<p>Did my IB kid have a 4.0 UW? No. Not many kids do.</p>
<p>He had a 3.56 UW (9-12), 4.24 W, had very strong test scores and 11 APs on top of IB. Had over 500 hours of community service, performed in the summers and on some weekends. Played a helmet sport with 20-25 hrs/wk of practice. Was captain of the debate team, did Model UN and was on theater crew for a couple of productions. Also had a lengthy relationship with a wonderful young woman. </p>
<p>He went to bed by 10-11 pm and got up at 6 to catch the bus at 6:45. We learned freshman year that there was no point in him working past 10 pm â the return on investment was minimal at best. One of the challenges of IB is that it forces one to cover all subject areas in depth â so there is no hiding from oneâs weaknesses. That gets reflected in the grades. He was busting his tail and leading a balanced life â we felt that was good enough to get him where he wanted to be. (And it was â he got into his top two choices.)</p>
<p>I skimmed quickly, but some of the kids may have commutes to schools, too. For our one science magnet in this county, some kids travel close to an hour each way. My DD attended a private school and her round-trip commute approached two hours most days. We totally underestimated traffic, which was awful. She left the house at 6:20 and returned at about 6:30 during sports seasons. Then she did homework. Would not do it the same way if we had another chance.</p>
<p>Your son sounds exactly like some of the kids in the book âThe Overachievers: the secret lives of Driven Kidsâ which you may have read. It is based on a group of kids that went to high school in Montgomery County.</p>
<p>Both Dâs studied alot (i would guess 4 hours average) but so did I in high school. College was very hard but they were so used to the grind and good time management it was fine. The kids I see that have trouble are the ones that never studied alot, they were just ridiculously brilliant and for the first time in their life had to learn to study in college when the classes got harder. Now that is really hard to do. Of course some never reach that point until they reach grad school or professional school.</p>
Yes. One of them had a 4.0, the other not quite as good, but both did very well, had lots of ECs, and a social life, and excellent college results. It is my observation that some kids were required by their parents to âstudyâ a lot every day, even after homework was finished, and Iâm not convinced that this really paid off. My kids studied only for testsâand thatâs really how the curriculum is set up. Time management skills are important, though, and different kids can take different amounts of time to do the same work.</p>
<p>Hunt, Were your kids in high school before facebook/tumblr epidemic? Or Iâm sure they stayed away from those. Those things are ruining a lot of our smart kids. I donât mean to say that OPâs child is one of them. just a general observation - from observing my daughterâs friends. It took us big effort to at least make her see where her priority should be set. Iâm glad to see that she seems to understand it. Several of her CTY friends served as testimony (sadly) for her to learn the lesson.</p>
<p>But she had fewer ECs than most IB kids, put in at least one full day every weekend on schoolwork in addition to what she did during the week, and deliberately chose some of the less demanding options within the IB curriculum.</p>
<p>aquamarinesea, Iâve read that book and was horrified. That mindset is not unusual in this area, for better or worse. </p>
<p>Actually, my IB kid is NOT the driven sort, though he was in class with many of them. (Poor guy. He is a type B in a house full of driven type As. OTOH, he has a wonderful sense of balance and humor.) He was not willing to sacrifice the rest of his life for better grades. We were also dealing with some significant LD issues that affected grades and how much time it took him to complete work. Time management and organization were huge for him.</p>
<p>As I mentioned above, he took a fair number of APs along with the same IBs to make sure he would get credit/placement (i.e, both Econs, Spanish, Bio and Euro) because he was not confident heâd get 6s and 7s on the IB exams to get credit. I can assure you he did NOT study for AP exams, though!</p>
<p>I have one kid that would have loved to have been more challenged in HS. But challenge and massive quantities of homework really donât have to go together. Even in her most challenging classes (AP), she only studied 1-2 hours a night. It gets to the point that they are only committing material to short term memory just to get homework done. I donât think that is helpful or wise. Teens absolutely need more sleep than you think. Six hours or less on a regular basis is not getting enough to let their brains rest and process what they have learned. I personally would not send my kids to a school that tells you up front that the kids will have 4+ hours of homework per night. There is also outside learning through trial and error, social skills, what activities truly interest them and all that jazz that needs to occur in HS. They are not little adults.</p>
