We are in BCC cluster and looked at Loiderman, but thought the academics were much weaker than Westland.

Forget the consortium programs. Those are lottery base and really not competitive at all.

15:46 is right. MCPS and some people may refer to the consortium programs at Loiederman et al as "magnets" but its BS. There's no competitive / merit application process to gain admittance, as there is, say, for the programs at Eastern and Takoma.

OP here - Actually, I am interested in the middle school magnet consortium - http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/msmagnet/. I read that:

Who may participate in the MSMC Choice Process?

Grade 5 students who live within the geographic area of the three MSMC schools will participate in the Choice process and will be assigned to one of the MSMC schools for Grade 6.
Grade 5 students who live in other areas of Montgomery County are invited to participate in the MSMC Choice process for Grade 6.

Is it common for kids outside of the geographic area to go to these schools? Are these the smoke and mirrors that PP refers to? Any insight?

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/curriculum/specialprograms/

PP is referring to the signature programs, not the magnet programs. There are a few - Poolesville High School has one. I believe that Blair has another. It's all on the MoCo Website. It's been too long that I can't recall all of the options, but there are many for kids who qualify.

Magnets are basically a mechanism for the county to even out the demographics of certain schools. They will put fancy sounding programs together like "science and technology" or "tv and music production". They arent going to make your kid a NASA rocket scientist or a Hollywood superstar and most insider's at MCPS will tell you they are basically smoke and mirrors.....

I have a 4th grader in the BCC Cluster, so I am trying to understand MS magnets, in case that seems like a good option in the future. How does it work? Can she apply to magnets out of the cluster... as there don't seem to be any in the BCC cluster?