TJ Admissions

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am looking at the application process now. I feel sick to my stomach. This is supposed to be a high school for science and technology. Yet there appears to be very little focus on foundational subjects like mathematics, and far more focus on subjective “experience factors” and “21st Century Skills”.

My kids still wants to apply but .barf.
I suppose I should encourage her to write a lot about being biracial, dad speaks another language, and currently being raised by single mom?

How competitive is her middle school? Whatever your personal opinion of the application process, that's the most important factor.

Middle school is ranked among the lowest. my question is how can they expect students from poorly ranked middle school to thrive at TJ and be among the best there, especially when they start off at a disadvantage?

The TJ has already started inflating the grades three years ago for the under-qualified.

They are increasing the curve but frankly it's a change that was a change they probably needed a long time ago.
The GPA differential between what these kids get at TJ and what they would have gotten at their base school was just too large.

Offering the same rigorous courses to base high school kids would give all students a fair chance, way better than giving privileged TJ kids inflated GPA.

Jeez. Bitter much?
Take a look at the T10 thread about TJ just now; it's not a big college advantage to be at the school.

DP. When you look at the declining performance of TJ students, the argument for maintaining TJ as a separate magnet gets weaker. Its main reason to exist now is simply to allocate seats “fairly” across the county, which begs the question as to why FCPS goes to the trouble of prioritizing students at one school above all others. If they were so bent out of shape over students at certain middle schools having a leg up to get into TJ, they ought to be at least as concerned with favoring TJ over the other high and secondary schools.

You sound clueless. All of your post is nonsense.

You so want to keep hanging on to the prestige of a school that is obviously declining by every objective measure. At some point the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

It's a magnet school, not a prestige school. You are mistaken because you are working from the wrong starting point.

Magnet school that screens Asian American students based on merit, but others based on diversity experience factors. How will the bottom hundred students ever be able to catch up to the top hundred Asian American peers who are already advanced in all stem areas?

So glad that doesn't happen since it's completely illegal. Admissions by law are race-blind. If you have evidence that they are using race, you can win a multi-million dollar lawsuit, but since that hasn't happened, it's safe to assume you are just talking sh**.

Treason is also very illegal; and yet January 6th still happened and the guy at the top got away with it.

Excellent use of Whataboutery!! Nevertheless, the PP's point stands. It is illegal and you can sue the county and win a huge payout if you can prove this is going on, but since that hasn't happened, safe to say it isn't going on despite the false claims of a few malcontents.

That's not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when you dismiss legitmate concerns in one area because concerns exist in other areas.

This is saying that just becasuse something is illegal doesn't mean people don't get away with it.

There is no real doubt that race was a primary factor in changing the admissions process.

There is no real doubt that the lower end of the students are less capable than in prior years.

It's exactly whataboutery. Just because some people may or may not have gotten away with treason doesn't change the fact that Asians make up a majority at TJ and were the biggest beneficiary of the admission changes. Claiming otherwise is laughable.

First of all, the claim that the treason comparison was responding to was the statement that discrimination couldn't be occurring because it's illegal.
Illegal shit happens all the time. I could just as easily have said murder is illegal and yet people still get murdered.

Second of all Asians are definitely not the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process. Every group saw an increase while asians and ONLY asians saw a decrease. You would have to be an idiot to think asians were the largest beneficiaries of this admissions change.

I think you might be trying to say that poor asians saw a large increase, which is true because poor people of all races saw a large increase due to the poverty preference and when you look at achievement gaps between races, the achievement gap is larger at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the higher end. Wealthy non-asian kids tend to come from families that value education and the asian cultural advantage isn't as wide. At the lower end, the gap is much much wider, the sacrifices necessary to pursue educational opportunity require more sacrifice, something that is hard to do unless you have an almost religious devotion to education.

Overall, asians saw a large decrease in admissions, everyone knows this.

Not sure what you are going on about but Asians make up over 60% of TJ. It has already been shown they are at a historic high in terms of representation and the largest beneficiary of the admission change were also (low-income) Asians.

The only group that dropped when they increased the class size was asians. Everyone else went up, asians went down. This was the intended consequence of the changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school board now is different. You could petition the new school board to revisit the admissions process.

I think the current chairman was among the wokest and most vocal supporters for dei admissions to TJ.

So you want them to go back to the old system where only kids from a few wealthy feeders can get in?

not wealthy but hardworking students from top three MS schools, that FCPS desperately needs and relies on for achievements.

Even with the new system, TJ admissions is literally begging, going down on the knees begging, students from Carson, Cooper and Longfellow to accept their 120+ offers for 2028 class. Almost one third of FCPS total seats. Why is that?

