How to choose a neighborhood in light of HGC/magnet programs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A student who is above the median of accepted students should get in though. How is the cut off higher than the median of accepted students? That cannot be true given that half of accepted students are below the median.

There is no cut off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A student who is above the median of accepted students should get in though. How is the cut off higher than the median of accepted students? That cannot be true given that half of accepted students are below the median.

There is no cut off.

The poster said her child was well above the median of accepted students but below the cut off. Agree it doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have found private schools lacking in academics. It is a choice only for a particular demographics that I did not care about.

I would buy in an area where mortgage was decent and schools were average and not underperforming. A good racial mix - reflective of the county demographic - would be fine. However, the poor performing schools lean heavily towards low income demographic and their racial mix is also skewed heavily towards Hispanics and AA, and the high performing schools have more Whites and Asians. In my opinion, neither is diversity.

huh?

ALL private schools? Are you sure about that? And there is no county-wide demographic. It varies widely by area and can most clearly be seen via the demos of the public schools. I would say (as a resident of SS), that many Silver Spring schools have a very diverse student body. As do most of the privates, by the way. Waay more than the W cluster schools.

[Anonymous]

With more important factors such as commute, home price, neighborhood feel, and overall school cluster quality, I wouldn't personally worry about distance from home school to a potential elementary magnet. As others have pointed out, your child may not get in, and if she does, the program is only two years. FWIW, my child goes to a HGC. Buses serve all the kids, in our case picking up at our home (zoned) elementary school. We're far away from the center relative to many of the other kids, so my child has a longish bus ride (30-40 minutes) but enjoys the ride. If our child had not gotten into the HGC (or had chosen not to attend), we felt comfortable with remaining at our zoned elementary school, which we liked very much.