TJ PREP OPTIONS !!!

[Anonymous]

Can someone please help instead of criticizing against prepping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone please help instead of criticizing against prepping.

Learn all of Alg 1 on khan academy this summer. I’m not joking.

[Anonymous]

My kid was accepted to TJ and did a semi-unconventional prep strategy instead of doing the normal prep.

Math - Have your kid study for the AMC 8. AOPS has plenty of practice problems with explanations. The book "How to solve it" has plenty of explanations. Also, do the course challenges for Alg 1. Preparing for the AMC will definitely help your child with the semi out of box algebra. This is one thing that a lot of people won't say, but make sure your child's critical thinking skills are good because some of the problems may require your child to think in a special way.

Reading - Have your kid read either the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal every day (especially the opinion sections). Don't worry about the "politics" or the opinions in the op-ed sections. However, this will expose him to good quality words that will help him a lot. Try to see if he can read the whole paper in an hour. BTW, this strategy helps a lot for SAT reading if anyone is interested. DS aced SAT reading after doing this strategy for two years.

Science - Have your child read a science-based magazine, I recommend Scientific American. Another way is that in the Business Finance sections of newspapers (WSJ is best at this in my opinions), have him take a look at the place with all the stocks, and have him analyze the tables and graphs. Generally, that is enough but if you need a little more, check out crackact.com, which has so many ACT practice tests. DS did not do this for TJ prep (did it for ACT prep) but he said that if he took a look at it for TJ prep, it could have been beneficial.

Now, I feel that the essay part is very important once the second round is hit so I will put a couple strategies for the essays.

1st. Why does your kid want to go to TJ - he needs to be able to convey why TJ is the place for him and why he will benefit the TJ community

2nd. What is unique about him? There are so many kids with high grades, great classes, great test scores. He has to say what is unique about him.

3rd. Work on grammar. DH used to be an admissions officer at another magnet school (in a different state) and he said that when people had bad grammar it was a turn off and most of the time they were rejected without question.

For the math essay, I feel the best way is to give him some Algebra level math problems but to try to have him explain to someone that does not know the high level (so he will explain it simply). Pretty similar to the rubber duck method in programming.

I know TJ is a big deal for many families, but don't prepare specifically for TJ. Try to help him prepare in a way that will give him key life skills. For example, for Math, he drastically improved in competition math. For reading, he became very well-worded and got exposed to a variety of different opinions. And for science, he takes a look at the stocks page daily.

[Anonymous]

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid was accepted to TJ and did a semi-unconventional prep strategy instead of doing the normal prep.

Math - Have your kid study for the AMC 8. AOPS has plenty of practice problems with explanations. The book "How to solve it" has plenty of explanations. Also, do the course challenges for Alg 1. Preparing for the AMC will definitely help your child with the semi out of box algebra. This is one thing that a lot of people won't say, but make sure your child's critical thinking skills are good because some of the problems may require your child to think in a special way.

Reading - Have your kid read either the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal every day (especially the opinion sections). Don't worry about the "politics" or the opinions in the op-ed sections. However, this will expose him to good quality words that will help him a lot. Try to see if he can read the whole paper in an hour. BTW, this strategy helps a lot for SAT reading if anyone is interested. DS aced SAT reading after doing this strategy for two years.

Science - Have your child read a science-based magazine, I recommend Scientific American. Another way is that in the Business Finance sections of newspapers (WSJ is best at this in my opinions), have him take a look at the place with all the stocks, and have him analyze the tables and graphs. Generally, that is enough but if you need a little more, check out crackact.com, which has so many ACT practice tests. DS did not do this for TJ prep (did it for ACT prep) but he said that if he took a look at it for TJ prep, it could have been beneficial.

Now, I feel that the essay part is very important once the second round is hit so I will put a couple strategies for the essays.

1st. Why does your kid want to go to TJ - he needs to be able to convey why TJ is the place for him and why he will benefit the TJ community

2nd. What is unique about him? There are so many kids with high grades, great classes, great test scores. He has to say what is unique about him.

3rd. Work on grammar. DH used to be an admissions officer at another magnet school (in a different state) and he said that when people had bad grammar it was a turn off and most of the time they were rejected without question.

For the math essay, I feel the best way is to give him some Algebra level math problems but to try to have him explain to someone that does not know the high level (so he will explain it simply). Pretty similar to the rubber duck method in programming.

I know TJ is a big deal for many families, but don't prepare specifically for TJ. Try to help him prepare in a way that will give him key life skills. For example, for Math, he drastically improved in competition math. For reading, he became very well-worded and got exposed to a variety of different opinions. And for science, he takes a look at the stocks page daily.

This is great and I agree with almost all of this. In the last sentence I think you meant to say "calculated gambling" instead of "science"

[Anonymous]

Will there even be a TJ test this Fall ? how will they do it ? They can not do it online.

[Anonymous]

There is going to be a huge shake-up soon in how TJ admissions are handled. Don't waste your time or money prepping to game the current system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why there should be no test. Stop prepping your kids!!!

