Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well 32% of kids at wilson are proficient at math. That’s pretty horrible. It has an 88% graduation rate. 78% of kids feel safe there.

93% of kids at Yorktown are proficient in math. 92% graduation rate. 86% feel safe. Pretty similar except on academics.

Well you have to consider that you're talking about different tests, different standard
DCPS uses PAARC while APS uses Va SOL.
Sorry but Va SOL is not known for being tough and really challenging.

Source? The VA SOLs are very similar to Common Core standards. Please share your research showing the SOL's are not as challenging in comparison.

Anonymous wrote:Well 32% of kids at wilson are proficient at math. That’s pretty horrible. It has an 88% graduation rate. 78% of kids feel safe there.

93% of kids at Yorktown are proficient in math. 92% graduation rate. 86% feel safe. Pretty similar except on academics.

Well you have to consider that you're talking about different tests, different standard
DCPS uses PAARC while APS uses Va SOL.
Sorry but Va SOL is not known for being tough and really challenging.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No comparison to Yorktown but I hate to admit the stories I read on here about Yorktown - no doors on the stalls - and the ones I hear from friends with kids there - make me think Wilson isn't so bad. Wilson has it's issues but the teachers are fairly solid and they have great math & science classes and a lot of them.

Wilson's diversity makes it stats look not so good but it also keeps it from being a total pressure cooker. We seem to hear a lot more about suicides from the W schools.

We are happy with Wilson.

Just stop it. Yes, Yorktown has its (not "it's" btw) issues but so does Wilson and you're not going to convince a lot of people that Wilson is a better HS. Both are great schools.

Saying Wilson has its issues is the understatement of the year.

Anonymous wrote:“Recruited athletes”? Is that really a thing — it’s a neighborhood highschool.

PP here. I meant Yorktown students who get into Ivies because they are recruited athletes (since people were talking about college admissions). When kids are recruited to Ivies because they play sports like lax or ice hockey, I don't think it is really reflective of their high school.

“Recruited athletes”? Is that really a thing — it’s a neighborhood highschool.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you didn’t specify diversity as a consideration, but as a black parent I’d never send my child to Yorktown.

+1

I’ve been told by DCPS teacher friends that DC graduating seniors have a better chance of getting accepted at top schools due to the diversity factor, even if the students are white. Supposedly colleges more actively recruit DC public school students to get their numbers up.

Some teachers even move their families into the city so their kids can attend DC public high schools primarily Wilson to qualify for lowered state college tuition plus easier entry.

Anonymous wrote:No comparison to Yorktown but I hate to admit the stories I read on here about Yorktown - no doors on the stalls - and the ones I hear from friends with kids there - make me think Wilson isn't so bad. Wilson has it's issues but the teachers are fairly solid and they have great math & science classes and a lot of them.

Wilson's diversity makes it stats look not so good but it also keeps it from being a total pressure cooker. We seem to hear a lot more about suicides from the W schools.

We are happy with Wilson.

Yorktown is a "Y school," not a "W school," but unfortunately the Y could be either "Yuck" or "Yawn" these days.

Anonymous wrote:No comparison to Yorktown but I hate to admit the stories I read on here about Yorktown - no doors on the stalls - and the ones I hear from friends with kids there - make me think Wilson isn't so bad. Wilson has it's issues but the teachers are fairly solid and they have great math & science classes and a lot of them.

Wilson's diversity makes it stats look not so good but it also keeps it from being a total pressure cooker. We seem to hear a lot more about suicides from the W schools.

We are happy with Wilson.

I think either is fine, but I would like to say- there are, indeed, doors on the stalls at Yorktown. Whoever told you they’re aren’t is yanking your chain.

Anonymous wrote:No comparison to Yorktown but I hate to admit the stories I read on here about Yorktown - no doors on the stalls - and the ones I hear from friends with kids there - make me think Wilson isn't so bad. Wilson has it's issues but the teachers are fairly solid and they have great math & science classes and a lot of them.

