middle school students can rank any school in the city

By Joyce Szuflita

This is a change. For many years, 5th graders have only been able to rank schools where they lived and attended school, and in addition a finite number of boroughwide or citywide schools…but not every school in the city.

The DoE has announced that starting this season, MYSCHOOLS will allow you to rank any school anywhere on your application. This seems like a big deal, but is it? The important distinction is that the schools’ priorities are remaining the same. For example, if a popular school has priority for District 2 students and residents, a student applying from outside of the district is considered for a seat after ALL the students and residents in District 2. If the school can easily fill with people from their own district, you are never getting a chance from out of district.

Occasionally very big and popular schools may have seats available after all district students have been placed. That will be an opportunity for people across the district line.

Also, sometimes strong schools are not recognized by their own district students, but other people may really like them relative to the options they have in their own districts and may feel like a small commute is worth it.

Sometimes, because of the vagaries of geographic boundaries, you might be closer to schools in the next district than you are in your own. Now you can rank them.

Is this a great thing? The answer is “it depends.”
One question that has been asked and so far remains unanswered: Does the same priority remain for “students and residents”? This equal priority has been misunderstood and is constantly mistaken by DoE employees and parents alike. It has always been the case that STUDENTS AND RESIDENTS HAVE EQUAL PRIORITY. It is assumed that Residents are preferenced. They NEVER HAVE BEEN. I don’t see any good reason for this to change, and like other years, people are telling me second hand that they have heard that “students” are not considered with the same priority as residents. I will believe it when I see it.
We need to wait until the MYSCHOOLS directory is finished being edited, but if it continues to say, “Priority to students and residents” - then take them at their word.

MIT is weighing in on high school admissions

By Joyce Szuflita

OOOOWW! MIT. How fancy!

Over the years, first we were so thankful for the crumbs: the clumsy Applicant : Seat ratio to guess at our chances at popular schools that were 30:1.
Then parents forced the DoE to reveal the random number, but they didn’t build context.
NOW MIT to the rescue with a very large but (to my limited mind) not terribly complicated combination of data to tell each student if a specific school is a long shot, medium shot, or pretty good shot. (Also no guarantees in the fine print.)

They are taking the number of seats at each program, and their admissions priorities, and an applicants screened group or Ed Opt group, and their random number and whether they are Gen Ed or SWD and feeding it into Big Blue to tell us if a school is a safety or a reach.

“MySchools now projects for each applicant if they have a low, medium, or high chance of getting an offer to high school programs. This gives families more information about the estimated chance of getting an offer to each program of interest, making it easier for them to build a balanced application.”

I should be grateful, and I will be if it helps parents make a good, balanced list.

the data from ranking unlimited high schools

We can only imagine what the data will look like next year. It has been reported that only 38% of students rank 12 choices on their applications. Shocking. How many students will actually take advantage of this “unlimited” app?

What is the likelihood:

• that the applicant : seat ratios for the few wildly popular tiny schools will go WAY up, so that any data will be artificially inflated?

• since 62% of students don’t rank even 12 choices, that there will still be kids who still don’t get a placement from their list?

• That people will complain with indignation that they got their “10th choice” when they placed 9 schools on their list that they had almost no chance of getting into?

The data that has been comforting and consistent for almost a decade - that around 75% of students get one of their top 3 choices, and that about 85% get one of their top 5 will be out the window. We’ll see.

Whatever you do, however many schools you list…make sure to have a couple of worthy safeties at 1:1 or 0:1 on your list. They are out there.

ranking more than 12 schools on your high school application

By Joyce Szuflita

The DoE has just announced that you can rank more than 12 programs on your application. A successful application isn’t necessarily about volume. If ‘more’ means lots more schools on your list that are crazy long shots, you haven’t improved your chances of getting into one of them. The thing is that it also doesn’t disadvantage you.

It is reported that only 38% of families rank 12 choices on their high school applications. I doubt that allowing folks to rank more will encourage the 62% to look more deeply.

It is my guess that the people who will list more schools will be students who are auditioning for several talents. They may be able to easily fill all 12 traditional spots with audition programs in a couple of talents. This unlimited list allows them to try for all the audition programs they want AND add some regular non audition programs to their list.

It may also encourage families to add schools that might have been considered “wasted spots” on their previously limited list. There will be beloved schools (maybe popular 6-12th grade programs or schools that give a geographic priority that you are not in) that seem like such crazy long shots it wouldn’t be worth including on a limited list. Now, why not?!

Perhaps the benefit to listing some wildly out of range schools will be that if you get placed at a school that is lower on your app, you will automatically be placed on a wait list for those crazy popular schools. The thing is that if those schools have geographic priorities and/or if they are screened, you will still be placed on the wait list in the appropriate priority and Tier.

