Official TJ Admissions Decisions Results for the Class of 2025

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

There is no lottery aspect to the new process. Students are evaluated first against one another within their own school to satisfy the geographical representation requirements, and then against the rest of the population for unallocated seats.

The PP likes to spread misinformation in the hopes of stirring up dissent. There are many parents who liked being able to easily game the system by simply investing in prep. These changes make that harder.

PP here. How is asking a clarifying question spreading misinformation. Seems like you are the one trying to manufacture news. It is much more easier to game the system with an essay claiming a lot of things and self declared adversity claims. Allows for far more subjectivity - which I guess was the intent with these changes in the first place.

Let me help clarify this for you. The new system isn't a lottery but when you say it is falsely you are spreading misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

Yep. Old TJ is dead.

Yep, the new TJ has more naturally gifted students and seems to be far less toxic.

I'm pretty damn pro-reform when it comes to TJ, but it's way too early to make any judgments as yet. It will take years to determine if the present reforms (which will and probably should be tweaked on some level post-COVID) actually have a positive impact on the learning environment - and there's not really an easy way to measure those improvements either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

Yep. Old TJ is dead.

Yep, the new TJ has more naturally gifted students and seems to be far less toxic.

I'm pretty damn pro-reform when it comes to TJ, but it's way too early to make any judgments as yet. It will take years to determine if the present reforms (which will and probably should be tweaked on some level post-COVID) actually have a positive impact on the learning environment - and there's not really an easy way to measure those improvements either.

This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

Yep. Old TJ is dead.

Yep, the new TJ has more naturally gifted students and seems to be far less toxic.

I'm pretty damn pro-reform when it comes to TJ, but it's way too early to make any judgments as yet. It will take years to determine if the present reforms (which will and probably should be tweaked on some level post-COVID) actually have a positive impact on the learning environment - and there's not really an easy way to measure those improvements either.

This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

Oh, I don't doubt that the impact WILL be positive - I'm just saying it's far too early to tell concretely. There are a lot of roadblocks in the way, not the least of which is a PTSA President who has written articles condemning the new admissions process and who stands to remain in office for two years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

Yep. Old TJ is dead.

Yep, the new TJ has more naturally gifted students and seems to be far less toxic.

I'm pretty damn pro-reform when it comes to TJ, but it's way too early to make any judgments as yet. It will take years to determine if the present reforms (which will and probably should be tweaked on some level post-COVID) actually have a positive impact on the learning environment - and there's not really an easy way to measure those improvements either.

This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

bull

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Those posters who try to make a case that there's such a thing as "truly gifted" and "truly deserving of a gifted education" despite having shown little interest in honing their STEM skills during their elementary school years have obviously never worked with STEM kids and have no clue what they're talking about.

By the time children are 11 or 12 years old those who are active in STEM (particularly in Math) have far outpaced those who are not; and whatever degree of innate giftedness (a vague and elitist concept, btw) really doesn't matter and shouldn't matter. Nobody gives a crap about potential at this age anymore, it's the record of engagement and academic success that matters. As it should.

That's why TJ's change is so disturbing.

Going to build on some of the other responses to this nonsense.

One of the reasons that the changes at TJ are so important is the disincentivizing of extreme advancement in math for its own sake.

You can talk to any of the math teachers at TJ and they will tell you that there are far too many kids who are artificially advanced in math at the expense of a foundational understanding of core concepts. Sure, there are a few truly exceptional kids out there who really belong in, say, Calc BC or beyond in 9th grade - but for every one of those at TJ, there are 10-20 kids who have been made to appear to be one of those kids and are in way over their heads as a result.

"Honing their STEM skills". Give me a break. I've watched students develop an excellent STEM skill set for decades at TJ - kids that walked in as excellent students across the board but without a specialized set of "STEM skills" and discovered their passion for a specific STEM field while they were there - or (gasp) decided that their world-class STEM education was best leveraged in politics, or economics, or teaching, or any number of other tremendously important disciplines. This is why the freshman year includes Design and Tech and Research Statistics.

I agree that "innate giftedness" is pretty much BS, but there is a lot to be said for one's ability to contribute to the academic environment above and beyond just being hyper-advanced. And yeah, that's a subjective metric, but you know what? Every aspect of the rest of their adult lives will be centered around subjective evaluations, from team and club selections to college admissions to dating to job applications. And the world is trending further toward that direction as corporate cultures change.

