What it actually means is that Curie is relatively ubiquitous among the South Asian community in Western Fairfax and Loudoun counties. If a South Asian student gets into TJ from that part of the county, there's a pretty strong chance (although it isn't 100%) that that student is a Curie product. In each case, either the student would have gotten in anyway (which means the parents wasted their money) or the student nudged out someone else (which is why people use the "pay-to-play" term that everyone seems to hate so much). |
Real pay to play is the "Varsity Blues" cases not prepping. |
The funniest thing about the Coalition stooges is that they think that pro-reform people are somehow in favor of Varsity Blues. We're not, and we think it's even more disgusting than what goes on with TJ. But it's not especially relevant to the conversation about TJ. |
Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant for you. How convenient. Must be a Trumper. |
How precisely is it relevant to the conversation? Merely because both cases involve parents and admission to elite schools? |
Sounds reasonable. I'm pro-reforms that give all public school students a fair chance at these opportunities not just the wealthy; however, not sure what varsity blues is? Is it another prep-center? |
Yes, amazing prep center with guaranteed admissions to top schools for uber wealthy white parents. |
even provide the specific SAT scores you want if necessary. |
It's not a prep center. It's a very specific scandal referring to a few students who were granted admission at prestigious universities thanks to efforts by their parents to bribe admissions officers, inflate their kids' exam scores through a variety of artificial means, and in some cases pay coaches to falsify recruiting information to pretend that non-athletes were actually recruited athletes. It was a devastating scandal and implicated many famous celebrities. When you hear Coalition stooges talking about "Aunt Becky", they're referring to the fact that Full House actress Lori Loughlin was one of the most visible convicts in this case. The total number of students improperly enrolled was about half of what Curie gets into TJ in a typical year. |
One parent estimated that Curie had at least 100 up to 120 in the class of 2026. Hard to know exactly who is still on after a few were removed due to the meals questions. Another prep company (TJ Prep) claims that 85% of the kids that completed their program were admitted in the class of 2026. The “reforms” did NOTHING to remove the incentives of prep. If your child is truly interested, you should likely enroll them in a prep center to give them a fighting chance. |
If anything, the reforms made it easier to prep. In the old system, teacher recommendations were largely immune to prep. Prep can only get you so far for high level STEM EC achievements. There are also limits on how well your score could be improved through prep on the old TJ tests. It's much easier to prep kids for earning high marks on the relatively brief, relatively simple problem solving essay. It's also pretty easy to anticipate the types of things that will be asked in the SES, and then help kids tailor their responses. |
Don't know but yes most students that get into TJ were prepped to the gils. The real problem with the old system was parents were effectively buying their students the test answers. It was a big scandal and the BOE put an end to this corruption with the reforms. |
#fakenews |
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Removing teacher recommendations is a massive red flag. The only reason to remove it was to make the process into a lottery.
One student who was caught cheating in Science Olympiad. Our team got penalized for it and that student was removed from the team for the state level competition. That student got in. Teacher recommendation would have been able to eliminate this. |
Exactly! |