Agree. Again people, it is all about peer group. If you take the IB program out of RM, the peer groups are better at the W schools.

Exactly. These kids are smart before they got into RMIB - definitely smarter than kids who applied and did not get into RMIB and went to W schools.

RMIB does not make these kids bright - just like W schools do not make W students bright. Who are we kidding?

Except there are a bunch of smart kids that don't want to be bussed to another school so don't apply.

But I agree neither RMIB nor Whitman make kids smart.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can see PP's point. Although I made negative points above about RM, I do believe it is a good school, I just don't think RM (sans IB) is in the same league as the schools in Bethesda/Potomac. At the end of the day it is about fit.

The point is that there are a number of kids from W schools who are attending RMIB magnet. Why are they there? The admissions process to the RMIB program is not based on where your granddad went to college or your zip code - its entirely based on the student's performance. RMIB magnet is a academically a very rigorous and hard program, and there is tremendous prestige if your kid gets into it. You don't have to be a good academically to be in W schools. You just need to live at the right address. That is the main difference. Kids get into RMIB based on their merit, through a very competitive process. And these same kids can get into Ivies as well if the Ivies gave them full scholarships. However - the reality for most RMIB magnet students is that their parents make too much money for them to qualify for scholarships and too little money for these students to not look for value for money to ignore state schools.


Would RM be a great HS without the RMIB program? Maybe not as good as it is with the program, but it would be comparable to other HSs in MCPS. Would W schools be as great if parents were not able to afford the expensive colleges and SAT prep courses and designer college admission coaches?

W schools means diddly squat if your kid is a dud academically. Being in a W school does not mean that extra brain cells and neural connections will be generated in your kid. RMIB magnet kids are proven in the brains department at least.

Yes. RMIB kids have proven they are smart, but They were smart before they got to RMIB, not because of RMIB.

They were mostly born that way and many have parents that pushed them to do lots of test prep. If that is what the kids wants then great, but the IB kids would probably do just as well in their home school. Not having them in their home school makes the test shores for their home school look worse than they actually are, which has done wonders for Rockville real estate.

I am not against the IB program, I actually think their should be more specialized programs for everybody, but to believe the IB program made those kids this way is not true.

Maybe in your social group there is "prestige" in being in RMIB but many people think many of these kids are being pushed too hard and could be just as successful with a little more normal life, the kids often burn out and feel like failures even though they are the cream of the crop. And like everything, there are positives and negatives. It is best to understand your personal schools negatives so you can alleviate them as much as possible.

Being is a W school just means you are rich, one of your kids will probably get the brains of the person that made you rich and you can pay for tutors and test prep.

I get it.

BTW... There is a down side to Ivy's too, but that is another thread.

Exactly. These kids are smart before they got into RMIB - definitely smarter than kids who applied and did not get into RMIB and went to W schools.

RMIB does not make these kids bright - just like W schools do not make W students bright. Who are we kidding?

Anonymous wrote:Or you could say you have a peer group that has a greater desire to achieve, has to work harder, has to work outside the home and ends up with a better work ethic... Vs kids who had to pay $2500 to go to Costa Rica to see poverty and get back and spend their days at the pool at the club and playing golf.

You just have to choose which is a "peer" group you would want our kids to be around.

Neither peer group has a "free ticket" to being a good person.

Yes, this is why I would not want my kids at Whitman or Churchill. Not that it's an option for us anyway, so feel free to accuse me of sour grapes.

Or you could say you have a peer group that has a greater desire to achieve, has to work harder, has to work outside the home and ends up with a better work ethic... Vs kids who had to pay $2500 to go to Costa Rica to see poverty and get back and spend their days at the pool at the club and playing golf.

You just have to choose which is a "peer" group you would want our kids to be around.

Neither peer group has a "free ticket" to being a good person.

