Some potential students and parents also worry that colleges won’t consider applicants from Meridian because they have no grade-point averages. (Meridian students still take the SATs, and do well on the standardized exams - their average score is above 700.) Since they attend private school, they are not required to take the MCAS tests.
But last year, none of the students had problems during the college application process, Abrams said.
About 60 percent of its students come to Meridian from Boston, and the rest from area suburbs. About two-thirds of the students have previously studied in public schools.
The academy combines math, science, and technology into a single course that applies what the students learn to real-life problems, such as building robots.
Earlier this year, the sixth- and seventh-graders took part in the Robot Olympics.
“They’re not learning algebra as sort of a set of discombobulated, unrelated skills,’’ said Abrams.
“They’re learning algebra because if you want a robot with a sense of history, or to be able to make predictions, it needs to store information, and that requires the use of variables.’’
