constant chatter about Montgomery County schools being better

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not buying it. Even YHP and Stanford aren't looking for 14-15 APs. They're looking for academic depth and extra curricular accomplishment and at least 6 or 7 APs with scores of 5 or IBD points totals of 40+. Nobody does this at JR.

I don't understand this comment whatsoever. My own kid took 13 plus DE at GW.

I would not say it is actually because kids are trying to overload on APs (though there are the few that really want to be valedictorian)...it is because you either take AP or grade level. Grade level is a complete waste of time, so even if you don't want to take AP English Lit...you take it because you are not going to take grade level English.

So, you take AP for all core courses (math, science, English, social studies/humanities) in 11th and 12th...that is 8 right there. Add in AP language, add in AP Comp Sci Principles and Comp Sci A (popular STEM APs). You are now at 11 APs. Many kids are taking 1 or 2 as Sophomores.

Also, US colleges don't really care about your AP Test score. That is for placement when you are accepted. They care about the grade in the class.

UK and Canadian colleges actually very much do care about AP Test scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not buying it. Even YHP and Stanford aren't looking for 14-15 APs. They're looking for academic depth and extra curricular accomplishment and at least 6 or 7 APs with scores of 5 or IBD points totals of 40+. Nobody does this at JR.

Every year a few hundred kids out of 1.6 million or so taking AP exams take 14 or more AP exams. So, it is possible that 1 or 2 could be at JR in a given year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not too many people move from MCPS to DCPS for a reason.

Yeah, home prices and space.

Do you really think people in Bethesda cannot afford NW DC?

I think PP was saying people move out to MOCO (which is a huge area) for either: (i) more space at the same home price, or (ii) lower home prices for equivalent space. $2MM can usually purchase way more house and land in various parts of MOCO (that are in-bounds for top performing schools) than Upper NW DC. Not CC MD or close-in Bethesda, but plenty of areas.

Noone is arguing the reverse.

[Anonymous]

I live in Brookland. I feel pretty good about our chances for getting into a reasonable middle school (though check with me after lottery results are in this year and next!), but I definitely would consider moving to Silver Spring for high school if where we end up for middle school isn't a school that goes on to high school. (though I would also consider Siena/Lab, maybe Chelsea, maybe Nora -- if we could swing it financially).

In fact, I already teased a friend who has a home in Takoma that we might have to switch houses on weekdays for four years!

My kid is in fourth grade, and 1.5 years behind (grr, long shut down) and I don't expect she could get into any of the application high schools (though I suppose Duke Ellington is a possibility)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not too many people move from MCPS to DCPS for a reason.

Yeah, home prices and space.

Do you really think people in Bethesda cannot afford NW DC?

I think PP was saying people move out to MOCO (which is a huge area) for either: (i) more space at the same home price, or (ii) lower home prices for equivalent space. $2MM can usually purchase way more house and land in various parts of MOCO (that are in-bounds for top performing schools) than Upper NW DC. Not CC MD or close-in Bethesda, but plenty of areas.

Noone is arguing the reverse.

We live EOTP and are OOB for a JR feeder. This is exactly the logic of our neighborhood friends. If you're moving out of your house "for the schools," you're also trying to get more space (indoors and outdoors) than your current rowhouse/condo/etc. There is a LOT more housing stock in MoCo that checks all of the boxes (schools, SFH with "enough" square footage, decent yard) than in NW DC. Maybe everyone is lying through their teeth, but I've heard "we looked and looked in the city, but couldn't find anything so that's why we ended up in Bethesda" a lot in the last few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

Sort of but you are way overstating the JR acceptance rate at top universities.

Whitman and JR each have about 500 in a class. Typically, maybe 35 apply to Princeton from Whitman in a given year, and 1-3 get in. The same year, maybe 12 apply to Princeton from JR, and zero get in. Sure, every once in a while, someone gets into Princeton from JR but it is unusual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The teacher shortage is nation wide. I am a teacher and on a number of list serves for teachers. Complaints are the same all over. We are all filling in, using our free and planning periods to cover for others, and teaching new classes at the last minute. My son has a math teacher who just took over his French class in another school. It is hard to find teachers generally and mid year it is even harder. I encourage anyone who ever considered teaching to do it now. We need you.

+1 And yet....I can only imagine the very small percentage of DCUM parents who want their kids to become teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

Sort of but you are way overstating the JR acceptance rate at top universities.

Whitman and JR each have about 500 in a class. Typically, maybe 35 apply to Princeton from Whitman in a given year, and 1-3 get in. The same year, maybe 12 apply to Princeton from JR, and zero get in. Sure, every once in a while, someone gets into Princeton from JR but it is unusual.

Hmmm...I presume you are talking out of your A** and are a MOCO person. This year, JR already has one accepted from Princeton (only 4 ED applicants), last year 2 accepted, year before...wait for it...2 accepted.

This year, based only on what I know, JR has at least 1 for Harvard, 5 for Cornell, 2 for Brown, 1 for Penn, etc.. Again, only based on what I know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not buying it. Even YHP and Stanford aren't looking for 14-15 APs. They're looking for academic depth and extra curricular accomplishment and at least 6 or 7 APs with scores of 5 or IBD points totals of 40+. Nobody does this at JR.

+1. Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not too many people move from MCPS to DCPS for a reason.

In fairness, not many people that would send their kids to JR or Walls move to MCPS either. It is just there are many people where they don't have JR as a neighborhood option and Walls is a small school.

Admittedly, MCPS has Whitman, Churchhill, BCC, Wooten...many good options for HS. I have heard close-in MCPS middle school is an issue for a lot of people, but they go with the flow because they do have strong HS options.

