This bothers me..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - what is your base school. If you are so concerned about getting into Ivys and the bloated reputation of TJ, then you must know your base school's general college acceptances. Does it even compare?

A rough back-of-the-envelope figurin...

Assume the approx. 12500 seniors in Fairfax County Schools are ranked by your favorite SPR (Smarty Pants Ranking)

Assume 1/6 of TJ students are not from Fairfax County, so approx. 375 seniors at TJ are from Fairfax County.

Assume all TJ kids from Fairfax County are from the top 10% of the ranked students, i.e. from the top 1250 ranked students.

That leaves 825 top 10% senior students for the other 21 Fairfax County high schools, or 39 per school.

So on average, each HS has around 1/10 the number of top 10% students as TJ, so if TJ has 10 MIT admits, each other FFX hs would have at most 1. But I would guess the TJ strips out almost all of the top STEM students with the ability and ambition to get into MIT, so an MIT admit from a base school would be rare.

Nice figurin', PP! Still don't understand what OP is saying about TJ being "just any other high school".

You have the same (or worse) teaching compared with any other school in the county. But, they have on average, the brightest kids. Those kids would be equally bright at there base schools. The peer group would not be as good there. Where it gets interesting is TJ has critical mass to have far more advanced opportunities than any other school in the region. Unfortunately, that is not why many people go to TJ; they go because it looks good to go to the best.

TJ is now dominated by students from families that would view failure to be at the top as an indicator of failure. They grew up in cultures where resources were extremely limited and their society could only afford to educate the top 1-5%. In the US, we educate every one. While in other societies, there are many exits from the path to success -- many gate ways where people are winnowed out, in the US, everyone has the opportunity (in theory). Anyone can go to a community college and do well, transfer to a top state school, and then the sky is the limit. This is why America is great.

TJ was initially built for the brilliant child that was underperforming in high school because they were bored. Like the STEM oriented kid who went on to be an internationally known physicist, but had a 2.3 GPA in HS because he was not challenged: why do the Homework when you know the answers?

The over-achievers co-opted TJ so the true genius -- the Albert Einsteins (who underachieved in HS) could not be admitted.

Yes, agree with above. But, also have to add that the curriculum at TJ is unparalled to any high school. When you have bright kids matched with opportunities & resources = sky is the limit.

Sky is the limit ???.. But where are the birds ..

The birds are flying too high for you on the ground to see...

Did you pad the bird with with electric wings ? It will run out of battery soon ..

I think I did hear about TJ kids conducting research into allowing brain cells to control wheelchairs to help disabled people in their Neuroscience lab! Is that what you mean?

Yeah.. Is that your kid ?

Similar stories happen at all schools across other USA..There will be one or two gems everywhere..

What TJ does is, they put most of the top high school students in FCPS at one place.. That's it

However, the fact is there are dozens of "magnet" or "STEM magnet" schools all over the country but not all or even some of them are performing at the TJ level or considered best in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

This is like saying it's better to graduate from GMU rather than MIT because you may end up with higher gpa for grad school or jobs etc. Not true. MIT grads would be better off generally (and learned plenty more) even with slightly lower gpa.

And only 10 out of 480 are accepted in MIT.. Think about how brilliant that kid needs to be to get accepted from TJ.. Those kids do not really need TJ though.. They can do well from any high school

MIT is not the only university attended by TJ graduates. TJ grads also attend, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UPenn, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Michigan, CMU, Service Academies ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It is like college in the sense that there is virtually no instruction; kids have to learn on their own. I do not see that as a good thing. The work approach is similar to HS: In college, one is usually not graded on homework, but rather tests. At TJ, that is not the case. An earlier poster wrote about the vast amounts of work required. In college, the work is suggested but not required. I do not know how TJ grades, but if they require you to do HW, and grade it, and include that in your grade, it is not like college.

TJ has brilliant students....but so does Madison, Langley, Woodson, Oakton, Marshall, McLean etc. TH teachers do not have to work hard because the teachers will get it.

Advantages of TJ:
No bullying for being smart
Brilliant Peers
No time spent prepared for SOL's.