I think I said this before but the school culture matters. Whitman, Churchill, Wootton, and B-CC have a culture of academic achievement that exists among a large portion of its student body. WJ has it as well but to a lesser extent. Now we can argue why that is but it is true. Poolesville and RM have it because of the magnet programs. Blair's magnet students have it to the 10th degree. My point throughout the thread has been that if you take the IB program out, RM becomes a better-than-average school. It is probably better than 20 of the schools in MoCo but is not better than the schools above. Think about it, if a kid grows up in a household where one of the parents is a scientist at NIH and the other parent is an attorney, that kid, who probably attends WJ, is likely to have a different perspective than a kid whose parents are immigrants working two jobs and whose focus is not that their kid attends the same elite undergraduate and graduate schools as will be the focus of the WJ kid's parents. Maybe at WJ or Wootton you have a few of the kids whose parents never attended college but at RM you have a larger percentage of the student body that fits that profile.

I am not saying that the kid who fits that profile will not be academically successful, I am saying that the kid will find a better peer group that will drive academic achievement at Whitman than at RM (w/o the IB).

Ideally, I think it is important to have a diverse economic environment where all classes are represented.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can see PP's point. Although I made negative points above about RM, I do believe it is a good school, I just don't think RM (sans IB) is in the same league as the schools in Bethesda/Potomac. At the end of the day it is about fit.

The point is that there are a number of kids from W schools who are attending RMIB magnet. Why are they there? The admissions process to the RMIB program is not based on where your granddad went to college or your zip code - its entirely based on the student's performance. RMIB magnet is a academically a very rigorous and hard program, and there is tremendous prestige if your kid gets into it. You don't have to be a good academically to be in W schools. You just need to live at the right address. That is the main difference. Kids get into RMIB based on their merit, through a very competitive process. And these same kids can get into Ivies as well if the Ivies gave them full scholarships. However - the reality for most RMIB magnet students is that their parents make too much money for them to qualify for scholarships and too little money for these students to not look for value for money to ignore state schools.


Would RM be a great HS without the RMIB program? Maybe not as good as it is with the program, but it would be comparable to other HSs in MCPS. Would W schools be as great if parents were not able to afford the expensive colleges and SAT prep courses and designer college admission coaches?

W schools means diddly squat if your kid is a dud academically. Being in a W school does not mean that extra brain cells and neural connections will be generated in your kid. RMIB magnet kids are proven in the brains department at least.

Yes. RMIB kids have proven they are smart, but They were smart before they got to RMIB, not because of RMIB.

They were mostly born that way and many have parents that pushed them to do lots of test prep. If that is what the kids wants then great, but the IB kids would probably do just as well in their home school. Not having them in their home school makes the test shores for their home school look worse than they actually are, which has done wonders for Rockville real estate.

I am not against the IB program, I actually think their should be more specialized programs for everybody, but to believe the IB program made those kids this way is not true.

Maybe in your social group there is "prestige" in being in RMIB but many people think many of these kids are being pushed too hard and could be just as successful with a little more normal life, the kids often burn out and feel like failures even though they are the cream of the crop. And like everything, there are positives and negatives. It is best to understand your personal schools negatives so you can alleviate them as much as possible.

Being is a W school just means you are rich, one of your kids will probably get the brains of the person that made you rich and you can pay for tutors and test prep.

I get it.

BTW... There is a down side to Ivy's too, but that is another thread.

Anonymous wrote:OP, we moved from RM cluster, wish we had done it sooner.

Could you please elaborate a little?

Anonymous wrote:I can see PP's point. Although I made negative points above about RM, I do believe it is a good school, I just don't think RM (sans IB) is in the same league as the schools in Bethesda/Potomac. At the end of the day it is about fit.

The point is that there are a number of kids from W schools who are attending RMIB magnet. Why are they there? The admissions process to the RMIB program is not based on where your granddad went to college or your zip code - its entirely based on the student's performance. RMIB magnet is a academically a very rigorous and hard program, and there is tremendous prestige if your kid gets into it. You don't have to be a good academically to be in W schools. You just need to live at the right address. That is the main difference. Kids get into RMIB based on their merit, through a very competitive process. And these same kids can get into Ivies as well if the Ivies gave them full scholarships. However - the reality for most RMIB magnet students is that their parents make too much money for them to qualify for scholarships and too little money for these students to not look for value for money to ignore state schools.


