TJHSST Class of 2017 College Destination List

[Anonymous]

I would venture to say I don’t think a lot of low income, low SES kids go to TJ to begin with. These are mostly kids with privileged background. Am I wrong?

[Anonymous]

Some kids have health issues and need to continue living with their parents - hence GMU.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And JMU isn't great either.

Then again you are talking about 8 students out of a class of 430 attending either JMU or GMU with the lowest WEIGHTED GPA around 3.14. And money is likely a factor as well.

UVA just announced its Echols Scholars (offered to about 5% of incoming first years) for its early admits and TJ seems to have an outsize # in its 2018 class.

My DC was offered Echols from her FCPS school. It seems like a nice perk, but comes with no $$$, so DC will probably attend elsewhere.

Any opinion on whether VCU, JMU, GMU are great schools to get into after attending TJ?! Do they require the rigor that is TJ?

Great schools? Nope. Bad options for the bottom 10% of the class? Nope. Do their general colleges require TJ level rigor? Again, nope. But VCU 6 year med school does. And GMU has an excellent and well regarded CS department.

Seriously? I have not heard that. It’s not on any of the rankings of top computer science colleges.

GMU is not as well known for CS, no. BUT they do have a strong program. It attracts a lot of minority / low SES students. Personal experience here, recruiting programmers out of GMU--so far, all excellent, mostly latino, whose parents could not afford to send them elsewhere and many of whom worked to put themselves through college. Some were caring for sick relatives while attending college, so had to be close by. Very strong work ethic, and very talented folks.

It's hard to see outside your bubble of privilege to try to understand why a student may choose GMU even if they had other options. But that doesn't mean that graduates of schools that are not nationally well-recognized are somehow inferior. I would call it a hidden gem, actually.

It’s fine if students attend GMU for reasons such as finances, needing to live close by to take care of sick relatives... but don’t make up reasons such as “they go for computer science”. A TJ student woukdnt choose GMU for CS. Now, if their life circumstances necessitate that they go there, then that’s a completely different thing. And if it happens to have a good CS department, then that is a plus.

But how can you tell, from a college destination list, why those students chose GMU? That's precisely my point--you can't. So stop judging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would venture to say I don’t think a lot of low income, low SES kids go to TJ to begin with. These are mostly kids with privileged background. Am I wrong?

Mostly, yes. But the class is not mostly going to GMU--I would venture a guess those stats are highly correlated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here’s a little tip: if most people don’t know about it, it’s bc it’s probably not that good.

Really? Without googling, you list the top schools in the US for astronomy. Then check the US News. UC-Santa Cruz, U Arizona ans Ohio State all make the cut. MIT does not. Don’t assume you know the best schools in every STEM field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here’s a little tip: if most people don’t know about it, it’s bc it’s probably not that good.

Really? Without googling, you list the top schools in the US for astronomy. Then check the US News. UC-Santa Cruz, U Arizona ans Ohio State all make the cut. MIT does not. Don’t assume you know the best schools in every STEM field.

Dude, you put WAYYYY too much faith in USNews rankings. It is a blunt instrument.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Is it just me or is this list underwhelming? If the primary goal of having a child attend TJ is to get them into an elite college, I think many of those TJ parents to be (and their kids) might be in for a rude awakening. Certainly not all TJ parents are pushing their kids to attend TJ so Johnny can get into Harvard, Stanford or MIT but prolly a large number do think this way whether they admit it or not.

+1,000!! Totally underwhelming.

First— 100% of TJ kids go to college. So you are seeing the destinations for kids with a 3.2 as well as a 4.6 GPA. And there is no NoVA or Longwood or Radford in the mix for the 3.2 kids.

Second, you send your kid to TJ for the education and the peer group and the research opportunities in an area of strong interest. Excellent chance your kid will end up at the same college from TJ— but probably much better prepared. Parents who use TJ for an ivy edge or for bragging rights do their kids no favors. Lots of kids love the TJ experience. Kids who don’t should move back to their base school— or not apply at all.

Sorry, but the list is still underwhelming to me. VCU and JMU?! From TJ????

JMU was a surprise, because this was the first kid to go in several years. Who knows their reasoning. Some kids have parents who went, or got a scholarship, or were ranked 432/435 at TJ. It happens. VCU is not a surprise. They have an excellent direct admit 6 year college/ medical school program. You do 2 years of college, and 4 years of med school there, without having to reapply to med school. Good scholarships, little or no debt for med school. Every year, several Tj kids do this program. Before you decide that a particular college is not worthy or should be discounted, so some reasearch. You may discover that a school you consider subpar is the best school in the country in geothermal energy research, so something equally esoteric, which is what the kid did their senior mentorship or research lab in. For example, my sophomore DD is working with the CubeSat program at TJ and applying for the senior astrophysics lab. She has the University of Alabama on her short list of colleges (first choice: Cal Tech to work with JPL). You would look down your nose at this. She sees the special programs they have that collaborate with NASA.

Don’t judge what you don’t know.

Before you discount

Do you know for sure the students going to VCU are doing the med school? No, you don’t.