You think they were begging at Carson? You should have seen Rocky Run. They almost dropped off the list of schools that had more than 10 kids going to TJ. A lot of the Ricky Run kids are coming off the waitlist. The prospect of going all the say to Alexandria from Centreville for a watered down version of TJ just wasn't attractive to a lot of students. Schools closer to TJ had higher accept rates, it's starting to turn into a local magnet.

[Anonymous]

TJ Admission offer can be easily "given", but TJ survival demands individual "readiness and effort". They can manipulate the composition of admission offers, but not the performance of the admitted.

Top hundred students of the class continues to be the same minority group, before as well as now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ Admission offer can be easily "given", but TJ survival demands individual "readiness and effort". They can manipulate the composition of admission offers, but not the performance of the admitted.

Top hundred students of the class continues to be the same minority group, before as well as now.

The whole school seems about the same. Well maybe it's less toxic now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school board now is different. You could petition the new school board to revisit the admissions process.

I think the current chairman was among the wokest and most vocal supporters for dei admissions to TJ.

So you want them to go back to the old system where only kids from a few wealthy feeders can get in?

not wealthy but hardworking students from top three MS schools, that FCPS desperately needs and relies on for achievements.

Even with the new system, TJ admissions is literally begging, going down on the knees begging, students from Carson, Cooper and Longfellow to accept their 120+ offers for 2028 class. Almost one third of FCPS total seats. Why is that?

You think they were begging at Carson? You should have seen Rocky Run. They almost dropped off the list of schools that had more than 10 kids going to TJ. A lot of the Ricky Run kids are coming off the waitlist. The prospect of going all the say to Alexandria from Centreville for a watered down version of TJ just wasn't attractive to a lot of students. Schools closer to TJ had higher accept rates, it's starting to turn into a local magnet.

That PP sounds delusional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ Admission offer can be easily "given", but TJ survival demands individual "readiness and effort". They can manipulate the composition of admission offers, but not the performance of the admitted.

Top hundred students of the class continues to be the same minority group, before as well as now.

The whole school seems about the same. Well maybe it's less toxic now.

The atmosphere is a bit less competitive and there are more generous curves so maintaining a good GPA is not as much of an issue as it used to be.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am looking at the application process now. I feel sick to my stomach. This is supposed to be a high school for science and technology. Yet there appears to be very little focus on foundational subjects like mathematics, and far more focus on subjective “experience factors” and “21st Century Skills”.

My kids still wants to apply but .barf.
I suppose I should encourage her to write a lot about being biracial, dad speaks another language, and currently being raised by single mom?

How competitive is her middle school? Whatever your personal opinion of the application process, that's the most important factor.

Middle school is ranked among the lowest. my question is how can they expect students from poorly ranked middle school to thrive at TJ and be among the best there, especially when they start off at a disadvantage?

The TJ has already started inflating the grades three years ago for the under-qualified.

They are increasing the curve but frankly it's a change that was a change they probably needed a long time ago.
The GPA differential between what these kids get at TJ and what they would have gotten at their base school was just too large.

Offering the same rigorous courses to base high school kids would give all students a fair chance, way better than giving privileged TJ kids inflated GPA.

Jeez. Bitter much?
Take a look at the T10 thread about TJ just now; it's not a big college advantage to be at the school.

DP. When you look at the declining performance of TJ students, the argument for maintaining TJ as a separate magnet gets weaker. Its main reason to exist now is simply to allocate seats “fairly” across the county, which begs the question as to why FCPS goes to the trouble of prioritizing students at one school above all others. If they were so bent out of shape over students at certain middle schools having a leg up to get into TJ, they ought to be at least as concerned with favoring TJ over the other high and secondary schools.

You sound clueless. All of your post is nonsense.

You so want to keep hanging on to the prestige of a school that is obviously declining by every objective measure. At some point the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

It's a magnet school, not a prestige school. You are mistaken because you are working from the wrong starting point.

Magnet school that screens Asian American students based on merit, but others based on diversity experience factors. How will the bottom hundred students ever be able to catch up to the top hundred Asian American peers who are already advanced in all stem areas?

So glad that doesn't happen since it's completely illegal. Admissions by law are race-blind. If you have evidence that they are using race, you can win a multi-million dollar lawsuit, but since that hasn't happened, it's safe to assume you are just talking sh**.

Treason is also very illegal; and yet January 6th still happened and the guy at the top got away with it.

Excellent use of Whataboutery!! Nevertheless, the PP's point stands. It is illegal and you can sue the county and win a huge payout if you can prove this is going on, but since that hasn't happened, safe to say it isn't going on despite the false claims of a few malcontents.

That's not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when you dismiss legitmate concerns in one area because concerns exist in other areas.

This is saying that just becasuse something is illegal doesn't mean people don't get away with it.

There is no real doubt that race was a primary factor in changing the admissions process.

There is no real doubt that the lower end of the students are less capable than in prior years.