Would RM be a great HS without the RMIB program? Maybe not as good as it is with the program, but it would be comparable to other HSs in MCPS. Would W schools be as great if parents were not able to afford the expensive colleges and SAT prep courses and designer college admission coaches?

W schools means diddly squat if your kid is a dud academically. Being in a W school does not mean that extra brain cells and neural connections will be generated in your kid. RMIB magnet kids are proven in the brains department at least.

Anonymous wrote:I can see PP's point. Although I made negative points above about RM, I do believe it is a good school, I just don't think RM (sans IB) is in the same league as the schools in Bethesda/Potomac. At the end of the day it is about fit.

But do you think the "kids are not in the same league" or the school? You take kid A... You think the result is going to be that much different?

Take Whitman sans the top kids ... Is it still in the same "league"l?

I can see PP's point. Although I made negative points above about RM, I do believe it is a good school, I just don't think RM (sans IB) is in the same league as the schools in Bethesda/Potomac. At the end of the day it is about fit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, if you ask most people whether they would pick Bethesda/Whitman or Potomac/Wootton over Rockville/RM, they would.

Duh. As noted earlier, the Ws are bubbles that don't zone in poor folks, whereas RM draws in a more diverse crowd. That doesn't change the fact that parts of RM are very upper class, and about as far as you can get from "hood".

If you take schools out of the equation, I'd much rather live in parts of RM than anywhere in Wootton for example . But alas, schools are part of the equation.

I would choose RM over Whitman ANY DAY! I wold choose RM over Wootton also. I prefer WJ to all of them.

I am curious about why you would prefer WJ over Whitman. thanks

It's more balanced. It is really hard to describe in a post on a website. If you have never lived there it is hard to describe. If you live there and love it then you love that lifestyle and should stay. But we are from a family that does lots of service work and we live below ort means and to live in the complete oposite world was hard for us. We got out and never looked back.

No school is without issues so WJ is not perfect either. (Nor is RM) but it comes down to family, values, personal preference and what you can afford. It does not come down to test scores and college placement. My kids will get into schools based on their grandfather not their test scores and people that don't know that or admit it are fooling themselves. Of course their college placement will be used to advertise for their school and club sports team.

Visit RM, go to the local stores, hang out at Rockville library, then at twinbrook library, check out the neighborhood, go to the community center, talk to the community police, talk to people that live there. But for goodness sakes don't judge it on rankings that have been manipulated 100 different ways.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, if you ask most people whether they would pick Bethesda/Whitman or Potomac/Wootton over Rockville/RM, they would.

Duh. As noted earlier, the Ws are bubbles that don't zone in poor folks, whereas RM draws in a more diverse crowd. That doesn't change the fact that parts of RM are very upper class, and about as far as you can get from "hood".

If you take schools out of the equation, I'd much rather live in parts of RM than anywhere in Wootton for example . But alas, schools are part of the equation.

I would choose RM over Whitman ANY DAY! I wold choose RM over Wootton also. I prefer WJ to all of them.

And we did choose RM over Wooton. As with any big decision, our house purchase had to balance many factors: school quality, commute, neighborhood, the house itself. We ended up choosing a house in the RM district rather than those in the Wootton or WJ districts that we considered seriously. We've never regretted the choice we made. Not that I think that it would be the best choice for everyone out there, but it worked for us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, if you ask most people whether they would pick Bethesda/Whitman or Potomac/Wootton over Rockville/RM, they would.

Duh. As noted earlier, the Ws are bubbles that don't zone in poor folks, whereas RM draws in a more diverse crowd. That doesn't change the fact that parts of RM are very upper class, and about as far as you can get from "hood".

If you take schools out of the equation, I'd much rather live in parts of RM than anywhere in Wootton for example . But alas, schools are part of the equation.

I would choose RM over Whitman ANY DAY! I wold choose RM over Wootton also. I prefer WJ to all of them.

I am curious about why you would prefer WJ over Whitman. thanks

Teaching at these ultra competitive schools is not exactly a dream job for everyone. The parents and kids can be very entitled..and the schools with more struggling kids have smaller classes and more support.