The cruel challenge provided by the DoE is - how on earth to get a decent understanding of more than 12 schools in 8 weeks with holidays in between. Thanks a lot?!

you asked for it!

I have been giving my popular High School talks for over 15 years. I did it in church halls and playspaces with my easel and bad “jokes” and the giant directory. Then Covid changed all that. The millennial children stepped up and got me online. You asked for a recording so you could watch more than once, on your own time. Once again, the millennials to the rescue!

The talk is now attractive, easy to use, and available whenever you want it. For $30, you have it for 48 hours, and I have been told that while it is helpful to watch the colorful graphics, it is just as easy to listen to, and there are natural breaks so you can take a breather if you need one.

The benefit of watching it now? You need these few months to prepare. Also there is a bunch of other documents that come with the talk. What to ask for on a tour, the timeline, a whole lot of resource links, and more. Check out the trailer on YouTube.

• Watch it at 3am with a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

• Watch it twice at 2x speed.

• Ask your spouse if they know what "Ed Opt" means, and when they don't know forward to 58:08.

• Is your kid anxious? It may be easier if I talk them down.

• Be the serene, quietly confident one in your group.

applying to 3k or Prek with a "bad" lottery number

The DoE is now putting the random number in your MYSCHOOLS profile when you begin the process to apply for 3k or Prek. It is a hexadecimal 32 digit list of letters and numbers that kinda looks like your computer’s serial code. The only characters that really matter are the first two. The sequence goes from 0-9 and a-f. The “best” number is 00. The “worst” is ff. If you care to know, it is all explained here, including a chart that has estimated what % of people have a higher number than you.

SUPER IMPORTANT: Don’t freak out about your number. It is only used as a tie breaker when there are candidates of equal priority. Each time you apply for schools; for Prek, K, 6th grade and 9th grade, you get a different number. Each time you are on a wait-list, you get a different number.
DON’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS! IT IS NOT THE ORDER IN WHICH YOUR APPLICATION IS CONSIDERED. It is a tie breaker whenever there are candidates of equal priority. For example: all zoned families have the same priority for their zoned school, but they are ordered according to their random number within that group.

There are many factors that matter in this match, like, if you are continuing at a school that has 3K or Prk, if you have a sibling in the school, if you are in District for a Prek Center, or if you are in-zone for a DoE school. If you are placed in a program depends on a whole bunch of factors including your priorities if any, the number of seats available, and the popularity of the school, as well as your luck with the random number.
The best advice is to rank a robust and diverse list of programs. Make sure that there are lots of seats available to you that are not mostly prioritized for other people. Try to leverage any priorities that you can. Rank schools in true preference order.

High Schools make "over offers"

If you are looking at the “numbers” on MY SCHOOLS and the totals don’t add up, it is because the City knows generally how many people decide to take other offers. More students are placed at a school than official seats available. When the inevitable happens and kids choose to go to Specialized HS or charter or private there are not big empty gaps. This is why the wait lists may not more a lot (or at all) at many popular schools.

Here is a sample from the Directory:

Millennium has 117 general ed seats and 33 SWD seats. Total 150 seats in the Freshmen class. They made offers to 190 students last year. Even though that is more than seats available, no one will be turned away. It is very likely that a bunch of those students will decide to go elsewhere. If Millennium is very popular this year, then its classrooms will be more full than normal, and people won’t move off the waitlist.

These numbers are particularly helpful when looking at 6-12th grade programs, because they will tell you how many people, who were not returning 8th graders, were offered seats.

Good luck

By Joyce Szuflita
According to the DoE high school placements will be coming out through MY SCHOOLS on Thursday March 9. If your child took the SHSAT, the results of the test, and LaGuardia auditions as well as your main application results will be listed there. You will receive an email when your results are available. They often stagger the results because MY SCHOOLS would crash if everyone went on at the same time.

Here is the thing. Life is uncertain. You can prepare and calculate and hope. It is hard not to fall in love with one place or another, but you can’t engineer your placement. Your mission is to prepare your child (and yourself, cause you have worked hard for this!) There is no doubt that you will be disappointed for any number of reasons, possibly just because there has been so much effort and angst.

This is what I hope students will consider when they get their placement:

This school is all potential.
It will be what I make of it.
I don’t know those kids, but my new best friend for life is somewhere in that crowd.
My first love is probably in there too.
There will be a teacher that I will never forget in that building.
There will be some uncontrollable laughter.
There will be something that seemed nearly impossible that I will conquer.
I will likely be sorry to leave at the end of it all.

You can focus on what you desire, but you don’t always get it, and you might even be sorry if you did, because you would have missed the wonderful thing that appeared when you least expected it. Go out and find it.