Reply to Richard Montgomery's non-IB program

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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. [b]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[/b]. 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. [/quote]
that's interesting. Heard the opposite: that college is a cakewalk after magnet IB.[/quote]

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

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