Richard Montgomery's non-IB program - high performing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you care about college outcomes at all, I would say the non-IB kids generally do not get into a top 20 college. There is a good bit of cross-IB/non-IB friendships that develop, mostly through sports or certain extracurricular (drama, for example), but otherwise a lot of the IB cohort stick together outside of school.

Most kids, of any sort, anywhere, do not get into a "top 20" college. Or even apply.

If you want your child to get into a "top 20" college, your chances are better at a high-poverty school with less competition.

+1 how many W kids get into the elite univ? Not *that* many. Also, just because some kids in W schools do get into top colleges, it doesn't mean OP's kids will just by osmosis. Doesn't work that way.

There are lots of smart kids at RM who are not in the magnet program. As stated, many don't join due to other commitments. Those kids also get into great colleges.

RM non IB doesn't have the pressure cooker environment that some of the W schools have, but at the same time there are a lot of kids who do well academically.

There are several students who go the dual enrollment route with MoCo CC, which is very close to RM.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you. I appreciate this perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Could the JWMS parent speak to a bit about the non-IB at RM? Is it a "thing" that IB kids are taking the AP tests anyway, perhaps for the sake of attracting colleges? Or not, and they stick to the IB tests, bc they are enough anyway. I believe IB scores come in too late after college decisions, so I am under the understanding that IB students in general (not just at RM) take APs anyway.

IB kids take AP exams and IB exams. My youngest took 16 AP exams and 6 IB, older one took 14-15 APs and 6 IBs.

PP, I am GENUINELY curious - and since this forum is anonymous, I sincerely hope you would not mind answering - how did your kids take this many AP exams? Did they start AP exams only after they started high school or did they do any earlier? What was the distribution (I mean, how many each year)? And, I am sure quite a few of these were self study, right?

My DCs (and their friend circle) will not be doing more than 9-10. I am just wondering how common it is to take 15-16 APs, and that too in addition to 6 IBs in this case. In retrospect, how helpful was it - were they able to get college credits for all the AP exams?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Could the JWMS parent speak to a bit about the non-IB at RM? Is it a "thing" that IB kids are taking the AP tests anyway, perhaps for the sake of attracting colleges? Or not, and they stick to the IB tests, bc they are enough anyway. I believe IB scores come in too late after college decisions, so I am under the understanding that IB students in general (not just at RM) take APs anyway.

IB kids take AP exams and IB exams. My youngest took 16 AP exams and 6 IB, older one took 14-15 APs and 6 IBs.

PP, I am GENUINELY curious - and since this forum is anonymous, I sincerely hope you would not mind answering - how did your kids take this many AP exams? Did they start AP exams only after they started high school or did they do any earlier? What was the distribution (I mean, how many each year)? And, I am sure quite a few of these were self study, right?

My DCs (and their friend circle) will not be doing more than 9-10. I am just wondering how common it is to take 15-16 APs, and that too in addition to 6 IBs in this case. In retrospect, how helpful was it - were they able to get college credits for all the AP exams?

Thanks!

Not PP, but I also had an IB student with that many APs. They double up taking the equivalent AP for their IB tests. IB students take max 4 tests at the HL level, but some schools only award credit for IB HL tests, so the AP scores are more likely to be awarded credit. If they had gone to UMD, they would have had 64 credits just from APs.

Took class
11 - AP English Language
12 - AP English Literature (and IB HL in 12th)
9 - AP Government - US
10 - AP US History
11 - AP European History (and IB SL)
10 - AP Calculus BC (w/AB subscore) (did IB HL in 12th)
10 - AP Statistics
10 - AP Physics C - Mech
11 - AP Chemistry (did IB HL in 12th)
11 - AP Environmental Science (and IB SL)
12 - AP Spanish Language (IB SL)

Self-Studied - but a lot of this content is overlap with strong background knowledge from other topics, so studying was really just reviewing the test prep books.
10 - AP Human Geography
11 - AP Psychology
12 - AP Macroeconomics
12 - AP Microeconomics

Was in Global Politics but chose not to test. Took FOCS in summer for tech credit and not AP Computer Science which is a common one.

