Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RM is a very good school, however if your kid get's caught up in the wrong crowd, it could spiral downhill pretty fast. I know one kid attended in the mid 90's, and one recently up to a couple years ago, who ended up almost dropping out of school, not attending college etc.

This can be said of any high school.

Ah..OP asked about TWO schools...

Anonymous wrote:RM is a very good school, however if your kid get's caught up in the wrong crowd, it could spiral downhill pretty fast. I know one kid attended in the mid 90's, and one recently up to a couple years ago, who ended up almost dropping out of school, not attending college etc.

This can be said of any high school.

RM is a very good school, however if your kid get's caught up in the wrong crowd, it could spiral downhill pretty fast. I know one kid attended in the mid 90's, and one recently up to a couple years ago, who ended up almost dropping out of school, not attending college etc.

Anonymous wrote:If you throw out the IB program RM is just average. There is zero school spirit and the athletics are poor.

On the other hand Quince Orchard is the closest to the ideal American high school that you can have. They have the best school spirit in the county, the academics are fantastic, and the sports program is top notch.

I've posted on the Wootton threads about QO. I'm in the Wootton cluster right now but would prefer QO. However, I think RM is Avery good school. School districts often collocate magnet programs at underperforming schools in order to get the school's overall stats to improve. Usually this doesn't help the non-magnet part of the school, but in RM's case, I think it's really helped improve the non-magnet portion as well. I probably prefer QO over RM, but only slightly. I'd prefer either over Wootton.

I say this as someone with kids in elementary and middle school, and hearing what my neighbors and coworkers have gone through with these respective high schools. QO and RM offer a wide range of academic flexibility and social circles for kids. So if you don't know precisely what type of student your younger child is, the chances of fitting in and getting a good education are better, IMO, at with RM or QO than at Wootton, which doesn't seem to offer much unless your child is the best of the brightest.

PP..do your children go to RM? What numbers do you have that exclude the magnet?

If you throw out the IB program RM is just average. There is zero school spirit and the athletics are poor.

On the other hand Quince Orchard is the closest to the ideal American high school that you can have. They have the best school spirit in the county, the academics are fantastic, and the sports program is top notch.

They're fairly similar demographically - the main difference is that RM has a larger proportion of Asian students; QO has a larger proportion of white students (other groups are represented about the same at each school).

In terms of average SAT, RM's are 100+ points higher, and the % of students scoring well on AP/IB tests is also much higher at RM. The IB magnet program (nearly 1000 kids from all over the county apply, and a little over 10% get in) at RM skews those numbers, but I don't know how much.

I have a child at RM - not in the magnet program - and I'm happy with the academics. I think sometimes the perception is that kids in the magnet program get a great education and all of the other kids get thrown into dumbed-down classrooms with peer interactions straight out of Lord of the Flies. (okay, maybe not quite that bad )That hasn't been our experience at all. My child is getting a rigorous education - in addition to the IB magnet, RM also has a robust AP program.

I don't have any direct experience with Quince Orchard, but my impression is that it's also a good school.

Anyone?

How do these two schools compare? Is one better than the other academically? Are they pretty comparable? What about the demographics if the two?