Why w school students not preferred in Blair magnet

[Anonymous]

The second post on this thread honestly should have kind of shut it down.

I'm going to post, because that person (who was not me), did a great job:

"You make a lot of assumptions. There are 100 slots at Blair open to students from 16 high school clusters. 2-3 from any one middle school is actually fairly high, especially if you are excluding students who attended an MS magnet (I believe for the purposes of HS applications students are grouped by their home MS if they are grouped at all). The pre-requisite for admission is completion of Algebra I and that is the knowledge which is tested. Guess you wouldn't believe it, but even in Silver Spring there are at least a couple very good candidates at each MS and more qualified applicants than slots available."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"In 11th grade, students write a research proposal and have to find a mentor outside of the school (at a govt. lab or university lab) to work with. They spend two months during the summer before 12th grade doing the research with their mentor (very often as part of the mentor's larger research group) and write a paper and presentation during the first semester of 12th grade. Many of these papers and presentations are entered into competitions. They do receive a lot of support from the senior scientist in this effort and are supervised by a Blair science teacher but I don't think it is accurate to describe it as tutoring."

Bullshit. They wash dishes at the lab and then write up what the lab was doing. You don't do groundbreaking research in 2 months!!!

When will we stop deluding ourselves?

As a federal government scientist with many years of working experience with intern students, I found juniors and seniors from Blair, Poolsville, RMIB and TJ are often much better and much more "useful" than a general UMD senior student, at least in our STEM field. These high schoolers are incredible at learning and grasping new ideas and techniques and had been exposed to many programing experiences, so they can achieve much more than a college or even sometimes graduate school intern. They are never wasted by us at washing dishes or tubes for 2 months. We often fight to secure a high school senior from these programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sure is silly but, yes, when many people talk about W schools that includes Winston Churchill.

Churchill
Whitman
Wooton
WJ

It's not silly, all 4 W schools have a W in the first name or the last lame:

Walt Whitman
Winston Churchill
Thomas Wootton
Walter Johnson

So do Wheaton and Watkins Mill.

W really stands for Western, white majority, and wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC will be in 9th grade in a W high school. Did not make it to Blair SMAC magnet. Talking to others I get a feeling that very few (2 or 3) students from MS made it to Blair though MS is one of the very good schools, with so many bright kids. Why is it that the screening committee would prefer to select a student from non w school area over the one from w school with former having equal or lesser scores? Why is this assumption made that a student from silver spring would benefit more from Blair magnet than the one who would go to Churchill or Walter Johnson or Wooten.

Stop, just stop.

There is zero bias towards W school students.

Mine got in and didn't go. W school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC will be in 9th grade in a W high school. Did not make it to Blair SMAC magnet. Talking to others I get a feeling that very few (2 or 3) students from MS made it to Blair though MS is one of the very good schools, with so many bright kids. Why is it that the screening committee would prefer to select a student from non w school area over the one from w school with former having equal or lesser scores? Why is this assumption made that a student from silver spring would benefit more from Blair magnet than the one who would go to Churchill or Walter Johnson or Wooten.

OP, you are basically saying this:

1. My child, in one of the middle schools in Bethesda or Potomac, was not accepted to the Blair SMAC magnet.
2. Only a few children in that middle school were accepted.
3. There are a lot of smart children in that middle school.
4. Therefore the Blair magnet admissions are biased against children from middle schools in Bethesda or Potomac.

+1

Plus, many or most Whitman parents think Whitman is so good that it doesn't make sense to send their kid to Blair.

+2 Here's the thing folks may not know about Silver Spring, Kensington, Takoma Park, and other places on the eastern side of the county - there are A TON of college professors, NIH and other government scientists, public and private school teachers, etc. We care about our children's education as much as you do. We help our kids achieve their potential as much as you do.

Your kids are not smarter or more motivated by virtue of attending a "W" school. You just need to accept that your child, like many other kids, was beaten fair and square. There's no conspiracy. Very few kids make the cut, and yours didn't. Be glad you have a good program to fall back on.

Way more hoodrats and landscapers than NIH GS13s. While there are a bunch, it doesn’t even have the highest concentration which is up 355. People act like if a couple of low paid lawyers live in a mixed part of town they claim that defines the area. There is 10 low income residents in silver spring TP for every professional. That doesn’t make it a white collar part of town

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All blair SMAC students attend tutoring. They receiving tutoring for math competition, science bowl, research at near by colleges or NIST, cimputer or IT related competitions. I wish my kid was as smart, driven, hardworking as those kids.

