Montgomery Blair HS- Why are the college acceptance rates so terrible?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've heard it said that it might be easier to get in from a school where fewer students are applying to top schools. Is that true?

Probably. Although the regional admissions folks have a pretty good idea about the level of rigor in each school, and they may adjust for that when looking at your kid's application. A good way to compensate for this is to take lots of APs and do well on the AP tests, so that the colleges don't just think that straight As at Podunk High is a fluke of easy grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've heard it said that it might be easier to get in from a school where fewer students are applying to top schools. Is that true?

Possibly but it you look at Blair, lots of kids are applying to top schools, in some cases more than the W schools.

Not surprising since there are 200 magnet kids in a grade. Plus Blair is much larger than any other MCPS school. Probably 200-300 more kids per grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've heard it said that it might be easier to get in from a school where fewer students are applying to top schools. Is that true?

Yes. For example, if you're applying from a high school in rural Montana.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

Read the thread. Blair isn't exclusively magnet.

[Anonymous]

I wish that they had included other MCPS schools for more of a comparison.

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering which school had the results that people were shuddering at when it was mislabeled as Blair?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

Read the thread. Blair isn't exclusively magnet.

This is an important point -- Blair has 3000 kids and I would guess 800 are magnet or CAP. The majority of the kids aren't magnet but many go on to very good schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering which school had the results that people were shuddering at when it was mislabeled as Blair?

I don't know if if was a mistake but the 2011 lists that prompted this thread had the Blair acceptance rates as very low at a wide variety of schools. The current lists don't reflect a big difference between Blair and the other schools. By a greater number of schools to compare would be interesting.

[Anonymous]

Can someone please post a link to the 2011 article, so I can compare to the recent version?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

Read the thread. Blair isn't exclusively magnet.

That is irrelevant. No denominator is used in any of the data. Only how many applied to a good school and how many of THOSE that got in. I would think most of the kids who applied to Harvard from Blair were in the magnet program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

Read the thread. Blair isn't exclusively magnet.

That is irrelevant. No denominator is used in any of the data. Only how many applied to a good school and how many of THOSE that got in. I would think most of the kids who applied to Harvard from Blair were in the magnet program.

MIT, CalTech, maybe. But without knowing, why would you assume the magnet kids (science and tech) would apply to a basically liberal arts college in greater ? I know of two neighborhood kids who applied and were accepted to ivy schools, one attended, one did not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so the major criteria on which high schools should be judged (prepping kids for strong college acceptance) shows that basically all MCPS high schools are VERY similar. I'm not totally surprised, but I suspects much angst will be had in certain parts of Bethesda and Potomac.

I don't know how you can say this. They only listed the schools in Bethesda and Potomac, which happens to be the good schools, and a magnet school. The only conclusion you may be able to draw is Blair is equally good or better than the 4 w schools. So if you don't live in those areas, you will be fine if your child can get in a magnet school.

Read the thread. Blair isn't exclusively magnet.

That is irrelevant. No denominator is used in any of the data. Only how many applied to a good school and how many of THOSE that got in. I would think most of the kids who applied to Harvard from Blair were in the magnet program.

Why would you think that?

[Anonymous]

This seems like a lot of agony about what colleges other kids, who are not your kids, might (or might not) be going to.