4 revealed books, debate trophies, good attendance and a 100 GPA weren’t sufficient to get a Queens eighth-grader into her dream highschool.
Kristina Raevsky, 14, discovered on March 7 she wasn’t accepted to Townsend Harris Excessive College in Flushing due to a lottery system that grouped her good take a look at scores with youngsters who scored over a 94.
“I used to be shocked,” Raevsky informed The Submit. “Everybody I informed stated, ‘How is that this doable?’ And I informed them, ‘I don’t know, it isn’t me that’s the downside. The system is the issue.
“Previous to the lottery, earlier than COVID, my mindset was, ‘Properly, I’ve a 100 common, I’m on the prime of my class, I’ve good attendance, and I did effectively on the state checks . . . what may probably go incorrect?’”
However Raevsky’s attendance file and stellar GPA have been not elements within the admissions course of, which, since 2022, makes use of a mix of seventh-grade core topic grades, an essay and a two-minute video submission. Youngsters are then sorted into 5 teams based mostly on their efficiency after which topic to a lottery.
“That’s the place all of the subjectivity is available in,” the Forest Hills scholar stated of the writing and video parts. “For those who ask me what to do to vary the system, I’d say put it again to the way in which it was after we had goal measures like state checks.
“The lottery decided my destiny. On the finish of all this, I used to be decreased to a lottery quantity,” Raevsky stated. Her poor lottery quantity put her within the 72nd percentile of candidates.
“Life will not be a lottery,” she added. “While you go into the medical discipline, the legislation discipline, each single discipline, all the pieces relies on advantage.”
Earlier than the pandemic, screened faculties like Townsend Harris selected their very own admissions standards. In 2020, former Mayor Invoice de Blasio nixed attendance, state checks and letter grades and carried out a system the place college students with an 85 or above have been entered into the identical lottery pool, in an try to diversify selective faculties.
In 2022, Chancellor David Banks, beneath Mayor Adams, introduced again screens and narrowed the highest tier of youngsters to these with a 94 or above, which these preventing for high-achieving college students welcomed.
“Though we agree that it strikes highschool admissions coverage in the best route, this coverage change is only one small step ahead after NYC took three very massive steps backward,” Raevsky wrote in a Fordham Institute article in 2022.
Raevsky says she was by no means a 94 scholar.
“I can let you know from expertise that the distinction between a 94 and a 100 is miles aside … the 100 scholar is sitting there the second one thing is assigned considering, ‘How am I going to finish this project? Let me begin planning.’
“The 94 scholar says, ‘Oh, I’ll come to the films regardless that there’s a take a look at two days away.’ The 100 scholar says, ‘I’m sorry however I can’t come. I’m finding out.’
“A whole lot take time. A whole lot take sacrifice and perseverance,” stated the coed, who’s on observe to be the valedictorian at JHS 157.
Raevsky put Townsend Harris, which provides no geographic desire to Queens college students, and just one different college on her checklist of 12 highschool selections.
She was accepted into the Bronx Excessive College of Science, which has its personal admissions course of, however stated it’s too removed from residence.
Plus, she doesn’t wish to go to a STEM college.
“I’m a humanities child,” she stated. “I like math, however I like historical past extra, and I like writing and studying extra.”
The final ebook that she wrote, “Marriage or Espionage: Learn Between the Traces,” is a historic fiction novel a few spy in the course of the American Revolution.
Raevsky’s final aim is the US Senate, she stated, the place she would concentrate on schooling and public security.
Now, it’s off to close by parochial college for her, the place she was provided a scholarship. Like many households fed up with the system’s insurance policies, hers is bidding farewell to town Division of Training.
“I’m actually glad I’m going to a non-public college,” she stated. “I’m lastly going to be in a spot the place I belong and am appreciated for my advantage and my educational talents.”
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