Kristina Raevsky Queens student with perfect GPA denied top school cause of lottery system designed to put merit second to diversity, equity and inclusion.
A Queens eighth grade student with a 100 GPA, perfect school attendance has been denied admission to her dream school on account of NY’s arbitrary lottery system set up to to diversify selective schools (code for offering slots to a more diverse range of students on the theme of diversity, equity and inclusion).
Kristina Raevsky, 14, found out on March 7 that she didn’t make it to Townsend Harris High School in Flushing after a lottery grouped her perfect test scores with students who scored over a 94.
‘I was shocked,’ Raevsky told the nypost. ‘Everyone I told said, ‘How is this possible?’ And I told them, ‘I don’t know, it isn’t me that is the problem. The system is the problem.
Objective vs subjective admissions standards
Added the teen girl, ‘Prior to the lottery, before COVID, my mindset was, ‘Well, I have a 100 average, I’m at the top of my class, I have perfect attendance, and I did well on the state tests . . . what could possibly go wrong?”
But Raevsky’s attendance record and stellar GPA, never mind also having published 4 books and winning debate trophies, were no longer factors in the admissions process, which, since 2022, uses a combination of seventh-grade core subject grades, an essay and a two-minute video submission. Kids are then sorted into five groups based on their performance and then subject to a lottery.
‘That’s where all the subjectivity comes in,’ the Forest Hills student said of the writing and video portions. ‘If you ask me what to do to change the system, I would say put it back to the way it was when we had objective measures like state tests.
‘The lottery determined my fate. At the end of all this, I was reduced to a lottery number,’ Raevsky said. Her poor lottery number put her in the 72nd percentile of applicants.
‘Life is not a lottery,’ (or is it…?) the girl added. ‘When you go into the medical field, the law field, every single field, everything is based on merit.’
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; who should get a chance at top schools?
Before the pandemic, screened schools like Townsend Harris chose their own admissions criteria. In 2020, former Mayor Bill de Blasio nixed attendance, state tests and letter grades and implemented a system where students with an 85 or above were entered into the same lottery pool, in an attempt to diversify selective schools.
In 2022, Chancellor David Banks, under Mayor Adams, brought back screens and narrowed the top tier of kids to those with a 94 or above, which those schools competing for high-achieving students welcomed.
‘Although we agree that it moves high school admissions policy in the right direction, this policy change is just one small step forward after NYC took three very large steps backward,’ Raevsky wrote in a Fordham Institute article in 2022.
Raevsky says she was never a 94 student.
“I can tell you from experience that the difference between a 94 and a 100 is miles apart … the 100 student is sitting there the moment something is assigned thinking, ‘How am I going to complete this assignment? Let me start planning.’
‘The 94 student says, ‘Oh, I’ll come to the movies even though there’s a test two days away.’ The 100 student says, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t come. I’m studying.’
‘Hundreds take time. Hundreds take sacrifice and perseverance,’ said the student, who is on track to be the valedictorian at JHS 157 according to the nypost.
Raevsky put Townsend Harris, which offers no geographic preference to Queens students, and only one other school on her list of 12 high school choices.
She was accepted into the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, which has its own admissions process, but said it is too far from home.
Plus, she doesn’t want to go to a STEM school.
‘I’m a humanities kid,’ she told the nypost. ‘I like math, but I like history more, and I like writing and reading more.’
Raevsky is eyeing making it to the US Senate, where she would focus on education and public safety. She has since been offered a scholarship.
‘I’m really glad I’m going to a private school,’ she told the nypost. ‘I’m finally going to be in a place where I belong and am appreciated for my merit and my academic abilities.’