Disadvantages:
Workload
Stress
Poor quality teaching
Travel Time
Imbalanced school-life priorities
1/2 the kids will finish in the bottom half instead of in the top 5% at the base school.

Do you have a kid at TJ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

You are assuming that the top students at other high schools do not feel stress or pressure. I grew up in in FCPS schools. I have to disagree. I'd love my top student from our high-performing base high school to go to any of these schools: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202015-16%20online%20hq.pdf

So , where do they go, community colleges. That hurts. I thought there are good high schools in FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

You are assuming that the top students at other high schools do not feel stress or pressure. I grew up in in FCPS schools. I have to disagree. I'd love my top student from our high-performing base high school to go to any of these schools: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202015-16%20online%20hq.pdf

So , where do they go, community colleges. That hurts. I thought there are good high schools in FCPS.

DP here. In the past few years, students at our neighborhood high school in FCPS have been admitted to almost every school that admitted 10 or more TJ students last year (Rice and UCLA are the only ones that aren't ringing a bell). Just not as many of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

You are assuming that the top students at other high schools do not feel stress or pressure. I grew up in in FCPS schools. I have to disagree. I'd love my top student from our high-performing base high school to go to any of these schools: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202015-16%20online%20hq.pdf

So , where do they go, community colleges. That hurts. I thought there are good high schools in FCPS.

DP here. In the past few years, students at our neighborhood high school in FCPS have been admitted to almost every school that admitted 10 or more TJ students last year (Rice and UCLA are the only ones that aren't ringing a bell). Just not as many of them.

Of course there won't be many.. But thought everyone who is non TJ top student at local high school goes to community colleges.

Anyway TJ is best..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

You are assuming that the top students at other high schools do not feel stress or pressure. I grew up in in FCPS schools. I have to disagree. I'd love my top student from our high-performing base high school to go to any of these schools: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202015-16%20online%20hq.pdf

So , where do they go, community colleges. That hurts. I thought there are good high schools in FCPS.

DP here. In the past few years, students at our neighborhood high school in FCPS have been admitted to almost every school that admitted 10 or more TJ students last year (Rice and UCLA are the only ones that aren't ringing a bell). Just not as many of them.

Of course there won't be many.. But thought everyone who is non TJ top student at local high school goes to community colleges.

Anyway TJ is best..

TROLL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

You are assuming that the top students at other high schools do not feel stress or pressure. I grew up in in FCPS schools. I have to disagree. I'd love my top student from our high-performing base high school to go to any of these schools: https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202015-16%20online%20hq.pdf

So , where do they go, community colleges. That hurts. I thought there are good high schools in FCPS.

DP here. In the past few years, students at our neighborhood high school in FCPS have been admitted to almost every school that admitted 10 or more TJ students last year (Rice and UCLA are the only ones that aren't ringing a bell). Just not as many of them.

Of course there won't be many.. But thought everyone who is non TJ top student at local high school goes to community colleges.

Anyway TJ is best..

Guess you think you're funny by mocking Asians with "accent". Get a life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - what is your base school. If you are so concerned about getting into Ivys and the bloated reputation of TJ, then you must know your base school's general college acceptances. Does it even compare?

A rough back-of-the-envelope figurin...

Assume the approx. 12500 seniors in Fairfax County Schools are ranked by your favorite SPR (Smarty Pants Ranking)

Assume 1/6 of TJ students are not from Fairfax County, so approx. 375 seniors at TJ are from Fairfax County.

Assume all TJ kids from Fairfax County are from the top 10% of the ranked students, i.e. from the top 1250 ranked students.

That leaves 825 top 10% senior students for the other 21 Fairfax County high schools, or 39 per school.

So on average, each HS has around 1/10 the number of top 10% students as TJ, so if TJ has 10 MIT admits, each other FFX hs would have at most 1. But I would guess the TJ strips out almost all of the top STEM students with the ability and ambition to get into MIT, so an MIT admit from a base school would be rare.

Nice figurin', PP! Still don't understand what OP is saying about TJ being "just any other high school".

