MCPS High School Magnet Decisions

[Anonymous]

amaheshw wrote:Anytime have thoughts on RMIB vs Kennedy IB? I understand that the curriculum is standardized, but RM is larger and better known than Kennedy. Any objective advice on how to choose one over the other?

RMIB has the stronger cohort and curriculum. The curricula are not exactly the same, though of course they meet IB standards. If your objective is top rigor, RMIB, though know it will be intense. If you're just looking for an IB diploma, and an experience that is a little less intense, Kennedy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone know how Einstein’s VAC waitlist works? Also, does anyone know the likelihood of getting chosen from the VAC waitlist? I’ve read that for some programs there doesn’t seem to be much movement. Lastly, (we are seriously anxious over HS choices), if we accept another criteria based program by their February deadline, are we removed from VAC’s waitlist? My kid really wants VAC. Our fingers and toes will be crossed until this is all over.

Four years ago kid didn't get off waitlist. I'm not sorry about it. Did IB and that provided HL Art.

The initial letter did say we could apply again in tenth grade, not sure if that's standard or not. We didn't.

[Anonymous]

Does admissions look at home school cohort?

A student from a weak homeschool needs magent a lot more than a student that has lots of APs and classmates to fill them.

If I were doing admissions, I'd select kids who don't already have a strong home school opportunity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here: the reason I am confused is that her reading scores were so-so at best, and her math scores, while not crazy outliers, were top 1-2%. So I am surprised that if she didn’t qualify for Blair with great math scores, she qualified for IB.

SMACS is more desired (competitive / selective) than IB, by supply and demand. Many students at highly resourced schools and families, where most of the qualified students are, prefer non-IB to IB for the flexibility in the AP course selection, and for the college credit friendliness. And there are several local IB / partial-IB programs to absorb students.

But SMACS has a lot of courses and labs and clubs you can't get anywhere else, even at the other academically desirable W schools.

DP. I don't know about that. RM is highly desired and competitive, and many resourced families w/ highly qualified students want a program that emphasizes humanities and stem. Our kid did end up at Blair mostly for transportation, but also because of the math track, so we did find some of the restraints of IB hard. It's like it attracted my kid as a well rounded kid but was hard to do all the things she wanted to do. It's still an amazing and highly sought after program. Perhaps with more talk about Kennedy and Einstein IB, the demand isn't quite as high as it was when me kid applied....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does admissions look at home school cohort?

A student from a weak homeschool needs magent a lot more than a student that has lots of APs and classmates to fill them.

If I were doing admissions, I'd select kids who don't already have a strong home school opportunity.

Admissions looks at both, basically top-performing kids across the board, with the understanding top-performing at a lower-resourced school won't look exactly the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here: the reason I am confused is that her reading scores were so-so at best, and her math scores, while not crazy outliers, were top 1-2%. So I am surprised that if she didn’t qualify for Blair with great math scores, she qualified for IB.

Unfortunately for her, you really need solid 99th percentile scores for Blair. At least above 270 to maybe get in and above 285 to likely get in.

You can check past threads, but I seem to recall that 273 was median for Blair Magnet admits or attendees. They just don't care about the ridiculously high MAP scores.

Blair Magnet has very few spots. Far more students are qualified than admitted. Admissions is very "holistic" (arbitrary), not anything the applicant can measure or control.

Nope median was about 283.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD always had MAP-M above 97th percentile, recently 98-99 (260+ score), and her MAP-R was at best 94th percentile (last score was 245). Applied to Blair and to RM and Kennedy IB. Got into both IBs but not into Blair. She is happy, I am utterly confused (not disappointed / complaining, just kind of “this doesn’t make sense” confused).

260s is really low for Map-m for Blair. Most kids are higher than 280 and plenty of kids with that score being rejected. Congrats on your child getting in to RM and Kennedy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone know how Einstein’s VAC waitlist works? Also, does anyone know the likelihood of getting chosen from the VAC waitlist? I’ve read that for some programs there doesn’t seem to be much movement. Lastly, (we are seriously anxious over HS choices), if we accept another criteria based program by their February deadline, are we removed from VAC’s waitlist? My kid really wants VAC. Our fingers and toes will be crossed until this is all over.

Four years ago kid didn't get off waitlist. I'm not sorry about it. Did IB and that provided HL Art.

The initial letter did say we could apply again in tenth grade, not sure if that's standard or not. We didn't.

In the past, you could enter the VAC in any grade and kids from other schools could come to Einstein just for art. My current VAC student was told that, beginning with class of ‘28, they will only be taking 4-year, full-time students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does admissions look at home school cohort?

A student from a weak homeschool needs magent a lot more than a student that has lots of APs and classmates to fill them.

If I were doing admissions, I'd select kids who don't already have a strong home school opportunity.

Admissions looks at both, basically top-performing kids across the board, with the understanding top-performing at a lower-resourced school won't look exactly the same.