Adapt or perish.

Subjective math. Yes of course. Adapt and perish is more like it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are obsessed with math advancement as the end-all-be-all of STEM aptitude. It's just not. There are so many factors that are far more important to and predictive of eventual success in STEM - like grit, determination, intellectual curiosity, and (perhaps most importantly) genuine passion for the subject matter.

And that genuine passion a) can and most frequently is acquired in high school and college and b) too often at TJ is manufactured by parents.

1. Math advancement is not end all be all of STEM aptitude. It is an important factor.
2. You are just stating the obvious. Of course grit, determination is important. And passion as long as it translates to work. I am passionate about playing the guitar but I don't practice doesn't cut it.
3. Agree that all parents can push too although I don't know what genuine passion is.

If your intention is to push some kids are unidimensional stereotype, shame on you.

I've been around TJ for long enough to know what I'm talking about. But - and this is important - the idea of the STEM "passion" being manufactured by parents is by no means limited to the Asian-American community at TJ. It goes across racial lines at the school and is a function of an admissions process that, in the past, deeply incentivized parents to make their children fit into a very narrow picture of what constitutes a potentially successful TJ student.

You can feel free to make this about Asian parents all you want - I'm not doing that. My point is that by and large, legitimate non-manufactured passion in STEM is not something that's measurable or identifiable in students who are 11 or 12 years old except in very rare instances, and as such trying to identify it at that age will create harmful unintended consequences like the ones that we've witnessed in Northern Virginia over the past dozen years, where you have tons of kids who are quitting activities that they genuinely enjoy in pursuit of the golden TJ ticket.

We need to STOP incentivizing behavior that pushes kids into narrow fields at such young ages. Parents can still do it if they want - their kids are theirs to parent as they so choose - but that behavior should not confer an advantage in any admissions process.

So the old process was bad (despite all the smart people at TJ) and new process great. Got it. What did the old process measure? And what does new process measure?

People at TJ didn't design the old process - the admissions office did, based on the directives that they got from the school board and the FCPS policies regarding TJ. So literally no one at TJ was involved with creating either the old admissions process or the new one. (I've said it before - if you're going to throw down with me, you'd better know what you're talking about)

The old process attempted to measure "academic achievement" by (in addition to their transcript) putting the kids through a three-section, three-hour exam that was unlike anything they would have encountered in their middle school careers - unless their parents had exposed them to it in another forum, usually at great cost in terms of hours and financial layout.

It also attempted to measure "passion for STEM" by having the students respond to a few essay questions and a problem-solving essay - which the new process also does. I will admit that, not having seen the questions on the new SIS sheet, I don't know how that piece is different from what it was before, and because of the intentional opacity of the admissions personnel and office, I don't know precisely how they've changed what they're looking for.

I will also say - as I've said previously - that I think that removing the teacher recommendations was a mistake. Even though these are subject to some level of bias, it is only the classroom teacher who can really provide a window into the student and the totality of their contributions to the academic environment.

I am quite certain that a re-engineered recommendation form, designed to take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete and purpose-built to for teachers to compare their students to one another, in addition to the option for teachers to write at length either positively or negatively on behalf of 5 students each, would accomplish what needs to be accomplished in this area and would go a long way toward identifying the students for whom TJ makes the most sense without overburdening the teachers at traditional TJ feeders.

Ok. So

Old process = academic achievement test +gpa + essays to show interest+ teacher recommendations.

New process = lottery after gpa criteria + essays to show interest + experience factors to demonstrate adversity.

Yeah?

Yep. Old TJ is dead.

Yep, the new TJ has more naturally gifted students and seems to be far less toxic.

I'm pretty damn pro-reform when it comes to TJ, but it's way too early to make any judgments as yet. It will take years to determine if the present reforms (which will and probably should be tweaked on some level post-COVID) actually have a positive impact on the learning environment - and there's not really an easy way to measure those improvements either.

This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

It was exactly the same. People were all doom and gloom and yet things seem to be better than ever now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

bull

Why would you say that. Perhaps the original admissions process wasn't doing a very good job.
Also, the new admissions may still be getting the top students who would do well on AMC 8 while bringing in weaker students.
Honor roll in AMC 8 is a pretty small subset.

