Parents hoping to admit their children to two popular Manhattan schools found themselves “stressed” after a glitch in the Department of Education’s high school prediction tool hurt their chances of being admitted.
The glitch — which skewed the odds for NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies and Millennium High School — came just hours before applications closed Wednesday.
“This is so strange and stressful,” one parent said in a private Facebook group in which the problem began to gain parents’ attention.
Another parent called the notoriously complex high school application process a “joke.”
The “Chance of Receiving an Offer” app – developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – debuted last summer and allows families to get a better idea of their children’s chances of getting into certain schools and how to classify them.
The prediction tool takes the “lottery” number randomly assigned to a student and examines it against the school’s selection criteria, such as district, grades and admission method.
It then spits out their chances of getting into their desired schools as “low, average, and high.”
After discovering the technical glitch, the DOE sent an email to the parents of approximately 1,600 students who may have applied to high schools based on incorrect predictions.
“We are writing to share an important update on the MySchools “chance to receive an offer” feature. Unfortunately, the offer chance presented for NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies and Millennium High School was incorrect for your child,” the email obtained by The Post read.
The DOE confirmed it updated the feature to “reflect good bid chance based on a correction to program seat availability,” the email said.
Officials also informed parents that they could still apply to these schools if they wished.
Families affected by the issue were granted an extension until Jan. 10, according to the email.
Deborah Kross, president of the Citywide Council on High Schools — a parent-led school board representing high school families in all five boroughs — told the Post that the deadline for all other families had also been extended to Monday , a grace period offered to most parents. years.
Admissions results are still expected to be released on March 6, Kross said before reassuring nervous parents that all was not lost.
“They’re pretty popular schools, so I’m sure the parents had others on the list, so I don’t think that’s the case. [glitch] it will mean people will have to redo their entire application,” she said.
This comes after the DOE delayed the launch of college applications this fall due to technical issues with the MySchool portal.
Meanwhile, in February, families were furious with the Department of Education’s remote learning system after facing a series of problems.
The Post has contacted the DOE for comment.