Ummm yes. I do. At least for my kids’s graduating year 80% did the med program. He had a friend who went there for a art program as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was talking about computer science. Sorry, GMU is not known for being a top computer science college at all. Here are some real top CS colleges:

MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Cal Tech, Yale, Rice, Georgia Institue of Technology, USC, U Penn...

GMU isn’t even in the top 50 for CS. So what I said stands. If it’s not we’ll know for it, it’s not that good. And yes, Harvey Mudd is well known for CS. Not frickin GMU!

Not every kid can afford to pay full freight for a private school. Let’s talk in State CS programs.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And JMU isn't great either.

Then again you are talking about 8 students out of a class of 430 attending either JMU or GMU with the lowest WEIGHTED GPA around 3.14. And money is likely a factor as well.

UVA just announced its Echols Scholars (offered to about 5% of incoming first years) for its early admits and TJ seems to have an outsize # in its 2018 class.

My DC was offered Echols from her FCPS school. It seems like a nice perk, but comes with no $$$, so DC will probably attend elsewhere.

Any opinion on whether VCU, JMU, GMU are great schools to get into after attending TJ?! Do they require the rigor that is TJ?

Great schools? Nope. Bad options for the bottom 10% of the class? Nope. Do their general colleges require TJ level rigor? Again, nope. But VCU 6 year med school does. And GMU has an excellent and well regarded CS department.

Yes, I’m sure the students choose GMU for Computer Science.

Some do. GMU has an active senior mentorship program with TJ in CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would venture to say I don’t think a lot of low income, low SES kids go to TJ to begin with. These are mostly kids with privileged background. Am I wrong?

Yes. And no. TJ has very few FARMs kids. So not low SES. But it has a ton on donought hole kids. In fact, it seems that the vast majority of kids fall into this category. Affluent, with parents able to pay for an in state college with no loans. But not wealthy. Most can’t afford to pay out of state without significant merit aid. My kid fits this description— so do most of his friends. That eliminates Ivy’s, and often means they will go to a less competitive school where they can get merit aid, vs a more competitive school where they cannot. And we are assuming our TJ kid will go to grad school. That means no undergrad loans to make up the difference for him. If the choice is between WM fully paid for or Rice with loans or us emptying our 501ks, my kid will go to WM.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Here’s a little tip: if most people don’t know about it, it’s bc it’s probably not that good.

Really? Without googling, you list the top schools in the US for astronomy. Then check the US News. UC-Santa Cruz, U Arizona ans Ohio State all make the cut. MIT does not. Don’t assume you know the best schools in every STEM field.

Dude, you put WAYYYY too much faith in USNews rankings. It is a blunt instrument.

Dude. It still tells you that before you sneer at a kid going to a school like Ohio State, you might want to consider that they have a highly ranked program in a specialized area.

And undergrad astronomy rankings are pretty specific. Not a “blunt instrument”.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And JMU isn't great either.

Then again you are talking about 8 students out of a class of 430 attending either JMU or GMU with the lowest WEIGHTED GPA around 3.14. And money is likely a factor as well.

UVA just announced its Echols Scholars (offered to about 5% of incoming first years) for its early admits and TJ seems to have an outsize # in its 2018 class.

My DC was offered Echols from her FCPS school. It seems like a nice perk, but comes with no $$$, so DC will probably attend elsewhere.

Any opinion on whether VCU, JMU, GMU are great schools to get into after attending TJ?! Do they require the rigor that is TJ?

Great schools? Nope. Bad options for the bottom 10% of the class? Nope. Do their general colleges require TJ level rigor? Again, nope. But VCU 6 year med school does. And GMU has an excellent and well regarded CS department.

Seriously? I have not heard that. It’s not on any of the rankings of top computer science colleges.

GMU is not as well known for CS, no. BUT they do have a strong program. It attracts a lot of minority / low SES students. Personal experience here, recruiting programmers out of GMU--so far, all excellent, mostly latino, whose parents could not afford to send them elsewhere and many of whom worked to put themselves through college. Some were caring for sick relatives while attending college, so had to be close by. Very strong work ethic, and very talented folks.

It's hard to see outside your bubble of privilege to try to understand why a student may choose GMU even if they had other options. But that doesn't mean that graduates of schools that are not nationally well-recognized are somehow inferior. I would call it a hidden gem, actually.

It’s fine if students attend GMU for reasons such as finances, needing to live close by to take care of sick relatives... but don’t make up reasons such as “they go for computer science”. A TJ student woukdnt choose GMU for CS. Now, if their life circumstances necessitate that they go there, then that’s a completely different thing. And if it happens to have a good CS department, then that is a plus.

But how can you tell, from a college destination list, why those students chose GMU? That's precisely my point--you can't. So stop judging.

I’m sorry, but don’t you see your own hypocrisy? You assumed the student who chose GMU chose it for computer science. You also don’t know why that student chose it.

Here’s what we DO know. It’s not that great of a school for a TJ student. That is still a fact.

[Anonymous]

I wonder where the bottom 10% students at your high school go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder where the bottom 10% students at your high school go.

They don’t go anywhere, or maybe go to NOVA, or even to GMU.

[Anonymous]

Or they join the Marines.