Current News and Upcoming Events
Magnet Arts Night
Get your acts together! Auditions are January 24-26 from 3:00-7:00 PM. The show is February 10th at 7:30 in the Auditorium! Visual arts are on display outside the Auditorium before and after the show.
Intel Semifinalists
Congratulations to Lorenzo Choudhary-Smith, Arec Jamgochian, Lori Kaufman, Freddy Koehler, Maureen Lei, Sherman Leung, James Shepherdson, and Andrew Zhang, Blair eight Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists. The eight win $1000 and $1000 each for the school. The forty nationwide finalists will be announced January 25th, and will compete for the $100,000 grand prize later this year
33rd Annual UMD Math Competition
Congratulations to juniors Sam Zbarsky and Charlie Pasternak who took 1st and 3rd, respectively, at the 33rd annual University of Maryland Math Competition; each was awarded a full four-year scholarship! Blair also had 23 additional students who won Honorable Mentions in the competition.
Magnet Arts Night Auditions
Get your acts together! Auditions are January 24-26 from 3:00-7:00 PM.
Magnet Parent Meetings in January
Magnet ninth and tenth grade parent/guardians should come to a meeting on January 5th at 7:00 PM; Eleventh grade parent/guardians have their meeting on January 19th also at 7:00 PM.
Informational Meeting Presentation
You can view the Informational Meeting Presentation for 8th grade applicants here.
Application Now Available
Eighth grade students and their families interested in applying to the Blair Magnet program can now download the application; check out the Applying to the Magnet section of this site for more information, and don't forget to come to the Information Meeting at Blair on October 17th at 7:00 PM!
Three National Achievement Scholarship Semifinalists
Congratulations to Magnet students Sara Gonzalez, Julian Lofton, and Alice Mukora, who were named National Achievement Scholarship Semifinalists.
Team Wins Editor's Choice Award
A team of Blazers Jerome Glick, David Kaufman, Devin Luce of Rockville, and Charlie Pasternak were awarded MAKE Magazine's Editor's Choice award at the 2011 World Maker Faire in New York this September. The won for the work they and the Robotics Team did on creating a Segway clone, which was constructed of repurposed parts from an electric wheelchair, a leftover robotic controller, and other parts from prior FIRST Robotics contests.
Magnet Student wins silver at International Physics Olympiad
Senior Andrew Das Sarma, one of five US students to represent the United States at the 42nd International Physics Olympiad Competition in Bangkok, Thailand this July, took home a silver medal.
Picnic!
Magnet students and their families are invited to the Magnet back-to-school picnic! Come join us on August 23rd from 5:00-7:30 PM at Bohrer Park at Summit Hall Farm in Gaithersburg. It's a potluck, so please check out the flyer for more info. You can RSVP here.
Bus routes
The CAP/Magnet and Activity bus routes have been posted for the 2011-12 school year.
Twitter Feed
We've reacquired our old Twitter feed name. Come laugh at our 2+ year outage of tweets.
US Biology Olympiad Award
Magnet graduate Alex Briese ('11) earned a Bronze Medal at the 2011 US Biology Olympiad.
American Computer Science League Results
The team of Magnet students Andrew Lu, Charlie Pasternak, Lisha Ruan, and Audrey Shi took first place in the Senior Division at the American Computer Science League Invitational All-Star Contest on May 28 at North Haven, CT. Blair also took third place in the Intermediate Division, with team members Arvind Kannan, Michelle Noh, Jessica Shi, Scott Wu, and Charles Yin.
Magnet Alum Wins 2011 University of Maryland University Medal
Dylan Rebois of the Class of 2007 was awarded the 2011 University of Maryland University Medal. The Medal is given to the one member of UMD's graduating class who best exemplifies academic distinction, outstanding character, and extracurricular contributions to the university or public communities.
Puzzlepalooza II in the News
Blair's second annual Puzzlepalooza competition received some press in the Gazette of May 18th. Puzzlepalooza is a four-day puzzle festival where students compete in teams to solve as many of puzzles as they can.
Maryland Science Bowl
Blair Magnet students took home 1st, 3rd, and 8th place at the 2011 Maryland Science Bowl. The first place team of Andrew Das Sarma (team captain), Alexander Briese, Diwakaran Ilangovan, Sandra Yan, and Samuel Zbarsky went undefeated through all eleven rounds of the event, and will compete for the National Science Bowl title later this spring. The third place team of Myles Wagner (team captain), Michael Anderson, Nathan Ng, Miles King, and Charlie Pasternak consisted of juniors and sophomores, and the eighth place team of Avikar Periwal (team captain), Alexander Zhang, Richard Zhu , John Anderson, and Alan Du was an all-9th grade team.
Intel Semifinalists
Seven Blair Magnet students were named semifinalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search, the most prestigious science competition for high school students in the country. Each semifinalist receives $1000, and an additional $1000 for the school, and competes to become a finalist for over a half-million dollars in scholarships this spring, including the top scholarship of $100,000. The seven students (and their project titles) are Fang Cao (“Using Very Large Promoter Fragments to Identify Modulating Neurons in the Drosophila Visual System”), Andrew Das Sarma (“A Nanoscale Study of Structural and Electronic Transitions in Vanadium Dioxide”), Ajay Kannan (“Observing SH-SY5Y Morphological Response to Hypoosmotic and Hyperosmotic Mechanical Stress”), Nilay Kumar (“Low Density Nuclear Matter in the Large Nc and Heavy Quark Limits of QCD”), Winston Liu (“Ethane-Hydrogen Systems under High Pressure”), Sandra Yan (“Determining Iron Concentration in the Motor Cortices of Patients with Focal Hand Distonia”), and Raina Zheng (“STAT1 as a Molecular Target in Breast Cancer Therapy”). Blair has produced 149 semifinalist since 1999, more than any other school in the country.
University of Maryland Math Competition
Magnet senior Charles Argue had the top score from Montgomery County and took third overall at this year's University of Maryland High School Math Competition, open to all Maryland and District of Columbia high school students. Charles wins a full scholarship at the University of Maryland. Blair Magnet students also accounted for fourteen of the contest's thirty-six Honorable Mentions.
Recognizing that education is an individual experience that depends on the unique talents and interests of each person, the mission of the Blair Magnet Program is to provide an environment in which each person's education is maximized by emphasizing the interrelationships among the disciplines, developing a repertoire of problem-solving techniques, and pursuing both independent and collaborative research projects
To realize the above mission, the staff nurtures the special talents of its academically able students by fostering individualism, independent thinking, and self-confidence by challenging those students through a unique, diversified curriculum. The environment, structure, and content promote the self-learner concept in which students participate in constructing their own knowledge base and learn problem-solving strategies that foster the multidisciplinary approach. The scope of their education extends beyond traditional classroom boundaries as students are asked to connect with a community that includes not only parents, mentors, other students, and staff but also a physical environment as diverse as our region.
