My kid heard a rumor WJ might switch to IB. Has anyone heard this? Doesn’t make sense to me except that Kennedy has it.

Anonymous wrote:With Woodward opening soon they are getting rid of APEX because not all of the incoming freshman in Fall 2026 will stay at Walter Johnson. Some will get moved to Woodward and thus won’t be able to complete the APEX program, since it’s a WJ only program and it’s a four year program.

If this were true for next year, wouldn't they have announced it by now? Could it be that the program is changing in 2027 but will be the same for next year's 9th graders?

Anonymous wrote:With Woodward opening soon they are getting rid of APEX because not all of the incoming freshman in Fall 2026 will stay at Walter Johnson. Some will get moved to Woodward and thus won’t be able to complete the APEX program, since it’s a WJ only program and it’s a four year program.

How do you know this? My child is planning to apply to APEX for next year and I haven't seen any announcement about terminating this program. Why would they cancel it just as they start a regional model that is trying to attract students to the various regional schools. Parents have waited years for their kids to be a part of this program at WJ.

With Woodward opening soon they are getting rid of APEX because not all of the incoming freshman in Fall 2026 will stay at Walter Johnson. Some will get moved to Woodward and thus won’t be able to complete the APEX program, since it’s a WJ only program and it’s a four year program.

You’re wasting your time talking about this.
APEX is a program of the past.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My recollection is that they send a letter home in December, have a meeting in January before the interest deadline and announce acceptance in February.

Is acceptance selective, or just box checking?

Acceptance isn’t really selective; retention is. Two years ago a lot of kids dropped due to the tough bio class. I think they’ve recalibrated again perhaps with the new end of year misa testing going well and I don’t think the drop out rate was as high last year.

They recalibrated by removing that teacher from the program, because she had a personal goal of driving kids out of the program for reasons unknown to anyone except her.
I think a lot of kids drop out over the years because they realize they just don't want to take that many APs, and would rather do DE or take more electives or whatever. That's all fine.
I do think that with the expansion of the program (from 6 years ago), they sort of lost the community. Like they are supposed to all have a mentor, but some of them have mentors that don't show up to the mentor meetings and don't actually do anything. It's big now, so I don't think there's much of an "apex community." You get some cohorting in the 9th grade classes, and there's some benefit to that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My recollection is that they send a letter home in December, have a meeting in January before the interest deadline and announce acceptance in February.

Is acceptance selective, or just box checking?

Acceptance isn’t really selective; retention is. Two years ago a lot of kids dropped due to the tough bio class. I think they’ve recalibrated again perhaps with the new end of year misa testing going well and I don’t think the drop out rate was as high last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My recollection is that they send a letter home in December, have a meeting in January before the interest deadline and announce acceptance in February.

Is acceptance selective, or just box checking?

They just need to have a 3.5 GPA: "Applicants must have earned a grade point average of 3.5 or higher for seventh grade and first marking period of eighth grade."

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/wjhs/programs/apex/program_info/

Anonymous wrote:The program is going away.

??

Two years ago we received an email in late November announcing a December 7 info session.

The program is going away.

They usually send the info in December. I have two kids in the program.

There’s a minimum GPA but that’s about it.

Anonymous wrote:My recollection is that they send a letter home in December, have a meeting in January before the interest deadline and announce acceptance in February.

Is acceptance selective, or just box checking?

My recollection is that they send a letter home in December, have a meeting in January before the interest deadline and announce acceptance in February.

Can someone tell me when my 8th grader could expect to get the APEX Reach interest form for Walter Johnson high school? We expected to hear something about it by now and no one at the school seems to know. I thought maybe some parents of kids in the program might remember when the information about applying is usually shared.