My Blair kids never had any tutoring

[Anonymous]

Way more hoodrats and landscapers than NIH GS13s. While there are a bunch, it doesn’t even have the highest concentration which is up 355. People act like if a couple of low paid lawyers live in a mixed part of town they claim that defines the area. There is 10 low income residents in silver spring TP for every professional. That doesn’t make it a white collar part of town

You're focused on the wrong question. The question isn't "Are the kids of NIH GS15s the majority in Takoma Park?"

No one would argue that is the case.

What PP was pointing to, though, was a totally different question. "Are the top 2% of kids in Takoma Park likely to be just as competitive for Blair magnet as the top 2% of kids from Whitman or whatever?"

OP made a pretty specific claim - that kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring must be benefiting from some sort of affirmative action if admitted to the competitive test-based magnet programs. The obvious retort to that is that there exist plenty of kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring who are just as smart, and well-supported, and driven, as kids in other parts of the county, and as a result those kids don't need affirmative action to be admitted.

Also, check your English grammar before throwing around words like hoodrats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Way more hoodrats and landscapers than NIH GS13s. While there are a bunch, it doesn’t even have the highest concentration which is up 355. People act like if a couple of low paid lawyers live in a mixed part of town they claim that defines the area. There is 10 low income residents in silver spring TP for every professional. That doesn’t make it a white collar part of town

You're focused on the wrong question. The question isn't "Are the kids of NIH GS15s the majority in Takoma Park?"

No one would argue that is the case.

What PP was pointing to, though, was a totally different question. "Are the top 2% of kids in Takoma Park likely to be just as competitive for Blair magnet as the top 2% of kids from Whitman or whatever?"

OP made a pretty specific claim - that kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring must be benefiting from some sort of affirmative action if admitted to the competitive test-based magnet programs. The obvious retort to that is that there exist plenty of kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring who are just as smart, and well-supported, and driven, as kids in other parts of the county, and as a result those kids don't need affirmative action to be admitted.

Also, check your English grammar before throwing around words like hoodrats.

Kids in Takoma Park have the only magnetvstyle elementary school and the 25 reserved spots at TPMS magnet, so theres that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Way more hoodrats and landscapers than NIH GS13s. While there are a bunch, it doesn’t even have the highest concentration which is up 355. People act like if a couple of low paid lawyers live in a mixed part of town they claim that defines the area. There is 10 low income residents in silver spring TP for every professional. That doesn’t make it a white collar part of town

You're focused on the wrong question. The question isn't "Are the kids of NIH GS15s the majority in Takoma Park?"

No one would argue that is the case.

What PP was pointing to, though, was a totally different question. "Are the top 2% of kids in Takoma Park likely to be just as competitive for Blair magnet as the top 2% of kids from Whitman or whatever?"

OP made a pretty specific claim - that kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring must be benefiting from some sort of affirmative action if admitted to the competitive test-based magnet programs. The obvious retort to that is that there exist plenty of kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring who are just as smart, and well-supported, and driven, as kids in other parts of the county, and as a result those kids don't need affirmative action to be admitted.

Also, check your English grammar before throwing around words like hoodrats.

Kids in Takoma Park have the only magnetvstyle elementary school and the 25 reserved spots at TPMS magnet, so theres that.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Way more hoodrats and landscapers than NIH GS13s. While there are a bunch, it doesn’t even have the highest concentration which is up 355. People act like if a couple of low paid lawyers live in a mixed part of town they claim that defines the area. There is 10 low income residents in silver spring TP for every professional. That doesn’t make it a white collar part of town

You're focused on the wrong question. The question isn't "Are the kids of NIH GS15s the majority in Takoma Park?"

No one would argue that is the case.

What PP was pointing to, though, was a totally different question. "Are the top 2% of kids in Takoma Park likely to be just as competitive for Blair magnet as the top 2% of kids from Whitman or whatever?"

OP made a pretty specific claim - that kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring must be benefiting from some sort of affirmative action if admitted to the competitive test-based magnet programs. The obvious retort to that is that there exist plenty of kids in Takoma Park and Silver Spring who are just as smart, and well-supported, and driven, as kids in other parts of the county, and as a result those kids don't need affirmative action to be admitted.

Also, check your English grammar before throwing around words like hoodrats.

Kids in Takoma Park have the only magnetvstyle elementary school and the 25 reserved spots at TPMS magnet, so theres that.

This.

And supportive parents who value diversity and more often than not work at a nearby research university like UMD, Hopkins, Georgetown, etc