Also, college competition is more severe from these MCPS high schools, so if you have great stats at JR you are not competing against nearly as many kids with great stats for T20 colleges.

This is exactly my impression. If you buy a starter home in Brookland, you are likely going to move to MoCo because it's cheaper and there's more housing stock and school options than moving IB for JR. Particularly because there's a good chance you can only afford Blair/Einstein, maybe BCC, but not Whitman or Wooten. But if you buy IB for JR, you had the financials to choose between MCPS and JR and are unlikely to change your mind for largely similar schools. Plus, many people don't LIKE those high schools and would rather deal with the warts at JR than the pressure cooker elitism in MoCo.

In our case we did PG County (house under $400k) and private, which for us was more preferable than getting into a giant MoCo public school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

Sort of but you are way overstating the JR acceptance rate at top universities.

Whitman and JR each have about 500 in a class. Typically, maybe 35 apply to Princeton from Whitman in a given year, and 1-3 get in. The same year, maybe 12 apply to Princeton from JR, and zero get in. Sure, every once in a while, someone gets into Princeton from JR but it is unusual.

Hmmm...I presume you are talking out of your A** and are a MOCO person. This year, JR already has one accepted from Princeton (only 4 ED applicants), last year 2 accepted, year before...wait for it...2 accepted.

This year, based only on what I know, JR has at least 1 for Harvard, 5 for Cornell, 2 for Brown, 1 for Penn, etc.. Again, only based on what I know.

Hmmm…weird how JR doesn't release any info about college acceptances…I guess that we will just have to take your word for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

Sort of but you are way overstating the JR acceptance rate at top universities.

Whitman and JR each have about 500 in a class. Typically, maybe 35 apply to Princeton from Whitman in a given year, and 1-3 get in. The same year, maybe 12 apply to Princeton from JR, and zero get in. Sure, every once in a while, someone gets into Princeton from JR but it is unusual.

Hmmm...I presume you are talking out of your A** and are a MOCO person. This year, JR already has one accepted from Princeton (only 4 ED applicants), last year 2 accepted, year before...wait for it...2 accepted.

This year, based only on what I know, JR has at least 1 for Harvard, 5 for Cornell, 2 for Brown, 1 for Penn, etc.. Again, only based on what I know.

Hmmm…weird how JR doesn't release any info about college acceptances…I guess that we will just have to take your word for it.

Not much one can do about that because it is a DCPS decision. I actually wish they would follow Montgomery County and show acceptance by HS, so you could sit there with your mouth agape and wonder why I moved to MCPS thinking my college acceptance chances would improve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not buying it. Even YHP and Stanford aren't looking for 14-15 APs. They're looking for academic depth and extra curricular accomplishment and at least 6 or 7 APs with scores of 5 or IBD points totals of 40+. Nobody does this at JR.

Your own comment negates itself. If you take 6 or 7 APs and have scores to show YHP and Stanford...that means you took all those APs by the end of 11th grade.

You think kids at that point just don't take any more APs? Of course they do...likely 4 or 5 as seniors.

So, even you would agree they are probably taking 10 - 12 APs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Im going to guess colleges will not give any additional thought to a privileged kid with resources at JR vs. BCC vs. Whitman.

Why should they?

It is more nuanced than that. The following factor into the college decision:

1. How many kids are applying to that specific college and how many have legacy. If you look at the history of college acceptances from various HSs, you will see it is fairly consistent year-to-year. JR will send 2-3 to Princeton every year, 2 to MIT, etc. There are way more kids applying to Ivies from Whitman than JR, and many more are going to have legacy. Your primary college competition is the other kids from your school, so if only 6 kids apply to Princeton from JR, you have pretty good odds. These kids will all have the Stats, so this is not a scenario where the JR kids all have 3.0 averages. Not the case at all. Whitman is going to have way more kids applying to Princeton, and Princeton will accept what they normally accept (don't know what it is) every year and the legacies will often win out. Sports recruits are a different animal and will add to the school totals.
2. The overall demographics of the school will actually put it in certain categories which allows the college to check various boxes. The colleges are ecstatic to say we accepted all these kids from this urban school where the median income is fairly low, and median test scores are low. They are more than happy to ignore the fact that the kids they are actually accepting live in $2MM houses and are not disadvantaged whatsoever.

Of course if you row crew for JR, you are an Ivy league dream come true. You are part of the national championship team and you go to an urban, hardscrabble school. So many boxes get checked.

Sort of but you are way overstating the JR acceptance rate at top universities.

Whitman and JR each have about 500 in a class. Typically, maybe 35 apply to Princeton from Whitman in a given year, and 1-3 get in. The same year, maybe 12 apply to Princeton from JR, and zero get in. Sure, every once in a while, someone gets into Princeton from JR but it is unusual.

Hmmm...I presume you are talking out of your A** and are a MOCO person. This year, JR already has one accepted from Princeton (only 4 ED applicants), last year 2 accepted, year before...wait for it...2 accepted.

This year, based only on what I know, JR has at least 1 for Harvard, 5 for Cornell, 2 for Brown, 1 for Penn, etc.. Again, only based on what I know.

Hmmm…weird how JR doesn't release any info about college acceptances…I guess that we will just have to take your word for it.

Not much one can do about that because it is a DCPS decision. I actually wish they would follow Montgomery County and show acceptance by HS, so you could sit there with your mouth agape and wonder why I moved to MCPS thinking my college acceptance chances would improve.

Kids self report on the school's seniors' IG page. That's pretty much real time.