You have the same (or worse) teaching compared with any other school in the county. But, they have on average, the brightest kids. Those kids would be equally bright at there base schools. The peer group would not be as good there. Where it gets interesting is TJ has critical mass to have far more advanced opportunities than any other school in the region. Unfortunately, that is not why many people go to TJ; they go because it looks good to go to the best.

TJ is now dominated by students from families that would view failure to be at the top as an indicator of failure. They grew up in cultures where resources were extremely limited and their society could only afford to educate the top 1-5%. In the US, we educate every one. While in other societies, there are many exits from the path to success -- many gate ways where people are winnowed out, in the US, everyone has the opportunity (in theory). Anyone can go to a community college and do well, transfer to a top state school, and then the sky is the limit. This is why America is great.

TJ was initially built for the brilliant child that was underperforming in high school because they were bored. Like the STEM oriented kid who went on to be an internationally known physicist, but had a 2.3 GPA in HS because he was not challenged: why do the Homework when you know the answers?

The over-achievers co-opted TJ so the true genius -- the Albert Einsteins (who underachieved in HS) could not be admitted.

Yes, agree with above. But, also have to add that the curriculum at TJ is unparalled to any high school. When you have bright kids matched with opportunities & resources = sky is the limit.

Sky is the limit ???.. But where are the birds ..

The birds are flying too high for you on the ground to see...

Did you pad the bird with with electric wings ? It will run out of battery soon ..

I think I did hear about TJ kids conducting research into allowing brain cells to control wheelchairs to help disabled people in their Neuroscience lab! Is that what you mean?

Yeah.. Is that your kid ?

Similar stories happen at all schools across other USA..There will be one or two gems everywhere..

What TJ does is, they put most of the top high school students in FCPS at one place.. That's it

However, the fact is there are dozens of "magnet" or "STEM magnet" schools all over the country but not all or even some of them are performing at the TJ level or considered best in the country.

True. TJ is in a different league compared to other test in schools in other States.

[Anonymous]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, worry about minor differences between high schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ is not for math or science genius.. The admission process is skewed towards holistic approach, where they have to be good at SIS, essays, middle school grades, teacher recommendations , and 20 - 30% from TJ test(math + English) ..

A pure math or science genius would have benefited from TJ labs, top teachers, facilities, etc... And TJ don't want them.

You have to see how coaching starts in the Asian communities from cogat and NNAT. Everything has to be spoon fed to their children .

I don't think anyone denies this isn't the case. Again, it's sad. I'm not sure about the turning away geniuses comment. If your genius can't put sentences together, then yes that process is not for you.

Putting Sentences together by coaching classes you mean ?

Why do think there is under representation of blacks or Hispanics ? They cannot afford to pay for coaching as much as Asians can.. Period.

Asians are not the only ones with coaching and tutoring.
Not all Asians are able to pay for coaching/tutoring. Asians are gaining admissions despite the obstacles and disadvantages in the TJ admission process (Admission process was revised several times in the past decade or so to lower Asian students and increase non-Asian students). Let's celebrate hard work and accomplishments or do you want to put Asian quota at TJ like they do at top colleges and have affirmative action?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ is not for math or science genius.. The admission process is skewed towards holistic approach, where they have to be good at SIS, essays, middle school grades, teacher recommendations , and 20 - 30% from TJ test(math + English) ..

A pure math or science genius would have benefited from TJ labs, top teachers, facilities, etc... And TJ don't want them.

You have to see how coaching starts in the Asian communities from cogat and NNAT. Everything has to be spoon fed to their children .

I don't think anyone denies this isn't the case. Again, it's sad. I'm not sure about the turning away geniuses comment. If your genius can't put sentences together, then yes that process is not for you.

Putting Sentences together by coaching classes you mean ?

Why do think there is under representation of blacks or Hispanics ? They cannot afford to pay for coaching as much as Asians can.. Period.

Asians are not the only ones with coaching and tutoring.
Not all Asians are able to pay for coaching/tutoring. Asians are gaining admissions despite the obstacles and disadvantages in the TJ admission process (Admission process was revised several times in the past decade or so to lower Asian students and increase non-Asian students). Let's celebrate hard work and accomplishments or do you want to put Asian quota at TJ like they do at top colleges and have affirmative action?