[Anonymous]

Speaking as an RM IB graduate from 10ish years ago, the top 3 dozen kids in my year all had 10+ AP exams, a 3.9+ unweighted GPA, an SAT superscore of 2350+, and multiple SAT II scores of 750+ in addition to completing the IB diploma (less relevant b/c IB scores were released after college admissions). Every year there's at least one kid with 20+ total APs and apparently one year somebody did that many in just one test cycle all self-studied. Most kids also did crazy extracurriculars too like varsity athletics, student government, scientific research, theater, CS/robotics, volunteering, etc.

My year had 2+ kids each go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford plus another 2 dozen spread across other Ivies and top 25 schools. Some kids who were "disappointed" with admissions ended up taking the Banneker/Key full ride at UMD. My two cents on admissions: adcoms want to see that you've maximized the academic opportunities available to you relative to your school context and your socioeconomic status. It is unrealistic to expect to get into Harvard from RM without being in IB and to my knowledge zero Ivy admits from the last decade have come from outside IB. And yes, less rigorous schools with less affluent parents do have less steep competition but the Common App asks for parental educational attainment and employment which outs you anyways.

One final unsolicited reflection on college. In terms of academic difficulty, STEM majors who went to Ivies and UMD both agreed that IB was a piece of cake compared to college. It turns out that even the nation's best public schools aren't adequate at preparing kids for proof-based math, physics, and orgo. Meanwhile, the humanities majors who went to top 25 schools had a great time. Looking at my peers 10+ years out from graduation, a huge chunk went into tech. Ironically, many of the Ivy and UMD grads all ended up as software engineers and product managers at places like Google. Going to a top school did actually matter for those who wanted to go into consulting or finance. It's much harder to end up at McKinsey or Bain Capital without going to a target school. One guy I remember, he went to Wharton, worked at Goldman Sachs and TPG for 5 years, and now runs his own hedge fund with 8-9 figure AUM. Immigrant parents, no connections, huge difference in socioeconomic mobility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hello, I was wondering about Richard Montgomery's non-IB program, and the extent to which it is high performing. I wanted to get past demographic / wealth / income issues, and found these set of data: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/data/LAR-charts/SAT-Performance.html

RM's AP data for non-FARMS student is quite on par and for some of the data point beats the various "W" schools. I was wondering, to what extent the AP data reflects the rest of the RM student population. Or are the IB students ALSO taking the AP tests, and thus the AP performance data reflects more of that small subset of students. -- Thank you.

Yes, almost every MCPS HS has high-performing students. They even offer many of the same classes. In fact, the same kid would do about the same at any of these schools.

This is the usual MCPS b.s. talking point. No, Blair and RMHS IB are placed in ‘lower’ scoring schools to obsfuscate the regular student scores. MCPS is all about muddying the water so they can focus on social engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hello, I was wondering about Richard Montgomery's non-IB program, and the extent to which it is high performing. I wanted to get past demographic / wealth / income issues, and found these set of data: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/data/LAR-charts/SAT-Performance.html

RM's AP data for non-FARMS student is quite on par and for some of the data point beats the various "W" schools. I was wondering, to what extent the AP data reflects the rest of the RM student population. Or are the IB students ALSO taking the AP tests, and thus the AP performance data reflects more of that small subset of students. -- Thank you.

Yes, almost every MCPS HS has high-performing students. They even offer many of the same classes. In fact, the same kid would do about the same at any of these schools.

This is the usual MCPS b.s. talking point. No, Blair and RMHS IB are placed in ‘lower’ scoring schools to obsfuscate the regular student scores. MCPS is all about muddying the water so they can focus on social engineering.

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. According to MoCo real estate, RM is one of the more expensive MCPS clusters to purchase a home in, with the average homes prices being very similar to WJ (both in the $500k range overall and $800k+ for SFHs). Julius West MS has an even higher FARMS rate yet performs similarly to Tilden MS.

