Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've posted this before--a friend's son graduated from Flint Hill and did not get in to any of the top-tier schools he applied to. Had he graduated from a public high school with the same grades and scores he would have been more likely to have been accepted as most colleges and universities take a smaller percentage of private school applicants. Something to consider long term. The mom was fond of saying that "Flint Hill failed her son" when in reality she should have done her research.

This seems speculative, if my kid applied to far-reach schools, she probably wouldn’t get in. Wouldn’t matter where she went to school. Her kid should have done better on the SAT.

You can look it up, PP, it's well documented that most colleges and universities take a higher percentage of public school applicants.

Anonymous wrote:I've posted this before--a friend's son graduated from Flint Hill and did not get in to any of the top-tier schools he applied to. Had he graduated from a public high school with the same grades and scores he would have been more likely to have been accepted as most colleges and universities take a smaller percentage of private school applicants. Something to consider long term. The mom was fond of saying that "Flint Hill failed her son" when in reality she should have done her research.

This seems speculative, if my kid applied to far-reach schools, she probably wouldn’t get in. Wouldn’t matter where she went to school. Her kid should have done better on the SAT.

I've posted this before--a friend's son graduated from Flint Hill and did not get in to any of the top-tier schools he applied to. Had he graduated from a public high school with the same grades and scores he would have been more likely to have been accepted as most colleges and universities take a smaller percentage of private school applicants. Something to consider long term. The mom was fond of saying that "Flint Hill failed her son" when in reality she should have done her research.

FH gets so much heat on this site. It’s a good solid school for those who don’t want to go public. It’s not considered as academic once you get to HS but they do have honors classes that can make it more academic for kids who choose to go that route. Nice thing about this is kids can pursue their passion. If your kid loves math and is a three season sport player, they can take hard math, but still have time to play year round sports (or do drama, student council, whatever their thing might be) because they are not bogged down by other hard courses they didn’t select. Some of the area more academic schools have an honors level class as their regular level for some subjects and if that subject just isn’t your child’s thing, they are going to have to spend extra time against something that just doesn’t resonate with them. Just my 2 cents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We almost applied for the lower school this year - got through most of the process, but felt like something was "off" in our admissions conversations. The final straw for us was the hour-long Zoom assessment for a young kid, with a very severe proctor who bordered on mean/rude. Kiddo asked at one point if she was "mad at him," given how sterile the whole thing went (which was also too long for kid that age). She refused to even answer his questions like, "how are you?" We thought, if this is an interaction that FH thinks is appropriate for a five-year-old, it's probably not the place for us, so we pulled his app.

You obviously don't know much about private school testing!

Not the PP but we've had 3 zoom assessments for our 9 year old and none went like the above.

Well we had two assessments for K via zoom that were about 1/2 hour that were brutal, cold and dry as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We almost applied for the lower school this year - got through most of the process, but felt like something was "off" in our admissions conversations. The final straw for us was the hour-long Zoom assessment for a young kid, with a very severe proctor who bordered on mean/rude. Kiddo asked at one point if she was "mad at him," given how sterile the whole thing went (which was also too long for kid that age). She refused to even answer his questions like, "how are you?" We thought, if this is an interaction that FH thinks is appropriate for a five-year-old, it's probably not the place for us, so we pulled his app.

You obviously don't know much about private school testing!

Not the PP but we've had 3 zoom assessments for our 9 year old and none went like the above.

Anonymous wrote:We almost applied for the lower school this year - got through most of the process, but felt like something was "off" in our admissions conversations. The final straw for us was the hour-long Zoom assessment for a young kid, with a very severe proctor who bordered on mean/rude. Kiddo asked at one point if she was "mad at him," given how sterile the whole thing went (which was also too long for kid that age). She refused to even answer his questions like, "how are you?" We thought, if this is an interaction that FH thinks is appropriate for a five-year-old, it's probably not the place for us, so we pulled his app.

You obviously don't know much about private school testing!

We almost applied for the lower school this year - got through most of the process, but felt like something was "off" in our admissions conversations. The final straw for us was the hour-long Zoom assessment for a young kid, with a very severe proctor who bordered on mean/rude. Kiddo asked at one point if she was "mad at him," given how sterile the whole thing went (which was also too long for kid that age). She refused to even answer his questions like, "how are you?" We thought, if this is an interaction that FH thinks is appropriate for a five-year-old, it's probably not the place for us, so we pulled his app.

^^This is right.

FYI with the new Middle School that opened this year they told parents, students, teachers that over time the 7th and 8th will grow to @ 100 kids max. Assuming nearly all 8th graders move into the Upper School, that means there will be fewer openings for new students to join in 9th - but still 30-50 if they keep it at 130-150 per grade in the high school.

Anonymous wrote:Is there an increase in #'s from 8th - 9th?

Yes, the class size goes up a lot because the HS is bigger than the middle school. The 8th grade has about 80-85 kids and HS classes have 130-150. That's why people think "everyone gets in" because they do accept a lot of kids when it jumps up. I know a couple kids who have not been accepted for 9th grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, we applied to FH this year for all of our kids. We know families who go there who've had nothing but positive things to say about it, and they've been there since LS. If accepted, we'd gladly enroll our kid. Don't listen to all the trolling here. DCUM will have you believe that if your kid is not at Sidwell or St. Albans, nothing is worth it. So maybe the rest of us should just stop educating altogether?

Don't forget everyone worships at the altar of Potomac here too.

OP - the smart thing to do is go through the process. Only you can figure out what's right for your family. Not strangers on an anonymous message board. I just saw a thread where someone said they regretted their school decision and wound up pulling their kid because they put too much stock in what they read here.

This!!! My kids attend a school that thjs board swear is horrible and has been fantastic. Take it with a grain of salt.