Anonymous wrote:There is no way more than 10 kids from one Wilson class are going to Ivy's. Class size by senior year is more like 300. Forgot how many people drop out.

Anonymous wrote:I'm also surprised at all the Wilson defenders. My kid is in 10th there but I don't need to pretend that it is all roses and sunshine.
9th grade was definitely very weak. 10th is a small improvement. Some of the teachers just don't care and the administrators are worse.
Most kids go to mediocre colleges. Big deal if 10 kids out of 450 go to top tier.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you thinking of moving from private to Wilson. Do not do it. My son is in 9th grade and it has been very disappointing. This is when we have been public the whole way. Wilson feels like the Wild West compared to ES and MS. Kudos to the handful of kids who are able to navigate through the chaos and disinterest of administrators. 5 or 6 Ivy acceptances among a class of 400 is not all that impressive.

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Anonymous wrote:Some public school students and parents don't want their "college lists" and admissions outcomes made public, even without their names associated with Naviance-generated admissions data a school releases. Independent schools have long advertised lists of colleges graduates attend, not acceptances and rejections. Many public schools are following suit. I advise clients they are under no legal obligation to make private admissions information public via a school's counseling office and Naviance subscription.

In the past, colleges almost always required a school guidance counselor's report to accompany an application. This is changing. Many colleges now permit applicants to bypass their assigned counselor, partly because the spread of home schooling and early college programs (public high school students taking college courses at the taxpayer's expense) is shaping application requirements and practices. Public school counselors with hundreds of kids to advise aren't complaining that they need not be involved in every application submitted by the students they serve.

We aren't talking about some schools- we are talking about specifically about Wilson. So I'm not sure your advice has much relevance here.

Exactly, specifically Wilson. Some of the kids applying to Ivies from Wilson (several dozen per admissions season) do not complete applications to schools for which counselors have provided a letter of recommendation, or tell a Wilson counselor what the admissions result was for a completed application. Counselors learn admissions results from students and parents, not from the colleges themselves, and counselors enter data into Naviance. You can get a read on admissions trends at a school from the data, not more.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some public school students and parents don't want their "college lists" and admissions outcomes made public, even without their names associated with Naviance-generated admissions data a school releases. Independent schools have long advertised lists of colleges graduates attend, not acceptances and rejections. Many public schools are following suit. I advise clients they are under no legal obligation to make private admissions information public via a school's counseling office and Naviance subscription.

In the past, colleges almost always required a school guidance counselor's report to accompany an application. This is changing. Many colleges now permit applicants to bypass their assigned counselor, partly because the spread of home schooling and early college programs (public high school students taking college courses at the taxpayer's expense) is shaping application requirements and practices. Public school counselors with hundreds of kids to advise aren't complaining that they need not be involved in every application submitted by the students they serve.

We aren't talking about some schools- we are talking about specifically about Wilson. So I'm not sure your advice has much relevance here.

Anonymous wrote:Also important to point out that Wilson families can see where students apply, accept and enroll over the last few years by using Naviance. The list of colleges is just a small snapshot. So for example for the 2016 graduates applying to HYP - 9 students applied to Princeton, 1 was accepted and 0 enrolled. Harvard 12 applied, 2 were accepted and 2 enrolled. Yale 10 applied, 1 was accepted and 1 enrolled.

Anonymous wrote:Some public school students and parents don't want their "college lists" and admissions outcomes made public, even without their names associated with Naviance-generated admissions data a school releases. Independent schools have long advertised lists of colleges graduates attend, not acceptances and rejections. Many public schools are following suit. I advise clients they are under no legal obligation to make private admissions information public via a school's counseling office and Naviance subscription.

In the past, colleges almost always required a school guidance counselor's report to accompany an application. This is changing. Many colleges now permit applicants to bypass their assigned counselor, partly because the spread of home schooling and early college programs (public high school students taking college courses at the taxpayer's expense) is shaping application requirements and practices. Public school counselors with hundreds of kids to advise aren't complaining that they need not be involved in every application submitted by the students they serve.

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I'm an independent high school counselor (with Ivy degrees) who can't stand Naviance. MOCO has long used the software as justification to cut college counselor positions. Wilson started using it after years of parents complaining bitterly that upperclassmen were getting less and less face time with (dramatically overworked) counselors. This increasingly popular software program has a grim way of reducing kids to graded, GPAs and scores, leading a great many to sell themselves short in applying to colleges. Families of the brightest college bound kids often don't understand that elite colleges value intangibles like intellectual curiosity, passion, motivation, drive, talent, strong executive function skills, creativity etc. over grades and rank in class. I encourage my clients to take the data Naviance spits out with a grain of salt (or a bag of salt in many cases). High schools commonly manipulate Naviance data on where kids apply and are accepted or rejected, because self reporting is the rule (colleges and private schools seldom use Naviance, and for good reason). I've seen kids Naviance effectively advised not to apply to Ivies get into multiple Ivies.

PS. Few Wilson kids get into Ivies, few who get into Ivies chose not to attend, and many false application narratives are in the mix.

What does this mean?

To me it means PP is a troll, who has a vested interest as an independent high school counselor, in making Wilson students look bad. Very unprofessional.

So the big list of MOCO acceptances that gets posted in Bethesda Magazine each year, is false or are they getting their data from somewhere else?

Independent counselor here, with children in DCPS. Wilson parents hire me, and some of their kids are terrific college applicants, elite college material without knowing it before working with me. Scant DCPS college counseling resources are the problem. MOCO families face different challenges, mainly terrible pressure to ensure that their kids test into super duper magnet programs for 4th, 6th and 9th grades. Suburban HS magnet programs commonly hire college counselors serving only their students.

Where Naviance data on applications goes, counselors often enter information about a student applying to a college without knowing that an applicant didn't complete the application (e.g. going through with an interview). In most cases, only the applicant learns the admissions result, and kids commonly don't follow up with counselors to report admissions outcomes, or don't report them accurately (to save face). Thus, it's impossible to verify the accuracy of Naviance data schools release, not just at Wilson. Right, a troll.

Thanks for the clarification.