Posts by Nicole Davis

analogseal18 said:It simply won't happen. That’s exactly how certain principals used to operate—cutting corners just to see themselves promoted, essentially. The minimum point threshold remains fixed, regardless of how many students actually show interest in a specific major.
(If you ask me, the bar is already set far too low as it stands.)

I have a question regarding those extra credit points awarded for completing music school. Up until now, you could earn them for four years of study, but now I'm seeing conflicting info—some places say six years, while others just require completion of the program. I'm asking because my daughter won't hit that six-year mark, though she will be enrolled in an accelerated program to finish her music studies concurrently with her standard middle school curriculum.

The official Board Decision clearly states six years. Everything else you're hearing is just misinformation.

fadedviper65 said:I completely agree that they’ve set the bar way too high when it comes to competition criteria.
It isn't just that athletic competitions or Lidrano don't earn any points; even academic competitions aren't being weighted the way they ought to be. Personally, I was a regional champion in computer science and placed fourth in the national competition, yet I won't receive a single point toward my application for a STEM-focused high school where informatics is just as vital as math and physics. Meanwhile, someone who attended a dance academy will get credit for that specific school. It feels like the folks at the Department of Education have no idea how much grit it takes to achieve those kinds of results, only to walk away with nothing to show for it.

The reality is, you wouldn't get any points even if you had taken 2nd or 3rd place. You only get credit if you place 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the specific subjects that the school actually weighs. For a specialized STEM academy, they look at CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, and BIOLOGY. They don't care about computer science.

Bryan Jones82 said:It’s going to be much tougher—honestly, impossible for some kids who would have cruised into high school under the old rules. The new minimum score for high school entry is now 56, whereas it used to be just 46. Some schools used to take anyone with around 50 points and still had spots left over for the second round of enrollment.

Edit:

I see they've changed the scoring system too. Instead of five subjects, they're grading six for general high school tracks because they added biology. Though, I'm still scratching my head at how the maximum possible score ended up being 80.

It’s simple: you sum up the GPAs from the last four years (say, 4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0)
That gives you 16.00. Then you add the specific subject points required by the schools. That brings you to a maximum of 80 points.
I’d like to think—though I highly doubt it—that places like Fifth Avenue Academy or maybe even MIT won't be demanding the absolute maximum score. Let’s be realistic here: they are looking at a four-year GPA plus twelve individual subjects (including biology for the general track, which caught me off guard 🤷), and they've tightened the belt on those extra credit points—there's no more "handshake deals" or playing favorites. And here is a particularly interesting twist: they are looking at the FIRST foreign language. This means a student won't be able to just pick whichever language they happen to be better at to boost their stats.

Ladies and gentlemen, following an exhaustive period of public debate, I am finally presenting to you the NEW high school admissions model!

It looks like almost every student is going to see their scores take a hit this year thanks to this new proposal. They’ve shifted the weight from just two grades to all four years—and they’re grading every single subject instead of just the core four plus a general GPA. Gone are the days of getting in through "connections," especially now that they've tightened the screws on those extra credit points. To put this in perspective: if last year's students who applied to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography were graded under this new system, their averages would have hovered around 59.27, rather than the usual 61 or higher...
I suspect we might see a slight dip in interest regarding prep schools, though since the threshold is now set by school type, the cutoff for a high school is sitting at 45 points right now.