Maybe before the magnet RM was a lower performing school, but after the magnet put RM in the top 10 high schools in MD, that has attracted families to its attendance area over the years and things are very different there now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hello, I was wondering about Richard Montgomery's non-IB program, and the extent to which it is high performing. I wanted to get past demographic / wealth / income issues, and found these set of data: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/data/LAR-charts/SAT-Performance.html

RM's AP data for non-FARMS student is quite on par and for some of the data point beats the various "W" schools. I was wondering, to what extent the AP data reflects the rest of the RM student population. Or are the IB students ALSO taking the AP tests, and thus the AP performance data reflects more of that small subset of students. -- Thank you.

Yes, almost every MCPS HS has high-performing students. They even offer many of the same classes. In fact, the same kid would do about the same at any of these schools.

This is the usual MCPS b.s. talking point. No, Blair and RMHS IB are placed in ‘lower’ scoring schools to obsfuscate the regular student scores. MCPS is all about muddying the water so they can focus on social engineering.

The SMACS program has been at Blair since 1985. The IB program has been at RM since 1987. It's now 2022. PP, please catch up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speaking as an RM IB graduate from 10ish years ago, the top 3 dozen kids in my year all had 10+ AP exams, a 3.9+ unweighted GPA, an SAT superscore of 2350+, and multiple SAT II scores of 750+ in addition to completing the IB diploma (less relevant b/c IB scores were released after college admissions). Every year there's at least one kid with 20+ total APs and apparently one year somebody did that many in just one test cycle all self-studied. Most kids also did crazy extracurriculars too like varsity athletics, student government, scientific research, theater, CS/robotics, volunteering, etc.

My year had 2+ kids each go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford plus another 2 dozen spread across other Ivies and top 25 schools. Some kids who were "disappointed" with admissions ended up taking the Banneker/Key full ride at UMD. My two cents on admissions: adcoms want to see that you've maximized the academic opportunities available to you relative to your school context and your socioeconomic status. It is unrealistic to expect to get into Harvard from RM without being in IB and to my knowledge zero Ivy admits from the last decade have come from outside IB. And yes, less rigorous schools with less affluent parents do have less steep competition but the Common App asks for parental educational attainment and employment which outs you anyways.

One final unsolicited reflection on college. In terms of academic difficulty, STEM majors who went to Ivies and UMD both agreed that IB was a piece of cake compared to college. It turns out that even the nation's best public schools aren't adequate at preparing kids for proof-based math, physics, and orgo. Meanwhile, the humanities majors who went to top 25 schools had a great time. Looking at my peers 10+ years out from graduation, a huge chunk went into tech. Ironically, many of the Ivy and UMD grads all ended up as software engineers and product managers at places like Google. Going to a top school did actually matter for those who wanted to go into consulting or finance. It's much harder to end up at McKinsey or Bain Capital without going to a target school. One guy I remember, he went to Wharton, worked at Goldman Sachs and TPG for 5 years, and now runs his own hedge fund with 8-9 figure AUM. Immigrant parents, no connections, huge difference in socioeconomic mobility.

Thanks for this insight. Have a DC at RMIB right now and wonder if it is worth it. Your comments make sense to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Could the JWMS parent speak to a bit about the non-IB at RM? Is it a "thing" that IB kids are taking the AP tests anyway, perhaps for the sake of attracting colleges? Or not, and they stick to the IB tests, bc they are enough anyway. I believe IB scores come in too late after college decisions, so I am under the understanding that IB students in general (not just at RM) take APs anyway.

IB kids take AP exams and IB exams. My youngest took 16 AP exams and 6 IB, older one took 14-15 APs and 6 IBs.

PP, I am GENUINELY curious - and since this forum is anonymous, I sincerely hope you would not mind answering - how did your kids take this many AP exams? Did they start AP exams only after they started high school or did they do any earlier? What was the distribution (I mean, how many each year)? And, I am sure quite a few of these were self study, right?

