Blair CAP vs. Whitman
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Anonymous
He doesn't really have good local friends. Most friends are from Eastern. |
Anonymous
Yeah that is the tough thing. I don't think he knows what he really likes...he is not strongly geared towards humanities (definitely not drama), nor is he strongly geared towards STEM. I think he is just going with the flow now and trying to figure out. |
Anonymous
| I'd choose Whitman. Blair is a ridiculously large and over crowded school. The few kids I know who went to CAP were smart, but ended up in meh colleges, for what it's worth. Not saying that's the norm, but getting a leg up in college placement should not figure into your decision to go there. Being you live in the Whitman cluster, I think CAP would not be worth the hassle, since your home school is as good or better. |
Anonymous
Except there's no comparison here. Blair CAP is a much stronger program than anything offered at Whitman. |
Anonymous
Your personal anecdote aside, Blair has the most impressive admissions of any HS in the county. Go read the Bethesda Beat issue that shows the stats. There's really no comparison. |
Anonymous
CAP is a demanding program and may just be too much for your child. Although I'd say stay at whitman, all the racist incidents that go on at those schools is a real concern. |
Anonymous
The sixth and seventh grade teachers are tough graders. I think coming from Eastern he will be well prepared. My kid isn’t into Drama either, but they do interesting assignments like read Raison in the Sun or chose a play or musical to review. As for the commute, you could try a carpool. There have to be a decent amount of kids from the Whitman district attending CAP or SMAC. If your child does select CAP, perhaps have him take Bio rather than AP physics. That is the most challenging class. |
Anonymous
"Blair has the most impressive admissions of any HS" - that is probably thanks to STEM kids? |
Anonymous
OP here - Wow, I didn't even know about the Whitman racist incidents! I guess I should search on this board for the details of the Whitman incidents (BTW, we are not Caucasian). I haven't really thought about HS much until lately. |
Anonymous
Thank you very much! Yeah, I watched the CAP information session from last year, and it does look interesting. This is an oversimplified question - but would CAP's workload be much heavier than Whitman, if he takes honors, etc. at Whitman? He wants to be challenged but I also don't want to overburden him. |
Anonymous
Can you link the Bethesda Beat stats article, please |
Anonymous
Exactly. All the merit scholars come from their stem magnet and I'm sure most of the impressive admissions come from there as well. |
Anonymous
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OP, we've been having the same debate at our house, although in our case it's a different W school vs. CAP. DD also got into RMIB but won't be going there (which is 100% fine with us). We have two older kids, one of whom went to the home W HS and one of whom went to RMIB, so we have those experiences for comparison.
DD is super into drama/theater, as are all of her Eastern friends, so she wants to go to CAP. My spouse and I have been discussing a lot and basically we decided that it's got to be our choice, not her choice, both for family reasons and based on our evaluation of what's best for her. Here's why we have decided she can't go to CAP: 1) CAP has a great program that's a continuation of Eastern (and really Barnsley as well since that's more of a humanities focus), but we are concerned about the quality of the rest of the classes outside CAP, given non-magnet Blair (which admittedly we have no experience with) vs. WJ. I want her to be able to take AP classes in 9th grade (AP Government), and I want her to have a strong all-around education, not simply a specialty in humanities that is most apparent in the first two years and then tapers off in junior/senior years. 2) The length of the school day (eight periods) and the length of the commute are huge factors. She's on the bus at 7 am and doesn't get home until 4:30 pm as it is (and that is the same bus schedule she'd have next year). With eight periods, that's a lot less time for extracurriculars, downtime, family time, and sleep, all of which are important. I can't find what time the activity buses run, but we aren't on a magnet activity bus route for Eastern and I don't think we'd be on one for Blair. 3) I am tired of not having a parent community to exchange favors and information with. Given the distances, there's no one to carpool with for afterschool activities. There aren't any parents I can rely on to exchange favors when there's a time crunch. 4) Relatedly, the logistics of getting her to/from school are too much for us. With traffic (and there's almost always traffic) it's 25-30 minutes each way. My spouse and I are working from home still but that's not going to last forever -- we can't just get over there to get her quickly on a moment's notice. 5) DD went to Barnsley ES before Eastern, so has been out of the neighborhood friend loop since 4th grade. None of her Barnsley friends went to Eastern, and none are going to the home HS. It's really becoming problematic because every get-together is a schlep, as all her friends are in Silver Spring. That's two hours of driving round-trip for us as her parents. She's lonely on weekends because there's no one local to hang out with. She suffers from some social anxiety, too, so is always reluctant to be the one to initiate a hang-out. 6) We know our home high school. It's a happy, well-run place and it's 600 kids fewer than Blair. Our older kid had a great experience there. DD has been out of the loop with her friends from elementary and the neighborhood, but still knows a lot of them and will reconnect and/or make new friendships. Our DD can put together a rigorous, challenging program and have a lot more time in her day both for school and for extracurriculars at the home HS. 7) We let our other kid go to RMIB -- it was her choice even though we weren't thrilled about it. We have experienced some of the issues above, and it's also been a brutal program both on its own merits and because of the pandemic. It's cost a lot in terms of time, stress, pressure, anxiety, etc. We are not happy that we're making this decision for our youngest instead of letting her make it for herself, but we're much more aware now of the impacts to our whole family of one kid going to a magnet program. So that's where we are. Reading your posts, I'd say there's no compelling reason for your kid to go to CAP for some of the same reasons we have. |
Anonymous
| ^+1 To say that "Blair has the most impressive admissions of any HS in the county" is misleading. A majority of the MIT/HPYS/Honors UMD placements come from the Blair magnet programs. |
Anonymous
| An additional consideration is that regardless of who your child is friends with in middle school, that will change - at least to an extent - regardless of how many of them attend high school together. It’s a developmentally, normal process. Peer groups shift and change. My point is that going to a school because your friends are going there is probably a weaker reason. |