Citywide Gifted & Talented lottery number odds
Posting this here as it may be useful for parents looking to apply to the 5 citywide gifted and talented schools. I realize this is the worst time of year to post it (as the admissions cycle is over) but putting it here as it may be a useful resource for anyone searching for this info. I know the process and the wait can be stressful.
The logic here is the following: citywide gifted and talented schools are at this point mostly a lottery. If you know how many kids apply, how many seats there are, and your lottery number (or "Random Number" as the DOE calls it), you should be able to figure out months ahead of time whether you are getting in. The only wrinkles are the following:
Siblings of current students get priority, so you need to reduce the actual number of seats available by how many of those applicants are siblings of current students. What I have heard anecdotally is that the percent of incoming kindergarten class that is taken up by siblings hovers around ~30%. I assumed 35% for this calculation.
You can never be sure exactly how many student will be applying to any given school on any given year. My data comes from the 2023-2024 data here, which is a year where there was no G&T testing and eligibility was based on teacher recommendations (which again, anecdotally, everyone who asks gets). This is the process for the foreseeable future. I assumed the true applicant number (meaning the number of applicants who didn't get in to a school that was higher on their ranking) would be consistent year-to-year.
With those assumptions in mind, I calculated the lottery number that would be the lowest "safe" number. That doesn't mean you won't get accepted if your lottery number is slightly worse (or guarantee that you would get accepted if it's slightly better), but the number is going to be the rough cut-off for getting accepted.
| School DBN | School Name | Kindergarten Total Applicants | Kindergarten True Applicants | Kindergarten Offers | Percent Admitted Assuming 35% of seats go to siblings | lowest "safe" lottery number |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 03M334 | The Anderson School | 1,656 | 998 | 50 | 1.75% | 03 |
| 01M539 | New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math High School | 1,533 | 930 | 96 | 3.76% | 08 |
| 20K686 | Brooklyn School of Inquiry | 819 | 435 | 50 | 4.02% | 09 |
| 30Q300 | The 30th Avenue School (G&T Citywide) | 768 | 383 | 50 | 4.57% | 0a |
| 04M012 | Tag Young Scholars | 743 | 382 | 50 | 4.58% | 0a |
Easy take away: if your lottery number doesn't begin with a 0, you're almost certainly not getting an offer. You should still rank these schools near the top if you're interested in attending, as you will be automatically placed in the waitlists!