Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured NCS and Maret within the same week. NCS was gorgeous and Maret seemed grungy and cramped in comparison. However, the student tour guides were impressive at both!

FWIW, Maret's tuition is about $7,000/year less than NCS and $9,000/year less than STA. For the super wealthy, that may not matter. But for those of us who are not on financial aid and struggle to send our kids to private school, I am totally fine with buildings not being "gorgeous" so the education is a bit more affordable.

Rats are still rats

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how rude the AD at NCS was and then shadow day was not much better. I thought the campus was pretty though and very updated. Sidwell was beautiful and their whole process was much better than we had imagined. Potomac was a wild card. Beautiful campus but sort of cold during admission and basically assumed our child would not get in. Maret needs some updating but they are so warm there it makes up for a lot. The lacking playing fields make it a hard choice if your child loves athletics so something to consider. Stone Ridge was 100 percent better than we had thought. That school moved up many places after our tour. GDS is not a place for an athletic child but many impressive kids and teachers.

This is so strange to me. We are public school nobodies and the NCS director was incredibly warm and friendly. We thought it was the most down-to-earth admissions experience we had.

I agree! I went in to the process thinking I favored Holton, but the AD at NCS blew me away. And I don't want to overstate...but I think she is changing the culture of the school dramatically. My daughter loved the Holton campus, it is beautiful. But it's pretty hard to beat the feeling that comes from being at the Cathedral (we are Episcopalian fyi).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how rude the AD at NCS was and then shadow day was not much better. I thought the campus was pretty though and very updated. Sidwell was beautiful and their whole process was much better than we had imagined. Potomac was a wild card. Beautiful campus but sort of cold during admission and basically assumed our child would not get in. Maret needs some updating but they are so warm there it makes up for a lot. The lacking playing fields make it a hard choice if your child loves athletics so something to consider. Stone Ridge was 100 percent better than we had thought. That school moved up many places after our tour. GDS is not a place for an athletic child but many impressive kids and teachers.

This is so strange to me. We are public school nobodies and the NCS director was incredibly warm and friendly. We thought it was the most down-to-earth admissions experience we had.

I agree! I went in to the process thinking I favored Holton, but the AD at NCS blew me away. And I don't want to overstate...but I think she is changing the culture of the school dramatically. My daughter loved the Holton campus, it is beautiful. But it's pretty hard to beat the feeling that comes from being at the Cathedral (we are Episcopalian fyi).

Anonymous wrote:Maret. I was just shocked at what the school looked like. I went to the bathroom and it smelled so bad, and it was the kind of smell like the place had not been taken care of. There was rust all over the stalls. There was even something hanging from the ceiling looking like it was going to fall at any second. I also agree with the earlier poster, there was stuff everywhere. Nothing seemed to have a place to be put.

I have to admit, when I heard the head there made over 500 thousand a year I assumed the place would be amazing. In my experience, I’m from New England originally, when a head makes that much, the school is an amazing looking and feeling place. Not Maret. I guess all of the money is going to the head and not the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe how the majority of the people on this thread are so enamored with bright, shiny objects.

You realize you're evaluating your options for an education and not a luxury spa retreat, right? I actually re-read the thread to see if anyone at all commented intelligently on the discourse within a classroom between teacher/students, student writing on display outside the classrooms, the caliber of the robotic competition entries …. nope, no one.

Just 8 pages of women sniffing about carpet vs. tile and shabby couches in the hallways.

You must be new to the DC private school population if you think this is abnormal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Langley was not as nice as I thought it would be.

+1


And the new AD was rude, dismissive, unwelcoming, and seemed to think she was interviewing for Exeter or Andover, going on and on and ON about the acadamic stanards at Langley. Give me a $&*% break.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how rude the AD at NCS was and then shadow day was not much better. I thought the campus was pretty though and very updated. Sidwell was beautiful and their whole process was much better than we had imagined. Potomac was a wild card. Beautiful campus but sort of cold during admission and basically assumed our child would not get in. Maret needs some updating but they are so warm there it makes up for a lot. The lacking playing fields make it a hard choice if your child loves athletics so something to consider. Stone Ridge was 100 percent better than we had thought. That school moved up many places after our tour. GDS is not a place for an athletic child but many impressive kids and teachers.

This is so strange to me. We are public school nobodies and the NCS director was incredibly warm and friendly. We thought it was the most down-to-earth admissions experience we had.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GDS was not what I expected. We were coming from a small intimate private school setting. I went to a GDS information session and quite honestly it felt very much like a Cattlecall. I just got the feeling sitting there the people were just clamoring to get their children a space at the school. I ended up walking out in the middle of the information session because I just felt so disgusted by it. I’m in no way implying that it’s a bad school, all I can talk about is my experience during the information session and how it made me feel. All that to say it was not the school for us.

I was pleasantly surprised by the vibe at St. Andrews. The people are friendly, the environment was just so warm and inviting. I liked the facilities and liked the vision and mission of the school. It felt very much like the smaller environment that we were used to.

GDS is much sought-after today. It is unfortunate but understandable that parents are clamoring for a spot for their children, so the information sessions can be large. The school is amazing, though.

Please go home, GDS troll.

I’m not a troll. I was giving my honest opinion. I didn’t get far enough to take a tour of the school because I walked out. I did stay for some of the info session where the administration talked about how wonderful the school is. I’m sure it is a wonderful place, It just was not the place that I wanted to send my child. I showed up there with a positive attitude because I had heard so many wonderful things about the school. It simply was not what I expected. That is what this thread is about right? I am allowed to give my opinion as did pretty much everyone else on this thread.

I think the troll accusation was directed at the responder to your post. There is apparently someone posing as an insufferable braggy GDS parent in an attempt to make the overall community look obnoxious.

+1. I can see how large information sessions at some of the schools can put people off. It's loud and chaotic, and doesn't show the facilities, staff or students to the best advantage. Our DC ended up in one of the upper schools that had this type of cattle call open house/info session, and the regular atmosphere is very different.
There was nothing insufferable or braggy about that prior post. GDS is in fact much sought-after today; that's just a fact. (Btw, I'm a parent at a competing school.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And this, my friends, is why tuition is circling $50k.

It doesn’t add up. Why are many schools able to maintain a lovely physical plant, and have great factulty and all the programming, extracurriculars, etc while others are charging the SAME price for dilapidated facilities.

Hearing that Maret’s head makes $500k could be one reason why that school looks shabby. In 5 years the school could pay him half of what he makes and put a million into needed facility upgrades. I don’t want to pay that kind of tuition for that!

First, Maret's head is a woman. Second, its facilities are not shabby. They're not super fancy, but not shabby by any means. It renovated its athletic facilities just last year.

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe how the majority of the people on this thread are so enamored with bright, shiny objects.

You realize you're evaluating your options for an education and not a luxury spa retreat, right? I actually re-read the thread to see if anyone at all commented intelligently on the discourse within a classroom between teacher/students, student writing on display outside the classrooms, the caliber of the robotic competition entries …. nope, no one.

Just 8 pages of women sniffing about carpet vs. tile and shabby couches in the hallways.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Langley was not as nice as I thought it would be.

+1


And the new AD was rude, dismissive, unwelcoming, and seemed to think she was interviewing for Exeter or Andover, going on and on and ON about the acadamic stanards at Langley. Give me a $&*% break.

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell lower school was not impressive for the amount that they charge. I felt like GDS was a close second. The facilities appeared dated and not as well kept as others. St. Andrew's, W.I.S., and W.E.S. were positively surprising.