It's exactly whataboutery. Just because some people may or may not have gotten away with treason doesn't change the fact that Asians make up a majority at TJ and were the biggest beneficiary of the admission changes. Claiming otherwise is laughable.

First of all, the claim that the treason comparison was responding to was the statement that discrimination couldn't be occurring because it's illegal.
Illegal shit happens all the time. I could just as easily have said murder is illegal and yet people still get murdered.

Second of all Asians are definitely not the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process. Every group saw an increase while asians and ONLY asians saw a decrease. You would have to be an idiot to think asians were the largest beneficiaries of this admissions change.

I think you might be trying to say that poor asians saw a large increase, which is true because poor people of all races saw a large increase due to the poverty preference and when you look at achievement gaps between races, the achievement gap is larger at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the higher end. Wealthy non-asian kids tend to come from families that value education and the asian cultural advantage isn't as wide. At the lower end, the gap is much much wider, the sacrifices necessary to pursue educational opportunity require more sacrifice, something that is hard to do unless you have an almost religious devotion to education.

Overall, asians saw a large decrease in admissions, everyone knows this.

Not sure what you are going on about but Asians make up over 60% of TJ. It has already been shown they are at a historic high in terms of representation and the largest beneficiary of the admission change were also (low-income) Asians.

The only group that dropped when they increased the class size was asians. Everyone else went up, asians went down. This was the intended consequence of the changes.

Well, I don't know about that, but they do use race blind admissions as required by US law. And it's been documented here numerous times that Asian enrollment is at a current all time high and that low-income Asians were the number one beneficiary of the admission changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ Admission offer can be easily "given", but TJ survival demands individual "readiness and effort". They can manipulate the composition of admission offers, but not the performance of the admitted.

Top hundred students of the class continues to be the same minority group, before as well as now.

The whole school seems about the same. Well maybe it's less toxic now.

The atmosphere is a bit less competitive and there are more generous curves so maintaining a good GPA is not as much of an issue as it used to be.

The pandemic had an impact on all students, but I'd give it a few years for things to get back to normal.

[Anonymous]

Pandemic forced the admission of lower merit students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Pandemic forced the admission of lower merit students?

I mean, yeah - all students suffered from the pandemic, including "higher merit ' students.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am looking at the application process now. I feel sick to my stomach. This is supposed to be a high school for science and technology. Yet there appears to be very little focus on foundational subjects like mathematics, and far more focus on subjective “experience factors” and “21st Century Skills”.

My kids still wants to apply but .barf.
I suppose I should encourage her to write a lot about being biracial, dad speaks another language, and currently being raised by single mom?

How competitive is her middle school? Whatever your personal opinion of the application process, that's the most important factor.

Middle school is ranked among the lowest. my question is how can they expect students from poorly ranked middle school to thrive at TJ and be among the best there, especially when they start off at a disadvantage?

The TJ has already started inflating the grades three years ago for the under-qualified.

They are increasing the curve but frankly it's a change that was a change they probably needed a long time ago.
The GPA differential between what these kids get at TJ and what they would have gotten at their base school was just too large.

Offering the same rigorous courses to base high school kids would give all students a fair chance, way better than giving privileged TJ kids inflated GPA.

Jeez. Bitter much?
Take a look at the T10 thread about TJ just now; it's not a big college advantage to be at the school.

DP. When you look at the declining performance of TJ students, the argument for maintaining TJ as a separate magnet gets weaker. Its main reason to exist now is simply to allocate seats “fairly” across the county, which begs the question as to why FCPS goes to the trouble of prioritizing students at one school above all others. If they were so bent out of shape over students at certain middle schools having a leg up to get into TJ, they ought to be at least as concerned with favoring TJ over the other high and secondary schools.

You sound clueless. All of your post is nonsense.

You so want to keep hanging on to the prestige of a school that is obviously declining by every objective measure. At some point the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

It's a magnet school, not a prestige school. You are mistaken because you are working from the wrong starting point.

Magnet school that screens Asian American students based on merit, but others based on diversity experience factors. How will the bottom hundred students ever be able to catch up to the top hundred Asian American peers who are already advanced in all stem areas?

So glad that doesn't happen since it's completely illegal. Admissions by law are race-blind. If you have evidence that they are using race, you can win a multi-million dollar lawsuit, but since that hasn't happened, it's safe to assume you are just talking sh**.

Treason is also very illegal; and yet January 6th still happened and the guy at the top got away with it.

Excellent use of Whataboutery!! Nevertheless, the PP's point stands. It is illegal and you can sue the county and win a huge payout if you can prove this is going on, but since that hasn't happened, safe to say it isn't going on despite the false claims of a few malcontents.

That's not whataboutism. Whataboutism is when you dismiss legitmate concerns in one area because concerns exist in other areas.