My DCs (and their friend circle) will not be doing more than 9-10. I am just wondering how common it is to take 15-16 APs, and that too in addition to 6 IBs in this case. In retrospect, how helpful was it - were they able to get college credits for all the AP exams?

Thanks!

PP you were responding to. In terms of "how" I see other poster responded already. So I will try to respond your retrospect question since my kids are older. My youngest who took 16APs/6 IBs got 62 college credits. Some kids use it to graduate early (one kid graduated in 2 1/2 years) and some kids use it to take other courses (other major/minor, more research...etc.). My kids would agree IB was soul sucking difficult but, for certain kids, the program is as perfect as it gets. I understand the program has changed a bit so I am not up to date on the current status of IB. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. Could the JWMS parent speak to a bit about the non-IB at RM? Is it a "thing" that IB kids are taking the AP tests anyway, perhaps for the sake of attracting colleges? Or not, and they stick to the IB tests, bc they are enough anyway. I believe IB scores come in too late after college decisions, so I am under the understanding that IB students in general (not just at RM) take APs anyway.

IB kids take AP exams and IB exams. My youngest took 16 AP exams and 6 IB, older one took 14-15 APs and 6 IBs.

PP, I am GENUINELY curious - and since this forum is anonymous, I sincerely hope you would not mind answering - how did your kids take this many AP exams? Did they start AP exams only after they started high school or did they do any earlier? What was the distribution (I mean, how many each year)? And, I am sure quite a few of these were self study, right?

My DCs (and their friend circle) will not be doing more than 9-10. I am just wondering how common it is to take 15-16 APs, and that too in addition to 6 IBs in this case. In retrospect, how helpful was it - were they able to get college credits for all the AP exams?

Thanks!

Not PP, but I also had an IB student with that many APs. They double up taking the equivalent AP for their IB tests. IB students take max 4 tests at the HL level, but some schools only award credit for IB HL tests, so the AP scores are more likely to be awarded credit. If they had gone to UMD, they would have had 64 credits just from APs.

Took class
11 - AP English Language
12 - AP English Literature (and IB HL in 12th)
9 - AP Government - US
10 - AP US History
11 - AP European History (and IB SL)
10 - AP Calculus BC (w/AB subscore) (did IB HL in 12th)
10 - AP Statistics
10 - AP Physics C - Mech
11 - AP Chemistry (did IB HL in 12th)
11 - AP Environmental Science (and IB SL)
12 - AP Spanish Language (IB SL)

Self-Studied - but a lot of this content is overlap with strong background knowledge from other topics, so studying was really just reviewing the test prep books.
10 - AP Human Geography
11 - AP Psychology
12 - AP Macroeconomics
12 - AP Microeconomics

Was in Global Politics but chose not to test. Took FOCS in summer for tech credit and not AP Computer Science which is a common one.

Thanks! This is pretty impressive! And is it common for tenth graders in RMIB to take AP calc and AP Physics C, or would you say your DC is an outlier?

Also, it seems kids who are this capable are more likely to end up in places like HYP etc. where they may not get any credit for AP exams unfortunately. And that brings up another question - does this have an impact on admissions? (I have heard the magnet coordinator at Blair say that the AP exam scores may help to get credits once you get in, but not for admissions. I wonder if that is true?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speaking as an RM IB graduate from 10ish years ago, the top 3 dozen kids in my year all had 10+ AP exams, a 3.9+ unweighted GPA, an SAT superscore of 2350+, and multiple SAT II scores of 750+ in addition to completing the IB diploma (less relevant b/c IB scores were released after college admissions). Every year there's at least one kid with 20+ total APs and apparently one year somebody did that many in just one test cycle all self-studied. Most kids also did crazy extracurriculars too like varsity athletics, student government, scientific research, theater, CS/robotics, volunteering, etc.

