Selection Process for Eighth Graders

Masterman Middle and High School has been undergoing some changes recently. Some include PBIS and extended advisory, but one extremely important change for rising high school freshmen is the school selection process. In past years, students had been interviewed or put into the lottery, but this year, eighth-grade students have been promised that they will be automatically accepted to Masterman if they meet the requirements. All students must have A’s and B’s, an attendance of 95%, and a standarized test scores at the 80th precent tile in both English and Math, to be administered. Now, Eighth-grade students in the district rank their top five choices for schools. If a student is not accepted into their first choice, then they will be accepted into their second choice. If they are not accepted into their second choice, it will go down to their third, and so on and so forth. 

According to WHYY, fifty schools in the city participate in the school district’s unique selection process, and twenty-two of these schools are criteria based. If students meet the requirements for the criteria-based schools, then they are placed in the lottery for those schools. For the other schools - the city-wide schools and neighborhood schools - anyone who applies and meets the requirements (e.g. the student has to live in a 15 mile radius) is automatically placed in the lottery for those schools. Even though there is a lottery system, the district still gives preference to certain zip codes, with the list for this year’s process being 19121, 19132, 19133, 19135, 19136 and 19140 (WHYY). The process can be confusing, nerve-racking, and exciting for students and their families all at once, but the school district has done its best to make the process fair and easy for everyone.

Most high school students remember going through the process and thinking it was the most important thing in the world at the time, and the class of 2030 feels the same way about the whole process. A current eighth grader said that the results come out on January 23, so there are only a few days until these soon to be highschoolers find out where they are going. A few weeks ago, on January 9th, they had “individualized reviews, auditions, and presentations,” for students going to schools that require that, such as SLA or GAMP. Most of the students that were interviewed are not too worried about the process, because they meet the requirements for their schools, so they should get in. For the selection process both this year and last, if a student from the Masterman Middle school puts Masterman as their top choice, and they meet the requirements, they automatically get into the high school.