This is saying that just becasuse something is illegal doesn't mean people don't get away with it.

There is no real doubt that race was a primary factor in changing the admissions process.

There is no real doubt that the lower end of the students are less capable than in prior years.

It's exactly whataboutery. Just because some people may or may not have gotten away with treason doesn't change the fact that Asians make up a majority at TJ and were the biggest beneficiary of the admission changes. Claiming otherwise is laughable.

First of all, the claim that the treason comparison was responding to was the statement that discrimination couldn't be occurring because it's illegal.
Illegal shit happens all the time. I could just as easily have said murder is illegal and yet people still get murdered.

Second of all Asians are definitely not the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process. Every group saw an increase while asians and ONLY asians saw a decrease. You would have to be an idiot to think asians were the largest beneficiaries of this admissions change.

I think you might be trying to say that poor asians saw a large increase, which is true because poor people of all races saw a large increase due to the poverty preference and when you look at achievement gaps between races, the achievement gap is larger at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the higher end. Wealthy non-asian kids tend to come from families that value education and the asian cultural advantage isn't as wide. At the lower end, the gap is much much wider, the sacrifices necessary to pursue educational opportunity require more sacrifice, something that is hard to do unless you have an almost religious devotion to education.

Overall, asians saw a large decrease in admissions, everyone knows this.

Not sure what you are going on about but Asians make up over 60% of TJ. It has already been shown they are at a historic high in terms of representation and the largest beneficiary of the admission change were also (low-income) Asians.

The only group that dropped when they increased the class size was asians. Everyone else went up, asians went down. This was the intended consequence of the changes.

Well, I don't know about that, but they do use race blind admissions as required by US law.

Of course you know about that. The process is race neutral, so were grandfather clauses and poll taxes.

And it's been documented here numerous times that Asian enrollment is at a current all time high and that low-income Asians were the number one beneficiary of the admission changes.

Asian enrollment is not at an all time high. Asian enrollment had been increasing every year since inception.

2021 was the first year when the asian population at TJ dropped. It is at about 1284 now from a high of 1398 the year before the change.

Low income asians increased but that's because there was a preference for low income kids (experience factors) and the advantages of asian culture is more pronounced at lower SES levels than at higher ones.
Affluent families pretty much ALL value education to some degree or another and they have the resources to reinforce that without too much pain. At lower SES levels those sacrifices require an almost religious faith in the value of education, something that a lot of asian cultures (and other immigrant cultures) have developed that other SES cultures have not.

I think opportunities for poor kids is a great idea, I wish they would do two things.
Create better tracking and academic support services.
The poor parents sometimes have no idea how to help their kids academically. What sacrifices are worth making and what sacrifices are wasteful.
Pick the poor kids based on test scores, this will vastly improve their chances of adapting to and thriving in an environment like TJ. Keep the 1.5% if you want but lets pick the most academically capable kids from each school and not based entirely on subjective essays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ Admission offer can be easily "given", but TJ survival demands individual "readiness and effort". They can manipulate the composition of admission offers, but not the performance of the admitted.

Top hundred students of the class continues to be the same minority group, before as well as now.

The whole school seems about the same. Well maybe it's less toxic now.

The atmosphere is a bit less competitive and there are more generous curves so maintaining a good GPA is not as much of an issue as it used to be.

The pandemic had an impact on all students, but I'd give it a few years for things to get back to normal.

No, it didn't. TJ is the only school that is still doing this to this extent. TJ is the only school that has seen these drops in academic performance.

The PSAT drop, the SOL drops, the higher washout rate, the higher curves necessary to keep kids from failing.

This isn't the pandemic, this is the result of reducing the merit filter.

You can reintroduce the merit filter and still have a 1.5%/school quota. I don't see where this stubborn resistance to merit comes from. Merit is a real thing, it's not just a way for asians to exclude whites, blacks and hispanics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Pandemic forced the admission of lower merit students?

I mean, yeah - all students suffered from the pandemic, including "higher merit ' students.

That's strange because it didn't have this effect at stuyvesant (or any of the other science high schools) in NYC

In fact it didn't have this effect on FCPS in general if you don't count the precipitous drop at TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Pandemic forced the admission of lower merit students?

I mean, yeah - all students suffered from the pandemic, including "higher merit ' students.

That's strange because it didn't have this effect at stuyvesant (or any of the other science high schools) in NYC

In fact it didn't have this effect on FCPS in general if you don't count the precipitous drop at TJ.

That doesn't even make sense. TJ exists, it is in Fairfax. You can't zero it out when inconvenient.

[Anonymous]

Using low-income Asian Americans as a cover to admit others based on non-merit criteria is an insult to them. Like all Asian Americans, low-income Asians also prefer to "earn" their admission through their own efforts rather than accept offers that would place at the bottom of the class.