It bothers whites that Asians are outperforming them and that various tweaks to the TJ admissions process have not worked to reduce Asians. Ivy League schools will be at least 50% Asians without the illegal racial discrimination and quotas.

In the meantime, they love to scream that AAP should be merit based, no affirmative action in college admissions etc. but they only want merit based selection if it benefits them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

This is like saying it's better to graduate from GMU rather than MIT because you may end up with higher gpa for grad school or jobs etc. Not true. MIT grads would be better off generally (and learned plenty more) even with slightly lower gpa.

Agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should other schools in FCPS have the same acceptance rate in colleges as TJ. TJ gets all the top students, who would have done better any way at local high school..

They would have gone to top colleges even if they were in local high schools..

But, this is blessing in disguise for students who go to local
High schools,as they can easily get into top colleges, based on their performances minus TJ feeding frenzy..

are you insane? very few students at any high school around here "easily" get into top colleges.

That's fine.. Those few can get to top colleges from local high schools with less amount of stress.. In TJ you have to be top of the top ..

No. About 75% of the graduates go on to top 10 to top 25 colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - what is your base school. If you are so concerned about getting into Ivys and the bloated reputation of TJ, then you must know your base school's general college acceptances. Does it even compare?

A rough back-of-the-envelope figurin...

Assume the approx. 12500 seniors in Fairfax County Schools are ranked by your favorite SPR (Smarty Pants Ranking)

Assume 1/6 of TJ students are not from Fairfax County, so approx. 375 seniors at TJ are from Fairfax County.

Assume all TJ kids from Fairfax County are from the top 10% of the ranked students, i.e. from the top 1250 ranked students.

That leaves 825 top 10% senior students for the other 21 Fairfax County high schools, or 39 per school.

So on average, each HS has around 1/10 the number of top 10% students as TJ, so if TJ has 10 MIT admits, each other FFX hs would have at most 1. But I would guess the TJ strips out almost all of the top STEM students with the ability and ambition to get into MIT, so an MIT admit from a base school would be rare.

Nice figurin', PP! Still don't understand what OP is saying about TJ being "just any other high school".

You have the same (or worse) teaching compared with any other school in the county. But, they have on average, the brightest kids. Those kids would be equally bright at there base schools. The peer group would not be as good there. Where it gets interesting is TJ has critical mass to have far more advanced opportunities than any other school in the region. Unfortunately, that is not why many people go to TJ; they go because it looks good to go to the best.

TJ is now dominated by students from families that would view failure to be at the top as an indicator of failure. They grew up in cultures where resources were extremely limited and their society could only afford to educate the top 1-5%. In the US, we educate every one. While in other societies, there are many exits from the path to success -- many gate ways where people are winnowed out, in the US, everyone has the opportunity (in theory). Anyone can go to a community college and do well, transfer to a top state school, and then the sky is the limit. This is why America is great.

TJ was initially built for the brilliant child that was underperforming in high school because they were bored. Like the STEM oriented kid who went on to be an internationally known physicist, but had a 2.3 GPA in HS because he was not challenged: why do the Homework when you know the answers?

The over-achievers co-opted TJ so the true genius -- the Albert Einsteins (who underachieved in HS) could not be admitted.

Yes, agree with above. But, also have to add that the curriculum at TJ is unparalled to any high school. When you have bright kids matched with opportunities & resources = sky is the limit.

Sky is the limit ???.. But where are the birds ..

The birds are flying too high for you on the ground to see...

Did you pad the bird with with electric wings ? It will run out of battery soon ..

I think I did hear about TJ kids conducting research into allowing brain cells to control wheelchairs to help disabled people in their Neuroscience lab! Is that what you mean?

Yeah.. Is that your kid ?

Similar stories happen at all schools across other USA..There will be one or two gems everywhere..

What TJ does is, they put most of the top high school students in FCPS at one place.. That's it

There are more than one or two gems at TJ and almost all of the TJ students conduct significant research.