isn't interchangeable with each other or with 6 years in elementary at an independent where they explicitly teach note taking and study skills.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:24
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Did you need financial aid?
Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:18
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:I think the main thing is that you apply to get into a private school during a "portal" year. In many local privates, that's 5th grade and not 6th grade. Also, the OP already mentioned 9th grade as a portal year at many of these private schools. Other than those two years, then yes the easiest way to get in is PK or K.
THEN there's always the "contribute 5-10K with the application" approach. I know anecdotally that this has worked at several schools for student applicants. I'm sure that someone who works at an independent school would confirm that this is an effective approach. Believe it or not, these schools actually need the cost of tuition to keep the institution running, and for many the cost of tuition without additional contributions is still not enough.
This post is full of nonsense. Fifth isn't an entry year anymore at the more competitive schools, not for a decade, and the fact that this poster thinks it is should make you suspicious of all his other assertions.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:08
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I have not had the perception from this forum that it's "easy" to get into a private school.
There are regularly posts about DCPS that insinuate that switching to private is easy:
"well, if XX school quality decreases, upper middle class families will leave for private".
"if my kid doesn't get advanced math instruction we'll switch to private".
I do think it's said pretty routinely and cavalierly.
As a long-time dcum participant, I completely agree. And I smh too, because as a private school parent (for 10 years now) I know the odds are much more difficult than the cavalier posters realize. Note that's very true of elementary school, too. A variation on the theme is the parent who assumes they can simply switch their rising 2nd grader from Watkins / noyes / seaton to a non-parochial private if the mood overtakes them. I see them on tours at my kids'' school every year. There just isn't space, especially in those non-expansion years when it seems the "fine for ECE" dcps and dcpcs are no longer working.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 07:03
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:It is disheartening to read that, in sum, nothing has changed at DCPS for 40+ years.
I’m not sure you can conclude that from one post.
Another anecdote: my DD and a couple of her friends were all admitted to privates from their EOTP school last year, including one to a “Big 3.” It’s hard to draw conclusions without knowing all the info.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 06:54
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
It is disheartening to read that, in sum, nothing has changed at DCPS for 40+ years.
Anonymous
03/04/2018 00:29
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I am a private school parent and I fielded 4 calls from friends of friends who had kids in MCPS who were absolutely desperate to get their kids out and go to private school. Most of them said the same thing that there was way too much pressure to take many AP classes and that class sizes of 40 kids or more meant their kids were being ignored. It could be that with the good economy people feel more able to afford private school and so they were more applicants this year
No classes have 40+ students, or anywhere near it.
I heard it was closer to 60
Anonymous
03/03/2018 23:27
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:I am a private school parent and I fielded 4 calls from friends of friends who had kids in MCPS who were absolutely desperate to get their kids out and go to private school. Most of them said the same thing that there was way too much pressure to take many AP classes and that class sizes of 40 kids or more meant their kids were being ignored. It could be that with the good economy people feel more able to afford private school and so they were more applicants this year
No classes have 40+ students, or anywhere near it.
Anonymous
03/03/2018 23:12
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Huge overeaction, OP.
Anonymous
03/03/2018 22:57
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:We just applied for private middle school from DCPS.
I had hoped my child would get in but he/she did not get in to any of the schools we applied. We did apply to competitive schools because our "safety" is DCPS middle school.
I know a lot of other kids in this situation this year and wanted to share our admissions experience.
My kids attends one of the JKLMM schools, 99% PARCC scores (98% at her/his school), excellent SSAT score, great grades, elite level athlete (on the top level
travel team in the DMV and has competed at regional level events).
Lots of varied extracurriculars (music lessons for years, student council, math club, musical,) etc. Years of language lessons.
Blah, blah--the whole package. Great teacher recs, great essays, great interview. We even had families at the private schools
who know our child well write on our behalf.
Nothing.
It's a harsh reality. It is NOT easy to to go from DCPS to one of the prominent privates despite what everyone on here says "well, we could always switch my child to private
school". I'm here to say, if this is your plan or desire---do it early!! Apply for PK or K or 3rd or 4th (or whenever the earliest entry years are). It gets harder as the kids get older
and middle school is particularly difficult.
