My DS15 applied to Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in Richmond, VA two years ago but was not admitted. His standardized test scores were well above the average of all admitted students. He received max scores recommendations and writing sample. He scored lower for grades and program rigor causing him to miss the cut-off. I argued about the rigor points because his independent school does not offer middle school students the opportunity to enroll in high school credit classes. So he missed rigor points even though he enrolled in the most difficult available classes. His grades were not straight A+'s out of sheer boredom so I couldn't argue this point.
The county we live in felt pressure because some middle schools were consistently under-represented at MLWGS. So, in order to make it "more fair" for everyone the county altered the admission criteria from the highest scoring students as a whole to the highest scoring student from each middle school (12 of the 42 slots last year) with the remaining slots filled from the remaining overall pool of applicants. Independent school kids are lumped into phase two to compete for one of the remaining 30 slots.
So, MLWGS missed out on a kid 3 standard deviations above the mean who maxed out on his standardized test because the county decide to admit lower ability applicants. I expect the same scenario for our DD12 next year.
Henrico County Schools doesn't care about our kids because they attend an independent school and our independent school has zero incentive to help get our kids admitted to MLWGS.
~Rant over~
