Reply to What makes Whitman such a (reputation of a) "pressure cooker?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Had three kids graduate from Whitman. You have to try out for everything. In other MCPS high schools, some sports need players or are “no-cut.” Not Whitman with the exception of the football team. Swimming, cross country are all cut teams. Want to work on  the Tv show, you need to try out. Many positions on the newspaper and yearbook are highly competitive. For the high average kids, it just wears them down because they feel like they don’t have a decent shot at anything. Whitman showcases a big club night but most of these “ clubs” never amount to anything except  resume value for the organizer. All the top kids are always competing with each other and it makes for a pressure cooker environment.[/quote]

Parent of 2021 grad and a current student at Whitman. I can't compare to other high schools (which is really what your question is, OP - why is Whitman a pressured environ any more or less than other mcps high schools), but I do think this poster nailed a big reason my kids feel/felt stressed out at Whitman. Every little thing is pursued by the students to the Nth degree at Whitman. Want to be on the school paper - you need to take the journalism class (too bad if you didn't realize about that until junior year, because at the point the intro class isn't really available any more and you probably don't have room in your schedule unless you already were prioritizing journalism) and everyone wants to be an editor. Want to be on the field hockey team - you needed to have started young and do the clinics, etc. As a result, my kids found it hard to balance beyond one main prioritized activity at Whitman.

Also, the pressure to take as many APs as possible, regardless of one's interests, is heavy at least among my kids' cohorts. My older DC is a humanities oriented student and still took MV, AP Calc BC, AP chem, and AP physics. At most challenging high schools elsewhere in the country, that would be unnecessary since DC's interests were really in the AP english and social studies classes. Said DC is not even at a top 30 university, by the way, despite rigorous classes, a 3.98uw gpa and 1580 SAT. Most of the students at Whitman getting into ivies and other top schools have those stats and also national level awards or are an athletic recruit. It feels like a race to nowhere to have taken all of those classes, pushed on the activities, and land at a fine but not stellar college that most of the other admitted students landed at via a much less intense academic route. We learned with our younger not to get sucked into that pressure (or at least to a lesser extent).[/quote]

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