Plenty of students get selected without any awards. Strong stem awards help but it’s not the only factor in the formula.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Why is a team required at all? I think allowing students to compete as individuals (or form a team with similarly unaffiliated students) would be much more welcoming to all who are interested.

I think there’s good to having some team competitions and having kids learn from each other and compete together on academic topics. I also think that while having to form a team can be a barrier in schools that have nothing than an individual competition, that having to have a team can help recruit other students into these competition areas. I just wish my kid’s school had these teams!

Also, several of these competitions are national -even if they hold regional rounds in Maryland or even in MoCO, MCPS doesn’t have a say in how they’re run.

But my original point remains that MCPS emphasizes awards won as part of its brief HS application for selective programs, and many (dare I say most?) MCPS middle school kids don’t have school based opportunities to compete in academic enrichment STEM activities.

Yes, and you can't say "this competition has free registration and lunch, so it's open to everyone" when the real cost of admission is a $500,000 house zoned for a particular MS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Why is a team required at all? I think allowing students to compete as individuals (or form a team with similarly unaffiliated students) would be much more welcoming to all who are interested.

Because there's usually a team round in these math competitions, where cooperative strategy is tested as part of the competition. For many of the college hosted HS math competitions, there's typically also a proof-round where basically kids go through an entire theory proof process so universities can select who can follow through and kids can have first-hand experience whether they like pure math or not.

I'd say attending math competitions is very low barriered compared to sports or music competitions. However, reaching the level that kids can read and understand the questions requires consistent investment in math enrichment from an early age that most parents don't realize until too late. For other STEM competitions, it's a similar story but it's usually not too late to start in middle school (e.g., science bowl, robotics, F=ma, etc.).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Why is a team required at all? I think allowing students to compete as individuals (or form a team with similarly unaffiliated students) would be much more welcoming to all who are interested.

I think there’s good to having some team competitions and having kids learn from each other and compete together on academic topics. I also think that while having to form a team can be a barrier in schools that have nothing than an individual competition, that having to have a team can help recruit other students into these competition areas. I just wish my kid’s school had these teams!

Also, several of these competitions are national -even if they hold regional rounds in Maryland or even in MoCO, MCPS doesn’t have a say in how they’re run.

But my original point remains that MCPS emphasizes awards won as part of its brief HS application for selective programs, and many (dare I say most?) MCPS middle school kids don’t have school based opportunities to compete in academic enrichment STEM activities.

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Why is a team required at all? I think allowing students to compete as individuals (or form a team with similarly unaffiliated students) would be much more welcoming to all who are interested.

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

It’s not as if parents aren’t spending on STEM enrichment activities for their kids because they are choosing to spend their money on travel hockey instead.

They aren’t spending on math enrichment because figuring out how to register as a parent coach when there’s no teacher coach and finding kids from different schools for your kid to compete with when there’s no school math team would be difficult even for a highly educated, well-resourced parent.

And if you’re highly educated and well-resourced you probably wouldn’t have your kid at a school with such limited STEM enrichment activities.

Again, characterizing these are widely available options for all MCPS students is not accurate.

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Y

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/

Both schools my kids are at don't have math teams, so how exactly would they do that?

Exactly. Same for my kid’s school for science bowl. Opportunities are equally spread throughout MCPS schools. And if you can’t show you excelled at opportunities that your kid didn’t have offered in MS, you are at a competitive disadvantage for selective programs like Blair for HS.

This is compounded by the admissions criteria which stupidly puts a high weight on a single MAP-M score, which is a test of exposure to academic concepts to which many kids are not exposed rather than a test of cognitive ability.

Our MS and HS doesn't have math teams, science teams or science bowls. No stem clubs.

My son is at NBMS. They have a math club sponsored by the teacher. They go to all the competitions, Math Count, Montgomery Blair Math competition, etc. There is a very active parent of a highly gifted child that registeres for some other random math competes and she drives the interest of other student and parents.

The school also has a Science Olympiad Team that is 99% dependent on parent volunteering the coaching sessions. Its a very big time commitment for both students and parents. The school is mostly hands off. Other than registering for the actual competitions, they do not do much. We asked the school for more help but the red tape and "equity" consideration is what we get in replies.

