TJ from private - impossible?
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Anonymous
| Our DD is in a Va private. Has straight As/A+s. No idea how she did on the TJ exam. Given the few unallocated spots, are her chances next to nil? |
Anonymous
| My TJ DC's best friend at TJ is from a local private middle school, so I know it's at least possible. |
Anonymous
| Go and look at the data. It’s incredibly difficult. Before the admissions reforms, about 10% of the class came from private. Last year IIRC there were less than 10 kids admitted from private school. |
Anonymous
This is because previously there used to be TJ tests and private schools used to prep them for it and now for the new admission they fall behind some public school children now because private schools try to teach stuff more broadly and not deep enough from what one parent told and moved her to public school. Honestly public schools are better because they get to learn from kids of various diversity and background. Regardless, going back to the poster question: This is how the process works: Every school gets 1.5% initially. Some schools don't have enough qualified kids to meet that 1.5%. So the unused seats go to unallocated quota. So the unallocated quota is not small. It is almost half of 550 they admit (TJ increased seats from 450 to 550). In unallocated quota, all public and private schools kids are treated equally. So they sort all the kids based on their scores and the top few get admission offers from unallocated quota. When it goes to unallocated, there are top middle schools like Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run with extremely qualified kids who get selected who have GPA 4+ and great extracurricular which they write about in the SPS response which private school kids don't have honestly. So private kids fall behind compared to the top feeder schools kids. This is why private admission is low. Every kid is graded on GPA (300 points); SPS (300 points); STEM problem (300 points). Some kids from other background/schools get some free points (Experience Factors) but they are all sorted together in the unallocated bucket. https://www.tjtestprep.com/admissions-overview |
Anonymous
| Depends on what private. In my experience in recent years kids who were accepted to TJ from top privates that go through 12 grade stayed at their privates. |
Anonymous
| Almost impossible. |
Anonymous
Because private is worthless |
Anonymous
| What is an SPS? Why wouldn’t private school kids have one? |
Anonymous
What do you consider top privates? |
Anonymous
If someone was at a school that goes through 12th and happy there why would they apply, I wonder? |
Anonymous
Says the public school teacher and broke parents. |
Anonymous
+1 - Haters gonna hate. I love how sanctimonious some public school parents can be. |
Anonymous
Right back atcha. Plenty of sanctimonious parent at both kinds of schools. |
Anonymous
|
So, to get back on topic, what is an SPS? Why don’t private school kids have one? And how are their scores then calculated? Are they just topping out at 600?
7th grade parent whose kid would probably love TJ. |
Anonymous
SPS is student portrait sheet. They have 4 questions to answer in 1 hour related to FCPS character. Every student is graded on 900 points. 1/3 is for GPA, 1/3 for SPS response, 1/3 for stem problem |