
does any know how many yearly incoming students spots there are at the blair magnet for hs and takoma park for ms - we are trying to decide on a transfer to rockville and may be looking at the mcps magnets - our ds in the elementary school gt stream in fcps and know that tj has about 450 incoming freshmen each year - but I would like to know how many spots there are in the mcps equivalent options - e.g. blair or rm for hs or takoma park for ms - thanks |
I believe there about 100 slots at the TPMS magnet. About 600-700 kids apply each year. Entrance is by a test conducted in December, plus teacher recommendations, transcripts and an application package with essays. |
It looks like the yearly class size at montgomery blair is also 100 - do students who are not at tpms magnet have any chance at getting admitted to the blair magnet? how many tpms students move on to blair and how many are blair admits are from other schools? |
Both the Blair magnet and the RM IB magnet have about 100-115 kids coming in each year. Most of the kids come from the middle school magnets, but not all.
The figure I got from MCPS is that around 900 or so kids apply for each of these programs. |
Since Poolesville has opened and now has expanded the # seats for a math/science magnet, word is that more students are struggling with thet math at Blair. Does anyone have data they can share on that and the pereceived cause? |
How would one affect the other? Or are you thinking that more of the highly able in math go to Poolesville? |
Just guessing that the magnet was designed for the most highly able, and now that the # of seats have doubled there will be more kids who struggle with magnet math. The magnet's standards do not seem to have changed, and kids who are not successful in magnet math can take AP Calculus to remain in the magnet. |
I thought poolesville only had 50 spots for the math/science stream - that's only 50% more than blair - so not really doubling blair. Are you saying only 100 kids in the county could handle hard magnet math? that seems too low - maybe because it's more due to lack of preparation in elementary school compared to previous years |
Every year the TPMS and Blair magnets turn away dozens of highly qualified kids, because there's just not enough room. The wait list for TPMS is another 50-100 kids (I think it's more like 100), which means that the school found 100 kids it thought could succeed but who didn't get admitted. So assuming these kids are still interested in math for HS, I would think the pool of applicants is pretty deep in terms of talent.
On the question of how many applicants per slot, I think it may vary from year to year. Two years ago, I believe about 600-700 applied to the Blair magnet and about 800 applied to the RM magnet. The 900-per-school figure could be for last year, though. It wouldn't surprise me at all if families are applying to the magnets in increasing numbers each year. |