Feedback on Northwood HS

[Anonymous]

Just bought a house in the area and our son will be attending Northwood in a couple of years. Anyone here have personal experience with the school?

Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just bought a house in the area and our son will be attending Northwood in a couple of years. Anyone here have personal experience with the school?

Thanks in advance!

No personal experience, but I've heard great things about the current principal from her former colleagues.

[Anonymous]

Also, are you aware that you live in what's known as the Downcounty Consortium, which theoretically gives you some options for high school. You're guaranteed a spot at your home school, Northwood, but the other high schools might offer programs that interest your son.

Details here: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/downcounty/about/

[Anonymous]

We have much younger kids, but have teenage neighbors who go there and the family is happy with it. Report from the (mature, smart, and grounded) teenage neighbors is that there are plenty of opportunities if you are motivated. If our kids don't decide to test into another program, we'll happily send them there. It seems to strike a good balance of offering challenging classes to those who opt in without being a pressure cooker full of super competitive kids.

[Anonymous]

My niece and nephew graduated from there in 2014 and 2015. They had a great experience, honors and AP classes, off to four year universities. One nice thing about a small school is that they got to play sports without being the very best with years of travel team experience. My niece enjoys playing soccer but had mostly played on rec dept teams. since the school is small, she was able to make the team and just had fun with it. My nephew got on the tennis team as a freshman without having ever played, and got really good really fast. He's now playing on his college team and gives lessons during the summer.

I'm sure other sports and activities are similar. Meanwhile, my friend's son played travel baseball pretty much his whole life, it couldn't make the JV team at Blair because of the huge pool of players.

[Anonymous]

If you look up Northwood in this forum, you'll see a lot of discussions/opinions. I think the general gist is that it had a reputation problem for a long time - folks who weren't familiar with it assumed it was not good. But a strong principal and a smaller-school feel has translated into people finally giving it a chance. We're in a neighborhood zoned for Northwood and every person I know who actually has experience with Northwood says it's great.