My year had 2+ kids each go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford plus another 2 dozen spread across other Ivies and top 25 schools. Some kids who were "disappointed" with admissions ended up taking the Banneker/Key full ride at UMD. My two cents on admissions: adcoms want to see that you've maximized the academic opportunities available to you relative to your school context and your socioeconomic status. It is unrealistic to expect to get into Harvard from RM without being in IB and to my knowledge zero Ivy admits from the last decade have come from outside IB. And yes, less rigorous schools with less affluent parents do have less steep competition but the Common App asks for parental educational attainment and employment which outs you anyways.

One final unsolicited reflection on college. In terms of academic difficulty, STEM majors who went to Ivies and UMD both agreed that IB was a piece of cake compared to college. It turns out that even the nation's best public schools aren't adequate at preparing kids for proof-based math, physics, and orgo. Meanwhile, the humanities majors who went to top 25 schools had a great time. Looking at my peers 10+ years out from graduation, a huge chunk went into tech. Ironically, many of the Ivy and UMD grads all ended up as software engineers and product managers at places like Google. Going to a top school did actually matter for those who wanted to go into consulting or finance. It's much harder to end up at McKinsey or Bain Capital without going to a target school. One guy I remember, he went to Wharton, worked at Goldman Sachs and TPG for 5 years, and now runs his own hedge fund with 8-9 figure AUM. Immigrant parents, no connections, huge difference in socioeconomic mobility.

that's interesting. Heard the opposite: that college is a cakewalk after magnet IB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
that's interesting. Heard the opposite: that college is a cakewalk after magnet IB.

The IB diploma program is exactly the same whether you're doing it in a magnet IB school or a home-school IB school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Speaking as an RM IB graduate from 10ish years ago, the top 3 dozen kids in my year all had 10+ AP exams, a 3.9+ unweighted GPA, an SAT superscore of 2350+, and multiple SAT II scores of 750+ in addition to completing the IB diploma (less relevant b/c IB scores were released after college admissions). Every year there's at least one kid with 20+ total APs and apparently one year somebody did that many in just one test cycle all self-studied. Most kids also did crazy extracurriculars too like varsity athletics, student government, scientific research, theater, CS/robotics, volunteering, etc.

My year had 2+ kids each go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford plus another 2 dozen spread across other Ivies and top 25 schools. Some kids who were "disappointed" with admissions ended up taking the Banneker/Key full ride at UMD. My two cents on admissions: adcoms want to see that you've maximized the academic opportunities available to you relative to your school context and your socioeconomic status. It is unrealistic to expect to get into Harvard from RM without being in IB and to my knowledge zero Ivy admits from the last decade have come from outside IB. And yes, less rigorous schools with less affluent parents do have less steep competition but the Common App asks for parental educational attainment and employment which outs you anyways.

One final unsolicited reflection on college. In terms of academic difficulty, STEM majors who went to Ivies and UMD both agreed that IB was a piece of cake compared to college. It turns out that even the nation's best public schools aren't adequate at preparing kids for proof-based math, physics, and orgo. Meanwhile, the humanities majors who went to top 25 schools had a great time. Looking at my peers 10+ years out from graduation, a huge chunk went into tech. Ironically, many of the Ivy and UMD grads all ended up as software engineers and product managers at places like Google. Going to a top school did actually matter for those who wanted to go into consulting or finance. It's much harder to end up at McKinsey or Bain Capital without going to a target school. One guy I remember, he went to Wharton, worked at Goldman Sachs and TPG for 5 years, and now runs his own hedge fund with 8-9 figure AUM. Immigrant parents, no connections, huge difference in socioeconomic mobility.

that's interesting. Heard the opposite: that college is a cakewalk after magnet IB.

my kids found college (STEM majors) was a lot easier than RM/IB

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
that's interesting. Heard the opposite: that college is a cakewalk after magnet IB.

The IB diploma program is exactly the same whether you're doing it in a magnet IB school or a home-school IB school.

LOL. Yes, that's a factually correct statement. Sadly, due to other factors, not all IB programs produce the same results.