Anonymous wrote:Fairfax has a higher ratio of maker to taker than Montgomery. Everything else flows from that simple fact.

Anonymous wrote:First - all the caveats. Non-scientific, last year's news, Washingtonian, etc. But I was curious if it is widely accepted that MCPS send more kids to elite colleges than FCPS? And, if so, why? Other than TJ, more MCPS public high schools make this list of schools with most 3 of kids sent to Harvard, Princeton, MIT. I grew up in MCPS (at one of the schools that made the list) but my kids are in FCPS.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/10/10/which-local-schools-have-the-most-graduates-go-on-to-the-ivy-league/

Is it demographics? Is it that there are more good VA state colleges that attract the top kids?

I promise I am purely curious - no dog in this fight - as I was happy with my PS experience and with that of my kids. Just interested in people's theories.

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Anonymous wrote:Ok, but then why do more large public MCPS make the list than large FCPS schools? That was my question.

Because of U.Va. Big percent of the class at TJ goes to U.Va. Md. doesn't have an equivalent.

Wrong, about 40% Blair magnet students go to UMD, which is actually a STEM powerhouse while UVA is not.
One has to wonder why go to all the troubles of going to TJ just to end up at UVA.

STEM powerhouse is a reach, when MD ranks number 25 in engineering while Virginia Tech (the less of the UVA schools) ranks at 13.

Nice attempt at Terp Pride though. It's a shame that your basketball team and your football team went down the tubes. Kinda like Blair's magnet program.

VT is unranked Graduate program while UMD is ranked 22.

And UVA is #4.

Your point?

Oh yeah. Throw out completely irrelevant numbers that don’t apply to high schoolers because you can’t do anything else. #twerps

In which STEM program?
Man, you all are clueless

As a graduate of UVA engineering, I can attest MD is vastly stronger and tech isn't even a serious contender.

True, for example, MD's CS department is #15 in the world according to US News whereas UVA and Tech aren't in the same class. UVA is around #25 wheras tech is closer to #50.

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Anonymous wrote:Ok, but then why do more large public MCPS make the list than large FCPS schools? That was my question.

Because of U.Va. Big percent of the class at TJ goes to U.Va. Md. doesn't have an equivalent.

Wrong, about 40% Blair magnet students go to UMD, which is actually a STEM powerhouse while UVA is not.
One has to wonder why go to all the troubles of going to TJ just to end up at UVA.

STEM powerhouse is a reach, when MD ranks number 25 in engineering while Virginia Tech (the less of the UVA schools) ranks at 13.

Nice attempt at Terp Pride though. It's a shame that your basketball team and your football team went down the tubes. Kinda like Blair's magnet program.

VT is unranked Graduate program while UMD is ranked 22.

And UVA is #4.

Your point?

Oh yeah. Throw out completely irrelevant numbers that don’t apply to high schoolers because you can’t do anything else. #twerps

In which STEM program?
Man, you all are clueless

As a graduate of UVA engineering, I can attest MD is vastly stronger and tech isn't even a serious contender.

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Anonymous wrote:Ok, but then why do more large public MCPS make the list than large FCPS schools? That was my question.

Because of U.Va. Big percent of the class at TJ goes to U.Va. Md. doesn't have an equivalent.

Wrong, about 40% Blair magnet students go to UMD, which is actually a STEM powerhouse while UVA is not.
One has to wonder why go to all the troubles of going to TJ just to end up at UVA.

STEM powerhouse is a reach, when MD ranks number 25 in engineering while Virginia Tech (the less of the UVA schools) ranks at 13.

Nice attempt at Terp Pride though. It's a shame that your basketball team and your football team went down the tubes. Kinda like Blair's magnet program.

VT is unranked Graduate program while UMD is ranked 22.

And UVA is #4.

Your point?

Oh yeah. Throw out completely irrelevant numbers that don’t apply to high schoolers because you can’t do anything else. #twerps

In which STEM program?
Man, you all are clueless

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Anonymous wrote:TJ is a larger and stronger magnet than any school in MCPS; there are more Ivy legacies in MoCo than Fairfax; and the state schools in VA are stronger (while they are not HYPC-level, it’s common for FCPS kids to turn down schools like Brown or Cornell for UVA or W&M).

Adjust for those factors and you’ll be close to an answer.

That is because MCPS does not have any full school magnets. The magnets are very strong but get mixed in with non magnet stats.

Anonymous wrote:someone posted this weird stat:

TJ 79/200 = 39.5%
Blair magnet 21/100 = 21%

Why would you take out 200+ kids out of 423 (class in TJ) just because half go to UVA? How do you know if 100 of Blair magnet kids applied to HYP or whatever and not UMD? You really did pull that number out of your a$$.

Don't make assumptions. Take the total number, even if half decided to not apply to those schools because you have no idea if 50%, 70%, or 10% of Blair magnet kids applied to those schools:

2015 to 2017 numbers:

TJ 79/423 = 16.5%

Blair magnet 100 (and assume all 21 on the polaris site are from the magnet) then 21/100 = 21%.