Here we go again, effort to turn the high school magnets also into lottery and keep out Asians, wonder why MCPS hasn't done that yet!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD always had MAP-M above 97th percentile, recently 98-99 (260+ score), and her MAP-R was at best 94th percentile (last score was 245). Applied to Blair and to RM and Kennedy IB. Got into both IBs but not into Blair. She is happy, I am utterly confused (not disappointed / complaining, just kind of “this doesn’t make sense” confused).

My guess is that more people with high MAP-M applied this year to Blair, than high MAP-R applied to RM. Also it may be (and it looks like) that your DC's scores in both cases are quite close to decision range.

You may be right! Another option that came to my mind was that essay matters more than we think.

Makes it even weirder for me that she was not even waitlisted or “wait pooled” for Blair, just straight “not selected”… as I said, she didn’t even want to go all that much, but as someone previously involved in selection / admissions, the logic escapes me. Especially since Blair likely skews boys (so she should have an advantage) and RMIB skews even or girls (so she should be at a disadvantage).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD always had MAP-M above 97th percentile, recently 98-99 (260+ score), and her MAP-R was at best 94th percentile (last score was 245). Applied to Blair and to RM and Kennedy IB. Got into both IBs but not into Blair. She is happy, I am utterly confused (not disappointed / complaining, just kind of “this doesn’t make sense” confused).

My guess is that more people with high MAP-M applied this year to Blair, than high MAP-R applied to RM. Also it may be (and it looks like) that your DC's scores in both cases are quite close to decision range.

You may be right! Another option that came to my mind was that essay matters more than we think.

Makes it even weirder for me that she was not even waitlisted or “wait pooled” for Blair, just straight “not selected”… as I said, she didn’t even want to go all that much, but as someone previously involved in selection / admissions, the logic escapes me. Especially since Blair likely skews boys (so she should have an advantage) and RMIB skews even or girls (so she should be at a disadvantage).

280+ for girls, 300+ for boys. 260 is way too low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD always had MAP-M above 97th percentile, recently 98-99 (260+ score), and her MAP-R was at best 94th percentile (last score was 245). Applied to Blair and to RM and Kennedy IB. Got into both IBs but not into Blair. She is happy, I am utterly confused (not disappointed / complaining, just kind of “this doesn’t make sense” confused).

My guess is that more people with high MAP-M applied this year to Blair, than high MAP-R applied to RM. Also it may be (and it looks like) that your DC's scores in both cases are quite close to decision range.

You may be right! Another option that came to my mind was that essay matters more than we think.

Makes it even weirder for me that she was not even waitlisted or “wait pooled” for Blair, just straight “not selected”… as I said, she didn’t even want to go all that much, but as someone previously involved in selection / admissions, the logic escapes me. Especially since Blair likely skews boys (so she should have an advantage) and RMIB skews even or girls (so she should be at a disadvantage).

280+ for girls, 300+ for boys. 260 is way too low.

Interesting; this contradicts the 283 or 273 median that was quoted by posters above, as well as some scores from past admission threads.

That said, even if we accept the lower 273 median for Blair, I am curious how she got into RMIB not sure what the acceptance rate for Blair is, but for RMIB it’s ~12-13% and I have to believe that there were people with higher scores in the mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD always had MAP-M above 97th percentile, recently 98-99 (260+ score), and her MAP-R was at best 94th percentile (last score was 245). Applied to Blair and to RM and Kennedy IB. Got into both IBs but not into Blair. She is happy, I am utterly confused (not disappointed / complaining, just kind of “this doesn’t make sense” confused).

My guess is that more people with high MAP-M applied this year to Blair, than high MAP-R applied to RM. Also it may be (and it looks like) that your DC's scores in both cases are quite close to decision range.

You may be right! Another option that came to my mind was that essay matters more than we think.

Makes it even weirder for me that she was not even waitlisted or “wait pooled” for Blair, just straight “not selected”… as I said, she didn’t even want to go all that much, but as someone previously involved in selection / admissions, the logic escapes me. Especially since Blair likely skews boys (so she should have an advantage) and RMIB skews even or girls (so she should be at a disadvantage).

280+ for girls, 300+ for boys. 260 is way too low.

Wow, this is quite crazy. Do you know how many spots in Blair are not filled from TPMS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You may be right! Another option that came to my mind was that essay matters more than we think.

Makes it even weirder for me that she was not even waitlisted or “wait pooled” for Blair, just straight “not selected”… as I said, she didn’t even want to go all that much, but as someone previously involved in selection / admissions, the logic escapes me. Especially since Blair likely skews boys (so she should have an advantage) and RMIB skews even or girls (so she should be at a disadvantage).

If your child doesn’t wanna go to Blair and she was not selected, then you need to let it go and just chill. No need to overanalyze it. Also, your confusion had been addressed in previous posts; i.e. your child’s MAP scores are not Blair magnet material.

[Anonymous]

My daughter who was just invited to Blair SMCS had a map-m of 271. Coming from a “regular” middle school that didn’t offer math team, science fair, robotics club, or any math/science opportunities beyond the standard accelerated math track (geometry in 8th). I think essay mattered; I know she talked about the type of projects she has enjoyed, some stuff she’s explored on her own, and what she was hoping for in a high school experience. Also got into regional IB (map-r 256), and didn’t apply to rmib.