How/Has DCUM shaped your impression of local private schools?

[Anonymous]

Has anything you've read here influenced where you applied? If so, what and how?

[Anonymous]

Is somebody writing a newspaper article?

[Anonymous]

We were going to apply to Landon. Obviously, that's not going to happen now.

[Anonymous]

I'm moving to Arlington and going public.

[Anonymous]

OP here. No newspaper article in progress -- just inspired by the "it's dangerous to talk about that" comment on another thread. Which lead me to wonder how seriously people take what they read here.

I found DCUM after my DC was already enrolled in a PreK--12 private which we've been happy with -- so applications haven't been an issue for us. I wonder, though, whether one school we considered applying to would have fallen off our list as the result of DCUM posts. I now definitely have a very different impression than I did pre-DCUM.

And occasionally I wonder whether I'm surrounded by women who think like some(/many?) of the posters here but have enough sense to keep their mouths shut when they don't know their audience and/or comments could be attributed to them personally.

[Anonymous]

Our natural inclination is to prefer public school whenever possible so I am already a little biased against private schools, but I admit that reading this board has turned me off of Beauvoir and Landon entirely. Reputations develop for a reason; if you hear enough people talking about a certain place in a certain way, I think there's something to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were going to apply to Landon. Obviously, that's not going to happen now.

This poster rose to the bait.

[Anonymous]

makes me happy my kid is in Fairfax County's GT program.

[Anonymous]

I didn't start reading DCUM until my kids were set in schools which will take them through high school, so no, no effect.

What I find is that I consider seriously the longer, more thoughtful posts but not the off-the-cuff (usually insulting) ones. The thoughtful posts usually jibe with my own experience of my kids' schools, and seem to come from posters who 1) have actual knowledge, as opposed to repeating rumors and 2) present a balanced picture of a school. So, if I needed to move a child for some reason, those posts might influence my decisions.

[Anonymous]

I'm glad we were already in the process of applying to dd's school (I came to DCUM to see if I could find out more about it) because if I had read DCUM beforehand I would have been given the impression that the school, which makes dd very happy and has challenged her effectively, was a loser school since it is not in the Big 3.

[Anonymous]

I agree re what character/quality of the posts -- with one exception. The knee-jerk critics don't turn me off of particular schools but in some cases the boosters certainly do.

[Anonymous]

I started reading DCUM because we were thinking about moving DC for high school. I am now more inclined not to apply out, partly because of what I have read about the other schools, but also because the people at our school (which is seldom mentioned here) are a lot nicer than the ones who post here!

[Anonymous]

I grew up going to a small private school that didnt have much in the way of sports and was AMAZED to find out how much people care about their kids playing sports. I always thought it was just for fun, but I was clearly mistaken.

I have never seen posts about music, drama, newspaper, or any other extracurricular activity, like I have about sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The knee-jerk critics don't turn me off of particular schools but in some cases the boosters certainly do.

Agree. There are 2-4 schools that really impress me on paper, but I now have a negative sense about them because they have obnoxious boosters crowing on DCUM. By contrast, I can think of a few schools that I now think more positively about, in part because their parents rarely comment on DCUM. I know it's not fair or logical, but I definitely find myself developing those biases.

[Anonymous]

DCUM put Norwood and EW Stokes on my radar screen. Otherwise, heavens, the time I've spent here has been totally wasted. Thanks, OP, for starting this thread -- it's served as a great wake-up slap for me. Goodbye.