Reply to If accepted to Blair Stem and Richard Montgomery IB

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Blair is a strong program but niche, for STEM obviously but majority pre-engineering. RMIB is better for kids who like STEM and humanities, and produces excellent analytical writers across disciplines. Historically RMIB has had better college outcomes because Ivy+ schools prefer a broader liberal arts focus. Blair does better with MIT. Both are very competitive but RMIB students [b]are a little more chill.[/b] Last year RMIB produced twice as many NMSF as Blair. This year it was reversed, Blair produced twice as many. So the cohorts vary too.[/quote]

Debatable. From MS the truly brilliant kids went to Blair, the grinders and strivers went to RMIB.[/quote]

A lot of these posts are not nice which makes me think that most families did not actually have a choice in schools. My older DC went to RMIB but did not get into Blair. Younger DC went to Blair after getting into both. Both enjoyed their time at the schools.

The reality is that the Blair magnet curriculum focuses on STEM but the kids themselves are very well-rounded. My younger child was surprised and happy to find the vast majority of kids are not "pre-engineering" whatever that means. You will find a cohort of kids who are are really into math and science at Blair and do almost all their activities in those fields but it's probably less than 20 percent of them and some of you would be shocked to find that this is probably about the same percentage at RMIB. These are not kids who have had "tutors" since they were 5 but many did do enrichment just like how if you're a star hockey player you might have been doing hockey since 5.

There are only a handful of kids who go to MIT every year from Blair as compared to maybe zero or 1 at RMIB. Blair from our experience does better in Ivy admissions but really it's based on the individual kid and it does not make sense to compare. RMIB is also a larger program because of all the kids who are allowed to join without testing in 11th and 12th so that skews results.

It's really uncharitable to call people grinders and strivers but from DC1 and DC2's middle school more standout smart kids did go to Blair while the really organized hardworkers went to RMIB. There is some sense because it's harder to do well in STEM at the level of Blair with just hard work IMO. You have to have some aptitude whereas with most other classes, even at a high level like RMIB, hard work will get you really far if you have a decently high IQ.

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