Reply to Moving from Arlington to Bethesda(ish) for job--best school clusters?

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Reply to "Moving from Arlington to Bethesda(ish) for job--best school clusters?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The W schools (and BCC) are all the same academically. Same opportunity for learning, resources to achieve, etc. Whitman is a pressure cooker in a way the others aren’t since probably 80% of its student body are college-bound high achievers with successful parents. BCC and WJ are more diverse (racial and socioeconomically) but they have successful cohort programs for the high achieving kids. The rich elementary schools that feed into all three are indistinguishable from one another. Westland, Silver Creek, and NB are all great middle schools with nurturing environments (as far as public schools go) and are not swimming in people. Pyle is a mess. Way too many kids so no way for a non-troublemaker to get any attention. [/quote]

I agree with a lot of this, but don't think Whitman is any more of a pressure cooker than the others.  What makes the others academically strong is that there is a large cohort of high-achieving kids striving for college, and in many cases competitive colleges.  That Whitman may have a smaller cohort of non-college bound students is largely irrelevant to the level of pressure your kid will feel.

If your kid is college-bound and looking at competitive schools, he or she will be competing against all the other kids in the school with similar goals.  It won't really matter whether there are 10, 20, or 30% of the class that don't share those goals, because there will be enough that do to create the pressure.  [/quote]
As a WJ parent who attended Whitman, I’ve noticed a difference for sure. My DD has made friends in her electives classes whose life plans don’t involved applying early decision to Penn or Brown (or even going to college at all). Her immediate friend group is somewhat of a pressure cooker just cause they all have the same goal and are on the same time table but [b]knowing that not everyone’s world and experience of being 17 is just like hers as been great for her. MC, trade school, etc are great options for some people and I never learned that at Whitman[/b]. [/quote]

That's a really interesting point. Thanks, PP.[/quote]

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