You may say to yourself, "well my kid is special! He or she will get in!" Well, I know (and I've learned further) that there are a ton of AMAZING kids in this area and these schools have
so few spots. As a DCPS applicant, your are simply (in the minds of the privates) a "public school applicant" and are competing against kids coming from the magnet and gifted programs
in Montgomery and Fairfax, etc. The kids who have been doing math 2 years above grade level (in the classroom) for years. It's difficult to compete from DCPS and honestly I don't
get the feeling that the privates have any allegiance to DCPS and pretty much view it as a dysfunctional system.
Middle and high school applicants have to take either the SSAT or ISEE test. These are knowledge based (and not intelligence) tests. My kids (who loves math and is at the top of her/his
DCPS class) started taking practice tests and getting around 30% (after a 99% PARCC) We studied for that test for 6 months and got her/his score up to 80-90%. It was a long and painful slog. Every other DCPS applicant
we know did the same thing---I can think of 15 kids off the top of my head. We were the only one who didn't get a tutor for months. The rest spent a lot of money to get their kid up to speed on the material.
There is another window of admission (9th grade) and some DCPS kids (from Deal etc) do get into the top private schools for high school because it's a bigger expansion year.
But again, it's a small number. And some (not all) of the successful applicants at any point are legacy kids or under represented minorities (both are "hooks" for admission that we didn't have).
Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience. This is not a brag on my kid's accomplishments at all (and again, this kid didn't get in). It's meant simply as an "FYI" to others who may be going down this road in the future.
Lastly, we applied because we thought the smaller class sizes in private (among other things) would be a better fit for THIS child than our DCPS middle school. We have one child in DCPS middle and now this kid
will attend as well. Ultimately we're fine with that but I wanted to share this to other families.
Thank you but 7 (yes 7) of my Deal parents got into top 10 schools this past week for their child. Their children were A/B students with descent test scores however strong athletes. Every one of my friends who have applied from DCPS has gotten into a school.
Anonymous
03/03/2018 20:23
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:The PARCC and SSAT have nothing to do with one another. Good performance on one is not going to correlate to good performance on another.
Interesting. The SSAT can predict the SAT. And the kids in our upper NW elementary bomb the SSAT while they do well on the PARCC. I still don’t understand why they haven’t been taught the material in DCPS to do well on the SSAT, especially the math section.
Anonymous
03/03/2018 19:33
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
The PARCC and SSAT have nothing to do with one another. Good performance on one is not going to correlate to good performance on another.
Anonymous
03/03/2018 19:33
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Our experience was similar to OP's when applying to 6th last year.
DC with 5 on PARCC got 30% on SSAT and had to go to a tutor.
Shut out of everywhere except school where sibling is. We had moved sibling in an earlier grade when it was easier.
Feedback from private this year is that DC is very weak on grammar and punctuation rules, does not know how to take notes, and does not know how to study.
We are dreading the process for our youngest DC next year.
Most 6th graders have no clue on notes or study skills....
Anonymous
03/03/2018 19:04
Subject: applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Perhaps things have changed over the course of the last few years (I have two in HS) but my dc went to a JKLM and their peers had no trouble getting into private schools following elementary school (just off the top of my head kids went to NCS, St. Albans, St. Anselm's, Sheridan, Field, Burke, Sidwell, Landon). Both of mine got into big 3 for 9th grade and, again, their cohort went off to all of the usual suspects (Sidwell, GDS, NCS, St. John's, Maret, Field, WIS) as well as top-tier boarding schools.
Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don't and that can be difficult but I can see no systematic rejection of DCPS students from the JKLMs and Deal.
OP here. I do think things may have changed because this year no one I know from our JKLM got in to these schools (and most of us applying knew who was applying where). I'm not sure why. I had also heard of (and know of) kids who got in during past years. That is part is why I was hopeful! Everyone said, "oh, you'll get in, kids from our school have gotten in during past years". Well, not this year.
I don't know if this is a rejection of DCPS kids or because there were so many more qualified applicants from Mont County and Fairfax (which I've heard both have increasingly amounts of unhappy parents especially in the gifted and talented programs).
Was your child born in 2007? That was a big birth year in DC.