We the parents need to ask for more. I am thinking that if next year we do not have parents involved in science Olympiad, we might loose the team altogether. Its unfortunate because students wants this sort of competitions and when we go to state competes, Howard County schools are gathering all the prizes. They value stem education much more than MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

They’ll likely continue spending time and money on sports, then complain that there are no school clubs. Many school clubs and teams depend heavily on parent involvement. Math is far less expensive than most sports or musical instruments. In the end, it comes down to priorities.

For mbmt and many university sponsored math competition (hmmt, PuMAC, cmu, Berkeley math competition, etc), you don’t need a HS sponsorship. Parent can register as a coach and pay a small registration fee to attend. Kids from different schools can form a team together. Some competition is driving distance, some has online format. Math competition is probably the cheapest one compared to sports travel team cost.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/

Both schools my kids are at don't have math teams, so how exactly would they do that?

Exactly. Same for my kid’s school for science bowl. Opportunities are equally spread throughout MCPS schools. And if you can’t show you excelled at opportunities that your kid didn’t have offered in MS, you are at a competitive disadvantage for selective programs like Blair for HS.

This is compounded by the admissions criteria which stupidly puts a high weight on a single MAP-M score, which is a test of exposure to academic concepts to which many kids are not exposed rather than a test of cognitive ability.

Our MS and HS doesn't have math teams, science teams or science bowls. No stem clubs.

Yes. And the the MCPS selective HS program application asks for descriptions of the awards your kid has won as a required part of the selection criteria. Hard to win if you don’t have an option to compete.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/

Both schools my kids are at don't have math teams, so how exactly would they do that?

Exactly. Same for my kid’s school for science bowl. Opportunities are equally spread throughout MCPS schools. And if you can’t show you excelled at opportunities that your kid didn’t have offered in MS, you are at a competitive disadvantage for selective programs like Blair for HS.

This is compounded by the admissions criteria which stupidly puts a high weight on a single MAP-M score, which is a test of exposure to academic concepts to which many kids are not exposed rather than a test of cognitive ability.

Our MS and HS doesn't have math teams, science teams or science bowls. No stem clubs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/

Both schools my kids are at don't have math teams, so how exactly would they do that?

Exactly. Same for my kid’s school for science bowl. Opportunities are equally spread throughout MCPS schools. And if you can’t show you excelled at opportunities that your kid didn’t have offered in MS, you are at a competitive disadvantage for selective programs like Blair for HS.

This is compounded by the admissions criteria which stupidly puts a high weight on a single MAP-M score, which is a test of exposure to academic concepts to which many kids are not exposed rather than a test of cognitive ability.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/

Both schools my kids are at don't have math teams, so how exactly would they do that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Nothing is a guarantee. Especially if the committee thinks the application is written by a striver mom, not the kid.

"290+" is a mid score, unless that "+" is doing a lot of work.

Or the committee thinks that the test score was lucky and not consistent with the rest of performance across other areas of evaluation.

It’s probably pretty rare to reject such students with strong stem awards and high MAP M. Outliers always exist but maybe with some reasons

There aren’t that many “strong STEM honors/awards” available to middle schoolers. So if the kids have them at that age, that’s more indicative of parental resources.

There are. Math Kangaroo, mathcount, mathleague, science bowl, AMC 8, Montgomery Blair math tournament, etc

These must be pay to play. Never heard of them.

They’re not exactly pay to play in that you need thousands to enter. But without some extra coaching (which could be $$), most kids wouldn’t be able to stand out. And Montgomery Blair math tournament and science bowl are team competitions. You’d need a cohort of fellow smart students. My kid’s MCPS MS doesn’t send kids to science bowl and it requires a faculty sponsor so it’s not like a team of kids can enter on their own.

They are pay to play. Many MCPS schools don't offer or support stem. There are plenty of schools with a cohort, but people like you like to pretend that these other kids aren't qualified. But, that's MCPS equity for you which is why they probably stopped using the term, but unleashing potential is a joke when they hold our kids back.

Free admission + free lunch isn't "pay to play"

https://mbmt.mbhs.edu/info/