by Laura » Wed Mar 14, 2012 1:59 pm
A few weeks ago our older daughter found out she did not get accepted into any of the ten "selective enrollment" Chicago Public High Schools she applied to. Getting your kids into the better public schools here (e.g. magnet, selective enrollment) is a challenge. We really lucked out with the lottery for our kids' K-8 school (a math & science focus magnet school), but knew high school was going to be the next hurdle. She's a great student, but in one school's case, they received 12,000 applications for 250 freshman spots. The local papers reported it was a particularly "brutal admissions year." There are no longer racial quotas (FYI, for those who don't know, non-hispanic whites are a minority in Chicago), but the racial quotas have been replaced by 4 socio-economic quotas (called tiers) based on your zip code - each applicant has to have top admissions test scores and grades to be considered, and then they take an equal number from each tier. Bottom line is - if you're a smart kid from a "good" zipcode (i.e. neighborhood), the competition is super stiff.
So, I could have put all the above in the random bitching thread (and especially since daughter Veronica was initially devastated)...but, as we always tell her, be confident it will all work out somehow...the whole idea of when "one door closes, another one opens." In other words, no crying over spilt milk idea and we immediately went into rapid Plan B mode - and had her apply to some private and "charter" schools. (by the way, our local public high school has a high drop-out rate, is "low-achieving," and has a fair amount of gang-related problems)
Long story short, she was accepted into a great private school which she is very happy about attending in the fall....and to be honest, we all think will be a better "fit" for her all-around. Of course, the major drawback is paying tuition which we weren't expecting, but that's the breaks, and we'll make it work.
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