Reply to Woodson, Lake Braddock, West Springfield experiences

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence.  Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.[/quote]

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.[/quote]

Here we go again.

This is a variant on the “pressure cooker” nonsense - the argument that parents in the Woodson pyramid are pushy and foisting TJ on their kids, whereas the LB/Robinson/WS families are more chill - but, by the way, it actually works out better for college admissions because your kid will somehow stand out more at these less competitive schools.

It’s kind of silly when you reflect on just how large most of these schools are.  If anything, Woodson is a bit smaller than the other three.

I’d just go with the house you like and not worry too much about the schools (with the caveat that most do prefer AP over IB, which is the main advanced program at Robinson).  [/quote]

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