Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What is equal to McDonogh in the DMV?
A recent thread here put it in the "Big 3" equivalent of Baltimore. It is co-ed so that distinguishes it in the area from Gilman and Bryn Mawr.
I’d say Park over Mcdonogh, based on academic rigor. Mcdonogh has more of a spread of kids in academic ability than the others.
If your kid is not Jewish you will always be an outsider at Park.
That was the stereotype 25 years ago. Not so these days. There are Jewish families who will not look at Park because it's too progressive.
Baltimore doesn't have a Big three. During the private school boom years of the 1990s-2008, the schools recognized as having the most rigorous academics backed up by their college placements were Gilman, Bryn Mawr, McDonogh, Park, and Friends. SAT scores were comparable across all these five schools. Since then Friends has slipped down to solidly second tier and Park is a bit of a hit or miss. But I don't consider any of these schools as uniquely capable, they just had the more academically performing students.
A PP is right in that McDonogh was popular among aspirational black professional families in the 1990s and 2000s. McDonogh's location in Owings Mills was more convenient for the black professional classes, who tended to live around there. And it was always bigger than the other schools, which translated into more black kids, which in turn made it more attractive to black families.
McDonough is popular these days, more so than it was 25 years ago. It's probably due to a combination of factors. It's closer to Howard County, which is where much of the new money is. It's coed, but not left-progressive like Park and doesn't have the "what the heck is Quakerism" issue that Friends suffers from, plus Friends is also further left on the ideological spectrum these days. Conservative/centrist families do flock to McDonough along with St. Pauls. It ticks most of the boxes. I can easily see why the school draws a lot of interest, more than any of the other schools do. Downsides are, as PP have pointed out, students are spread over a huge region. There's a divide between McDonough and the rest of the privates as families tend to send all their kids to McDonogh instead of splitting them up at multiple privates.
Good school. But it's also not the only good school in the area.