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Most of what you stated is true enough.. however, the bolded is very true, also, and not to be discounted. This is true across the board, and not just related to this dumb argument about FCPS vs MCPS. When you look at the proportional rate and the % of FARMs, one would expect more from FCPS. Even within MCPS, one would expect a rich area like Churchill to send more kids to top colleges than, say, Einstein HS which has a much higher FARMS rate. You see this play out in FCPS, too, ie, McLean vs Annandale.

Theoretically, I agree. But I'm not sure that having a 5 point difference between the counties is significant. Considering what we spend per kid in FCPS vs. what you guys spend per kid in MoCo, and the fact that we have 25% more kids, I'm not sure that the FARMs rate is determinative at that level.

Moreover, as I point out above: the rate at which kids go to HYPS is a false assumption. You can't reverse engineer a rate with a high enough predictability because the number of kids that go to HYPS cannot be determined simply on FARMs % or the magnet itself. That's why the rate at which graduates go to a four year college (and ergo, the US News Ranking) is far more reliable-- there are a ton more factors involved than a simple rate and hard numbers are more reliable predictor.

I get why people are being dumb about this-- a lot of us purchased homes here and most of us are super competitive. But the reality is that given a choice: I would choose FCPS over MCPS any day. Just skimming what is going on in the MD boards makes me realize that we made the right choice moving here.

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Anonymous wrote:someone posted this weird stat:

TJ 79/200 = 39.5%
Blair magnet 21/100 = 21%

Why would you take out 200+ kids out of 423 (class in TJ) just because half go to UVA? How do you know if 100 of Blair magnet kids applied to HYP or whatever and not UMD? You really did pull that number out of your a$$.

Don't make assumptions. Take the total number, even if half decided to not apply to those schools because you have no idea if 50%, 70%, or 10% of Blair magnet kids applied to those schools:

2015 to 2017 numbers:

TJ 79/423 = 16.5%

Blair magnet 100 (and assume all 21 on the polaris site are from the magnet) then 21/100 = 21%.

well, technically the data is from 2015-2017 graduate rate so it will be TJ 79 / (420*3) = 6.3% or Blair 21 / 300 = 7%. we have to remember that TJ is gifted students and Blair only 100 so for Blair we don't count entire school number just the gifted. However, we also have to understand that the HYPS graduation data is only 88% complete so it is not exactly accurate.

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Anonymous wrote:Hey bonehead, this is not HYPS data: it is merely HPM data. Why is it an appropriate measure of all "elite" schools?

Thank you for correcting me in regards to incorrect marking as HYPS, as you have stated yes the information on original post is HPM graduation data.
According to Polaris

"Why Harvard, Princeton, and MIT?
We decided to focus on Harvard, Princeton, and MIT based on a combination of their selectivity and their accessibility to lower income students.

Selectivity is important to us because it means these schools have their pick of the lot when it comes to applicants. If a high school is able to send students to one of these three schools, it means that the school has created an environment to support high achieving students, whether it's in academics or extracurriculars.

Accessibility is just as important to us because we believe a college is only as good as its student body, and a student body is at its strongest when it encompasses a diversity of experiences. According to U.S. News and World Report, these three schools are among the colleges with the highest percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, which are most often given to undergrads with family incomes below $20,000. This means that these schools all offer generous financial aid that make it possible for all students to attend without significant burden."

Regardless, I don't trust data when they claim they were only able to capture 88% of the data. I can't really understand why MCPS posters are calling people names and getting all worked up.
when we look up the states we know that FCPS and MCPS numbers are not that far off yet FCPS having higher rating on all parts are still true.
we also have to consider that because MCPS does not have magnet schools, it is possible that few schools in MCPS are investing on building advanced academics program on their own which is why more MCPS schools are on the list.

Issue with this post is that initial poster only asked following "But I was curious if it is widely accepted that MCPS send more kids to elite colleges than FCPS? " where the answer is no MCPS does not send more kids to elite colleges.

Anonymous wrote:Hey bonehead, this is not HYPS data: it is merely HPM data. Why is it an appropriate measure of all "elite" schools?

Anonymous wrote:someone posted this weird stat:

TJ 79/200 = 39.5%
Blair magnet 21/100 = 21%

Why would you take out 200+ kids out of 423 (class in TJ) just because half go to UVA? How do you know if 100 of Blair magnet kids applied to HYP or whatever and not UMD? You really did pull that number out of your a$$.

Don't make assumptions. Take the total number, even if half decided to not apply to those schools because you have no idea if 50%, 70%, or 10% of Blair magnet kids applied to those schools:

2015 to 2017 numbers:

TJ 79/423 = 16.5%

Blair magnet 100 (and assume all 21 on the polaris site are from the magnet) then 21/100 = 21%.

well, technically the data is from 2015-2017 graduate rate so it will be TJ 79 / (420*3) = 6.3% or Blair 21 / 300 = 7%. we have to remember that TJ is gifted students and Blair only 100 so for Blair we don't count entire school number just the gifted. However, we also have to understand that the HYPS graduation data is only 88% complete so it is not exactly accurate.