Reply to Got into both CAP and Blair Magnet, but...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Another thing to consider is the level of instruction in the humanities and social studies in Blair HS.  
The SMAC program is head and shoulders above anything your child would get in any other high school in Mont. County.  
CAP might be better than the regular high school experience in Blair but I am not sure that is a good enough reason to pick it over SMAC.  Your SMAC kid will get to take a lot of AP classes in history, english etc.  and will probably get the same educational experience he or she would get in any good Mont. County high school in the humanities and social studies.[/quote]

You see the world as boxes to be ticked off but HS is not just accumulating as many AP credits as possible, all classes are not interchangeable.

OP, CAP is more than the sum of the credits it really is a great collection of people and just asks HS students to be really good HS students (if that's not too vacuous).  When I was in college I managed to take more math credits than could be applied to a degree.  Yet when I ask myself, would it have better to have taken linear algebra or dif eq in HS? I say no.  Would I have liked my HS physics class to have been compressed into a semester or to have done self-study AP? No, wtf?  Do I wish my college survey lit class was half as good as my HS English class? Yes.  As someone who was always math focused it took a little soul searching but I realized that for me humanities were the most important part of HS.  I would never discourage someone from SMAC but also don't believe CAP could derail an engineering career.  If your DC is excited about either program, that's the most important thing.  CAP strikes me as healthy balanced HS experience, that being at Blair gives access to great science and math classes at the same time, all the better. I know if I'd had that choice I'd have gone with SMAC but older wiser me sees the value in CAP.  Obviously a HS decision is not about the parent but that was my advice.  Maybe somewhere all the now attorney's I took HS Calc with are pushing their kids into a STEM frenzy...[/quote]

I think this is very true.  My CAP kid can discuss history and current events at a really amazingly in-depth level, and can synthesize things and draw conclusions in a very sophisticated way.  CAP isn't a learn-all-the-facts kind of approach; it's an integrated and enriched approach to the humanities, with a good dose of media and media technology thrown in.

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