[Anonymous]

New TJ seems good so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New TJ seems good so far.

We are only a few days into the new SY and you’re saying something you’d say under any scenario that reflected the change in admissions.

[Anonymous]

Yep. That’s right. Because it is not the end of the world. Whatever the admission change, it will be OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yep. That’s right. Because it is not the end of the world. Whatever the admission change, it will be OK.

This isn't super complicated.

The old process produced the #1 public high school in America, as adjudged by several news outlets. Why? Because those outlets based their ratings largely on test scores like the PSAT, SAT, ACT, and AP exams, and TJ's admissions process has always consistently overselected for performance on standardized tests like the SHSAT, Quant-Q, and ACTs.

TJ's high rankings came not from anything that the school itself was doing, but rather from the county's priorities with respect to the admissions process. Require excellent test taking skills as a condition of admission, and it should come as no surprise that TJ's average SAT score is usually in the 1500s. I'm not especially brilliant, but I got into TJ many years ago on my excellent test-taking skills (honed by my parents' efforts over many years) and got into an excellent college largely on the strength of an SAT score in the mid-1500s. My excellent test-taking skills have been largely useless over the rest of my career, as they are for essentially everyone once they finish with schooling.

It's important to distinguish between test-taking ability and ability to contribute to an educational environment. TJ - like any elite educational environment - delivers a stronger product when the students in the classrooms are dedicated to working together in an environment of collaboration rather than competition. Literally anyone who has any recent experience at TJ - not parents, I'm talking about people who are actually in the classroom - knows that TJ's biggest problem is the toxic competition and comparison between the students.

And please, spare me the "dog whistle" comments on the word "toxic". Try to follow the logic - TJ's racial composition is a function of the old admissions process, and the toxic environment is a function of the old admissions process, but the toxic environment is NOT a function of the racial composition. It's ALWAYS going to be hyper-competitive when you have a process that paints a picture of the ideal student and then incentivizes and rewards parents for turning their kids into their closest approximation of that ideal student. Yes, TJ is 70% Asian, but that's not why it's a toxic environment. It's toxic because too many of the students have the same goals, backgrounds and priorities, and that's a direct function of the old admissions process.

The biggest factor in the education experience at TJ is not and has never been the level of advancement of the students - it's their commitment to contributing to a positive learning environment. And honestly, that's why the only thing you really need to do to improve the process is to reintroduce the teacher recommendation, narrowly tailored to allow the teacher to evaluate not only the student's readiness for TJ, but also their ability and desire to create value for their fellow students when compared to other applicants. Teachers can tell you whether or not a kid can hack it far better than an exam can. And yeah, it's subjective - but so is everything else in life. Students would be well-served by getting better at subjective evaluations - and you'll probably start seeing TJ students get into better colleges as a result.

The simple act of eliminating the exam removes an occluding factor when evaluating these students. For too long, test-taking ability has been conflated with academic ability, and we're finally starting to move away from that old and flawed mindset. TJ has been well behind the curve when it comes to that shift, but it's nice to see FCPS finally joining the leading edge.

[Anonymous]

TJ was the number 1 school in the country long before it was predominantly Asian and long before all the cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ was the number 1 school in the country long before it was predominantly Asian and long before all the cheating.

The first time it was listed as #1, by US News and World Report, was in 2009. The Class of 2009 was 32.32% Asian per FCAG.org.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ was the number 1 school in the country long before it was predominantly Asian and long before all the cheating.

The first time it was listed as #1, by US News and World Report, was in 2009. The Class of 2009 was 32.32% Asian per FCAG.org.

And now it’s more than twice that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This isn't the first school system to enact these reforms and by all accounts, the impact has been positive. For example, MCPS enacted a similar reform for its MS magnet program a couple years ago. It doubled the number of URMs and comparable numbers of students ended up with honor roll or higher on the AMC8. I know that's not what some parents want to hear but those are the facts.

bull

Why would you say that. Perhaps the original admissions process wasn't doing a very good job.
Also, the new admissions may still be getting the top students who would do well on AMC 8 while bringing in weaker students.
Honor roll in AMC 8 is a pretty small subset.

I spent over $5k on prep classes for my kid to ensure they'd get into TJ but this new process hurts their chances.