Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Lottery to gain entrance

I am considering a move in the future for DD10 to a high ranking Jr/High school in the state,but the students are picked by a lottery.Has anyone gone through this process and know the chances of being left out?

I'm sure that it varies from school to school. You should be able to find the information by looking at the school's website or by contacting the school.

Yes, the applicant families should be able to find this information from the school. My DS entered a few entrance lotteries and we knew the odds before entering (the info at all of these schools was public knowledge).

We applied to the lotteries at 2 different gifted schools and never made it (we placed in the 200's and 300's for a total of around 70 seats). So, we knew for sure that there was no room for us even in the waiting list. In a way, it closed some doors for us decisively and we had other options that we were interested in and we moved on. Ours is an area where there are a lot of really smart kids and the parents are eager to get them into the best ranking schools. When we called the schools, they told us how many applicants were there for this year, how many seats were available and what the numbers were for the previous years. From that, we could easily figure out that my son's chances were slim.

Thank you all,a call is in order.They call it a lottery but I see where siblings are given priority.

How do you guys feel about lottery to gifted school? I cannot imagine it in my area. Parents are going to go crazy about it. As it is, the magnet exam is so competitive that people advertise prep schools for them. I am amazed by playandlearn's experience.

Usually the way the sibling priority thing works is that any siblings of existing students (that meet whatever other entrance criteria there are) get in first, and then the remaining seats are given out by lottery.

But parents won't go crazy if it's lottery, right? Because there is no need to cram for entrance exams... In our area the "magnet" public schools all do lottery and I think this is much better than if every school has entrance exams.

But shouldn't the most deserving get in? The basketball team or the orchestra wouldn't choose who plays by a lottery.

My perception is that there are many more students who deserve to be in challenging programs than the number of spots available. It's really hard to design an exam that truly selects those who are "most deserving" for high-ranking high schools. These are not necessarily specialized schools that only certain types of kids can benefit from. Exams also raise anxiety levels, sometimes to absurdity, and reward those who can afford excessive prepping. This is much harder than selecting basketball players and orchestra members, where skill sets are narrow and well defined.

Also, magnet schools offer opportunities in a variety of ways. Locally we have early colleges, IB schools, and schools that offer a lot of flexibility in course selections. Who deserves to go to such schools is really hard to measure by exams.

I'm sure many, many magnet schools require entrance exams. I'm just glad that our local schools take a different approach, which, in my personal opinion, works well without making middle school into prep schools for selective high schools.