<p>Walker, this is a very big school system (over 100,000 students in all grades) and the regular schools in this school system would allow kids to be challenged-- with and without massive quantities of homework-- within their area high school. Kids from every regular high school in this school system go to the top universities every year. (In other words, the regular schools have 20-30 AP courses, multiple languages, science research opportunities, math through 2nd year college Calculus, and often IB programs.) These two small magnet programs are for families whose kids want the additional work. They donât have to be there to get into a top school; they want to. I know a kid who dropped out of the program and went to a regular high school and still ended up at a top college.</p>
Or their parents want them to. Or they feel the need to please their parents even if they donât want this for themselves. We accept that decision making ability is limited at this age and often substitute adult judgment for theirs when it comes to every other aspect of teen life. âThey want toâ is the beginning of the conversation about enrolling in a high pressure magnet school, not the end.</p>
<p>I believe there is such a thing as too much. I love learning but a lot of these kids in these magnets sound like they are getting too much of a good thing.</p>
<p>At our house, the decision ultimately belonged to the kids â but it was also a family commitment because of the program workload and transportation issues. </p>
<p>My younger S had the choice of three programs or his local HS â he knew kids at all the programs and knew what he was getting into. He had thrived on the elem and MS magnet programs and wanted to continue that path with his friends.</p>
<p>The local HS for my older S was not an option. He had academic and social needs that could not be met there and frankly, we didnât want him attending UMCP when he was 14. The magnet program offered the academic challenge with the advantage of doing so with age peers. Win-win. </p>
<p>And nobody, but nobody, beats Eric Walsteinâs magnet MV/DiffEq class at Blair. :)</p>
<p>I agree with the post up thread that said programs for our top students have not figured out how to give appropriate level work, not just lots more work.</p>
<p>MommaJ, I was referring to families. Regardless of the reasons, students are in these programs with family support. They may not be for everyone but it doesnât sound to me like the OPâs daughter is in trouble. I donât think most kids sail through these programs or through rigorous classes in MCPS (or other similar school systems) without putting in many hours of hard work. If the workload increases, she may need to cut down on socializing or extra-curricular activities. Every family makes the best choice for themselves and itâs not just about workload. The program at Blair is specifically targeted to science/math/computer science. A brilliant student with a different bent or other talents might prefer the flexibility of another program. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I also donât think that MCPSâ regular high schools canât meet the academic needs of brilliant students. I know of children in their regular schools there who were very accelerated, did science research and went to the top schools of our country (MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, CalTech)â all out of their local high school. Since the curriculum is generally the same at all MCPS high schools (with a few exceptions-- like some languages), perhaps the issue at some high schools is their administration? Because I do think the curriculum and flexibility are there to handle brilliant kids. I also think some families make their choice based partly on social issues and atmosphere in their particular schools as well. </p>
<p>Four hours a night of homework is not the worst thing in the world for a kid. I am glad the programs are there for those who want it and there are other options for those who donât⊠but there are more than 4 hours a day after school so the choice to forego sleep is unnecessary.</p>
<p>2collegewego, if you have kids who attend Churchill, Wootton, Whitman, W-J or B-CC, your kid can get a fabulous education at the local HS. However, one is paying a BIG premium to live in those neighborhoods. If we lived in the Whitman cluster, I think S2 would have gotten a terrific education and that his college outcomes would have been similar to what he achieved coming out of the IB. OTOH, Whitman was the locus of âThe Overachieversâ so I am not sure the stress level would have been any lower than a magnet!</p>
<p>As a matter of financial reality, we couldnât afford the Whitman cluster, much less college on top of that.</p>
<p>We also liked the diversity (ethnic and socioeconomic) of the high schools the guys attended. Are the magnets a perfect solution? No, but it was the best option for our family, and I am pretty darned thankful the public schools offer this opportunity.</p>
<p>It is a commitment for the whole familyâŠmy kids could have walked from our house to our local HSâand itâs one of the good ones mentioned above. I thought of that many times as we drove past it on the way to RM. But none of us would change the decision. For our kids, it was clearly the right choice.</p>