Public magnet or private?

[Anonymous]

For those of you with kids in high school how did you choose and are you happy with your choice? Why?

[Anonymous]

Search is your friend.

[Anonymous]

Looking for recent feedback.

[Anonymous]

It took under 10 seconds on Google to find threads from the past few months.

[Anonymous]

np. What threads?

[Anonymous]

DC in 10th, decision was Big 3 versus magnet. Chose magnet, no regrets but do miss the lunches in private and sometimes the smaller community where you feel really in the loop.

[Anonymous]

Also I think there will be more questions and more responses in March when decisions come out.

[Anonymous]

Looking at both magnet and private. We received magnet acceptances but are still waiting on privates.

If we get accepted into a private, we will decline our magnet positions based on this fact alone-

What our magnet options do not offer is an elevated college counseling experience. The privates we visited were much more hands on and provided more support to the parents.

While our student has a preference for the magnet program based on "the vibes", which I totally get, the vibes for us parents mesh better with the private school crowd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at both magnet and private. We received magnet acceptances but are still waiting on privates.

If we get accepted into a private, we will decline our magnet positions based on this fact alone-

What our magnet options do not offer is an elevated college counseling experience. The privates we visited were much more hands on and provided more support to the parents.

While our student has a preference for the magnet program based on "the vibes", which I totally get, the vibes for us parents mesh better with the private school crowd.

You are rejecting your kid’s choice based on your desire to be around parents you prefer? Seems highly silly and downright disrespectful toward your kid. You are not going to be spending much time with those other parents anyway.

Also, if it’s a high quality magnet, I suspect your kid would do well with college admissions anyway, assuming good grades, etc.

[Anonymous]

We are on the fence at my house. Kid is in 8th grade at a private that goes through 12 so we don’t need to wait for admissions.

From what I can tell, the magnet has more variety in STEM courses and he could spend a larger portion of his day on STEM which is what he loves. STEM extracurriculars are also stronger. Magnet also is closer to home, and has more diversity.

Private has higher quality instruction in humanities, particularly writing. Kid spontaneously does a lot of STEM but doesn’t read or write much unless pushed. Kid’s other parent also worries about safety in public. I don’t but obviously Dad gets a vote too.

Not worried about college, I figure it will work itself out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You are rejecting your kid’s choice based on your desire to be around parents you prefer? Seems highly silly and downright disrespectful toward your kid. You are not going to be spending much time with those other parents anyway.

Also, if it’s a high quality magnet, I suspect your kid would do well with college admissions anyway, assuming good grades, etc.

Community is a legitimate concern/desire though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at both magnet and private. We received magnet acceptances but are still waiting on privates.

If we get accepted into a private, we will decline our magnet positions based on this fact alone-

What our magnet options do not offer is an elevated college counseling experience. The privates we visited were much more hands on and provided more support to the parents.

While our student has a preference for the magnet program based on "the vibes", which I totally get, the vibes for us parents mesh better with the private school crowd.

Be careful - many complaints here RE private college counseling. STA seems excellent, Sidwell/GDS not. And Maret/Potomac marginal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You are rejecting your kid’s choice based on your desire to be around parents you prefer? Seems highly silly and downright disrespectful toward your kid. You are not going to be spending much time with those other parents anyway.

Also, if it’s a high quality magnet, I suspect your kid would do well with college admissions anyway, assuming good grades, etc.

Community is a legitimate concern/desire though.

Community for who? Denying your kid the community your kid wants because you like to think of yourself as part of the “private school crowd” is bonkers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You are rejecting your kid’s choice based on your desire to be around parents you prefer? Seems highly silly and downright disrespectful toward your kid. You are not going to be spending much time with those other parents anyway.

Also, if it’s a high quality magnet, I suspect your kid would do well with college admissions anyway, assuming good grades, etc.

Community is a legitimate concern/desire though.

Community for who? Denying your kid the community your kid wants because you like to think of yourself as part of the “private school crowd” is bonkers.

Our child chose magnet but I get it. Our older child's private HS had so much more communication with the parents and parent events that we felt more connected. It wasn't a social thing for us but more about feeling like we were an important stakeholder, lol. They would talk about admin, teacher, curriculum changes and help parents understand all the schedule options and next steps as the children progressed year to year. In public the schools basically trust HS kids to do everything. I didn't even look at DC's schedule and had no idea registration happened because there's almost no communication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are on the fence at my house. Kid is in 8th grade at a private that goes through 12 so we don’t need to wait for admissions.

From what I can tell, the magnet has more variety in STEM courses and he could spend a larger portion of his day on STEM which is what he loves. STEM extracurriculars are also stronger. Magnet also is closer to home, and has more diversity.

Private has higher quality instruction in humanities, particularly writing. Kid spontaneously does a lot of STEM but doesn’t read or write much unless pushed. Kid’s other parent also worries about safety in public. I don’t but obviously Dad gets a vote too.

Not worried about college, I figure it will work itself out.

What kind of safety concerns? I don't think you should worry about anything really serious like getting knifed or being in a fist-fight if you are talking about FCPS or MCPS. You can look at the statistics yourself. These incidents are really rare and it's unlikely your child will see any of these incidents much less be involved. But if you're talking about kids stealing things, roughly bumping other kids in the hallway on purpose, or making disparaging remarks that is something that can come up and your child should have be prepared to handle that. It's not like privates where you can leave your North Face jackets and airpods lying around and no one will touch them for weeks. If your child would find that upsetting I think you might want to hear the other parent's concerns out a bit more to make sure you and your child still feel comfortable.
GL PP!