Wilson's diversity makes it stats look not so good but it also keeps it from being a total pressure cooker. We seem to hear a lot more about suicides from the W schools.

We are happy with Wilson.

Just stop it. Yes, Yorktown has its (not "it's" btw) issues but so does Wilson and you're not going to convince a lot of people that Wilson is a better HS. Both are great schools.

Anonymous wrote:All of you who went to college in the late 90’s early 2000’s, I have news for you. College admissions are a whole new ballgame nowadays. It is many times more competitive to get into top schools. I got into a top 20 (then-now it’s a top 10) school late 90’s with no APs, very average extracurricular, below a 4.0 weighted. No way in heck would I even be able to consider this school as even a far away reach today. UVA is very difficult to get into even in state. Being at a competitive high school makes this even harder because they aren’t just going to fill the classes with mclean, Yorktown, and Langley kids.

So you went to JHU? What school that was in the top 20 twenty years ago is top 10 today?

Anyway, you made my point. US News has UVA in the "most competitive" admissions category. Two dozen Yorktown grads will end up there. Not too shabby.

No comparison to Yorktown but I hate to admit the stories I read on here about Yorktown - no doors on the stalls - and the ones I hear from friends with kids there - make me think Wilson isn't so bad. Wilson has it's issues but the teachers are fairly solid and they have great math & science classes and a lot of them.

Wilson's diversity makes it stats look not so good but it also keeps it from being a total pressure cooker. We seem to hear a lot more about suicides from the W schools.

We are happy with Wilson.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I graduated from Yorktown many years ago (early 2000s), we always had a slew of Ivy League/Ivy equivalent (Stanford/MIT/Duke/Chicago) admissions. What has happened? I just moved back to North Arlington. Has Yorktown gone downhill?

Yes, primarily for two reasons: (1) APS incentivizes kids to pupil place to W-L for IB, but allows W-L to offer both AP and IB so there aren't many reciprocal pupil placements from W-L to Yorktown; and (2) the AAP program in FCPS attracts more Asian families with high-achieving kids to FCPS than APS.

White parents in APS respond by calling the nearby schools in FCPS "pressure cookers," but the days when Walt Whitman, Langley and Yorktown were considered the top three public high schools in the DC area are gone.

Does this explain why W-L tends to do better than Yorktown in admissions for a lot of top colleges? Is that mainly the IB kids (and recruited athletes)?

In part, it's a brain drain issue, along with the fact that top colleges seek diverse student bodies and W-L is more diverse than Yorktown. Yorktown may have more recruited athletes and legacies than W-L, but otherwise the student profile at W-L is more interesting.

All of you who went to college in the late 90’s early 2000’s, I have news for you. College admissions are a whole new ballgame nowadays. It is many times more competitive to get into top schools. I got into a top 20 (then-now it’s a top 10) school late 90’s with no APs, very average extracurricular, below a 4.0 weighted. No way in heck would I even be able to consider this school as even a far away reach today. UVA is very difficult to get into even in state. Being at a competitive high school makes this even harder because they aren’t just going to fill the classes with mclean, Yorktown, and Langley kids.

The problem I have with threads like this are ones that make claims like "W-L does better" without backing it up. There's no real evidence that this is, in fact, the case. From what I've seen, they're about the same.

Last year 484 Arlington County high school students applied to UVA. The vast majority were from public schools. 168 were accepted (less than 35 percent) and 90 ended up going (more than half of those accepted). Considering how selective UVA has become, it's pretty obvious that many if not most of the 90 who went to UVA could have been accepted at some pretty elite colleges. For whatever reason, be it financial or otherwise, either they chose not to even apply or were accepted at some pretty impressive schools but didn't go. The same goes with Fairfax County schools. UVA is a huge draw, and why shouldn't be?

When I calculate elite college acceptances in NOVA high schools, I include UVA. And by that measure Yorktown does just fine.