Montgomery Blair Magnet

CountingDown
Sun, 17 Feb 2013 13:38:37 +0000

Swimkidsdad, at Blair, the kids go through an accelerated chem/bio/physics/earth science sequence, plus two years of programming, in freshman and soph years. Everyone in the program must get through Analysis I (BC Calc on steroids); this usually is completed by junior year, though there are different tracks depending on one’s math placement, so it is possible a magnet student may finish it in 9th or 12th. Usual track is the middle of junior year. They also take a two year R&E (research/engineering)class in 9th and 10th, which leads them to research design and the senior research paper.

The first two years are intense, but after that, the kids have a LOT of electives. Some kids we know did mathematical physics, some took every math course in the catalog, some took genetics and cell phys, some took fine arts, AP history courses, etc. The other nice part is that many of the advanced electives are one semester courses, so there is a lot of opportunity for exploration in other fields. (S1’s AP World History class led him to the philosophy club, which led him to choose a different college than what one might have expected, given his interests.) S1 really enjoyed his senior year. It was hectic, thanks to some external events, but it was not stressful.

The IB program kicks up a notch in junior year, and another notch in senior year. At RM, the program taught everything in IB format, and required the kids to take AP Gov’t as freshmen and AP USH as sophomores to prepare them for the intensity of the full IB curriculum. I will say that S2’s freshman pre-IB English was FAR more rigorous that S1’s junior year AP English Comp (the guys took those courses the same year, so I could see on a side-by-side basis what was expected and the accompanying grades). For S2, senior year was a pretty miserable slog; by the end, he was burned out.