Reply to McDonogh vs Bryn Mawr

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One is co-ed, one is all-girls

One is way out in the suburbs, one is in Baltimore City

One has a reputation for well-rounded kids with an emphasis on sports, one has a reputation for being an academic pressure cooker

One seems popular with long-time Baltimore families and is a bit more conservative, one is laden with kids of Hopkins professors and high-achieving immigrants

It's a little surprising you need all of these differences laid out for you. How did you pick these 2 schools? Have you set foot on either campus?[/quote]

Other than geographical locations, literally nothing in this quote is accurate.[/quote]

Huh? Not the person you’re replying to but.. all looks 100% accurate to me. My kid is in a different Baltimore independent school, but everyone knows this stuff about both McDonogh and BMS. Which of these assertions do you  dispute?[/quote]

Well, for one, there is of course well rounded kids at both schools.  Bryn Mawr doesn’t recruit athletes but most girls participate in sports and some are quite competitive in the IAAM.  Bryn Mawr isn’t an academic pressure cooker.  Mcdonogh is not more popular with long time Baltimore families.  Bryn Mawr is not “laden with kids of Hopkins professors and high achieving immigrants.”   Doesn’t leave much.

Source: had one daughter and several other family members recently attend Bryn Mawr,  son is at Gilman, and know lots of kids at all the other Baltimore private schools including Mcdonogh.  I also have one child who applied and was accepted to Mcdonogh but chose not to attend.[/quote]

Oh, come on. Sure, plenty of Bryn Mawr girls play sports. But McDonogh is sportier. Of course what makes an “academic pressure cooker” is subjective, but Bryn Mawr is a heck of a lot closer than McD. I do agree with you that for real old Baltimore money the pipeline is Calvert > Gilman/Bryn Mawr. But for County money, McDonogh is certainly a popular choice.

Do you think that Gilman is “laden with kids of Hopkins professors and high achieving immigrants”? I do, and we are a Gilman family. But again, I guess “laden” is subjective.

Anyway, I think PP’s post is basically sound information, albeit obvious stuff. [/quote]

High achieving immigrants?  I think there are very few at any of the private schools, including Gilman.  And there are Hopkins parents at literally every private in Baltimore including Mcdonogh.  [/quote]

Literally 80% of my kid’s Gilman friend group can be described this way (with plenty of overlap between “immigrants” and “Hopkins” although not 100%). I consider it a plus. He’s learning way more about other cultures than I would’ve expected. If I had to guess I’d say that about 40% of Gilman families are old money country club with the remaining split evenly between immigrants and non-immigrants. The country-club crowd doesn’t socialize too much with the rest of us, but that’s fine, they’re nice and friendly, just in a different groove. The immigrant families have been warm and welcoming to us and we have enjoyed getting to know some awesome families from all over the world. [/quote]

Lol some people send their kids to private schools for better peers and networking opportunities for their kids. It’s funny that the rich people segregate themselves from the poorer “working class” families.[/quote]

It's funny that you would assume the immigrants are the poorer of the two. Not necessarily true. [/quote]

DP. My kid goes to Gilman and the regular families, immigrants and non immigrants, are definitely poorer than the old money “lived in Baltimore for generations” people. The latter has serious generational wealth and multi million dollar homes/land. The other families are all dual income, often live in old, non-renovated, mediocre homes (around 1-1.2m) and stretch a lot to send their kids to these schools.[/quote]

I live in Baltimore, smack dab in the heart of private school territory. 1.1-1.2M is a good price for an updated home in a nice area. Sure, it goes up from there but it also goes down from there for a nice house. Baltimore is not an expensive market. It's not DC. I'm not going to engage in the battle of redfin/zillow links but your post was both clueless and tone deaf.

Old money Baltimore certainly exists but is also not as wealthy as you might think. Unless you consider real estate families like the Cordishes and Manekins old money, I don't know, perhaps you do. But for every Griswold still around (most have long bailed out for more exciting places) you have multiples of your typical couple generations of UMC wealth with a few mill in the bank and a few gen at the local privates, and plenty of self made people, and that includes most of the Legg Mason / T Rowe Price leadership who look suitably waspy but didn't come from established wealth. Baltimore isn't a major money town, there's no comparable level of wealth that you find in Dallas or Houston or Austin or Miami or any of the other boom cities of the last few decades, it's a steadily declining, long past its prime, midsize city with no real home industry outside - you got it - medicine and JHU.[/quote]

The PP nailed it. I don't think the "DP. My kid goes to Gilman..." is even a parent or real, live, adult living in Baltimore. The more I read DCUM, the more I think there are bots or 13 year olds posting. Maybe just a REALLY bored Baltimore private school kid looking to stir the pot by relying on dated information from the Preppy Handbook. 
 [/quote]

The Cordishes and Manekin go to Park. Old money doesn't necessarily equal high endowment.

Have you considered any other schools? We looked at both of those schools at different points in time. We looked at MCD for our son and my husband hated it. he  thought  it was far too sports oriented. He just kept saying it was a school for "white, preppy Jocks". I didn't necessarily agree as I thought it was more diverse than he did. That being said, I did think it was very sports oriented but what I didn't like about it was that my son should have been considered for pre-first, but we were told they were no spaces because all of the spaces were occupied by their kindergartners. Having settle this, my view may be very outdated as my son is now in high school.

I loved Bryn Mawr. We looked at it for our daughter for middle school. My daughter absolutely hated it and said that the girls were too enthusiastic she said basically no one needs to know how smart I am besides me and my teacher. we also had a bad experience with our tour guide as she scared my daughter talking about when the best time was to get the study carols in the library and college. My daughter was in fifth grade at the time and it really intimidated her.

I am also not at all the fan of some of the race dynamics at Bryn Mawr. They've had several issues over the years that  made me very happy that my daughter decided not to go there. [/quote]

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