When your kid takes the SAT, make sure the child does it without doing a sample exam or prepping in any way. Leave the ones who want to work and put in real effort alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is going to be a huge shake-up soon in how TJ admissions are handled. Don't waste your time or money prepping to game the current system.

This is absolutely true. The current School Board is itching to finally solve the toxic environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Will there even be a TJ test this Fall ? how will they do it ? They can not do it online.

I bet Wolfram alpha gets a nice bump in traffic for the county if its online

[Anonymous]

Here's the thing about prep. There are plenty of kids who get into TJ who did it, and there are plenty of kids who didn't.

Of the kids who did it, there are many of them who didn't need to - but their parents decided to do it anyway, believing it to be a fail-safe.

But the kids for whom prepping is the reason they got in - those kids tend to struggle mightily once they arrive. They are frequently overwhelmed by the workload (which frankly, is overrated thanks to the preponderance of these kids), suffer from impostor syndrome (which creates major mental health issues), and end up faring worse in the college admissions process than they would have otherwise had they stayed at their base school.

TJ prep is a bad bet, especially if you're paying thousands of dollars for it. If it's the reason your kid gets in, they're going to be miserable and likely not very successful when they get there - so you basically shelled out several thousand for the brief thrill of being able to brag to your parent group that your kid got into TJ.

And besides, as a previous poster correctly indicated, there is going to be sweeping change to the admissions process in the very near future anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's the thing about prep. There are plenty of kids who get into TJ who did it, and there are plenty of kids who didn't.

Of the kids who did it, there are many of them who didn't need to - but their parents decided to do it anyway, believing it to be a fail-safe.

But the kids for whom prepping is the reason they got in - those kids tend to struggle mightily once they arrive. They are frequently overwhelmed by the workload (which frankly, is overrated thanks to the preponderance of these kids), suffer from impostor syndrome (which creates major mental health issues), and end up faring worse in the college admissions process than they would have otherwise had they stayed at their base school.

TJ prep is a bad bet, especially if you're paying thousands of dollars for it. If it's the reason your kid gets in, they're going to be miserable and likely not very successful when they get there - so you basically shelled out several thousand for the brief thrill of being able to brag to your parent group that your kid got into TJ.

And besides, as a previous poster correctly indicated, there is going to be sweeping change to the admissions process in the very near future anyway.

+1

[Anonymous]

Here's the other thing about college admissions from TJ - it's possible to get into a top-tier school from the bottom 25% of TJ's GPA pool - but NOT if you're a typical TJ kid (STEM-heavy, debate, Model UN, STEM internships).

Three-sport athletes (even non-recruitable ones), musicians, theatre kids, and other humanities/arts types with actual tangible accomplishments and talent in those areas always do surprisingly well in the college admissions process coming from TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid was accepted to TJ and did a semi-unconventional prep strategy instead of doing the normal prep.

Math - Have your kid study for the AMC 8. AOPS has plenty of practice problems with explanations. The book "How to solve it" has plenty of explanations. Also, do the course challenges for Alg 1. Preparing for the AMC will definitely help your child with the semi out of box algebra. This is one thing that a lot of people won't say, but make sure your child's critical thinking skills are good because some of the problems may require your child to think in a special way.

Reading - Have your kid read either the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal every day (especially the opinion sections). Don't worry about the "politics" or the opinions in the op-ed sections. However, this will expose him to good quality words that will help him a lot. Try to see if he can read the whole paper in an hour. BTW, this strategy helps a lot for SAT reading if anyone is interested. DS aced SAT reading after doing this strategy for two years.

Science - Have your child read a science-based magazine, I recommend Scientific American. Another way is that in the Business Finance sections of newspapers (WSJ is best at this in my opinions), have him take a look at the place with all the stocks, and have him analyze the tables and graphs. Generally, that is enough but if you need a little more, check out crackact.com, which has so many ACT practice tests. DS did not do this for TJ prep (did it for ACT prep) but he said that if he took a look at it for TJ prep, it could have been beneficial.

Now, I feel that the essay part is very important once the second round is hit so I will put a couple strategies for the essays.

1st. Why does your kid want to go to TJ - he needs to be able to convey why TJ is the place for him and why he will benefit the TJ community

2nd. What is unique about him? There are so many kids with high grades, great classes, great test scores. He has to say what is unique about him.

3rd. Work on grammar. DH used to be an admissions officer at another magnet school (in a different state) and he said that when people had bad grammar it was a turn off and most of the time they were rejected without question.

For the math essay, I feel the best way is to give him some Algebra level math problems but to try to have him explain to someone that does not know the high level (so he will explain it simply). Pretty similar to the rubber duck method in programming.

I know TJ is a big deal for many families, but don't prepare specifically for TJ. Try to help him prepare in a way that will give him key life skills. For example, for Math, he drastically improved in competition math. For reading, he became very well-worded and got exposed to a variety of different opinions. And for science, he takes a look at the stocks page daily.

I can tell you categorically that the TJ Admissions Office does not care about grammar or spelling in the Student Information Sheet - at least as long as it doesn't fundamentally change that the applicant is trying to say. They make a big deal out of saying this every year. I think they SHOULD care a great deal about it - ability to communicate clearly should be a huge piece of the process and TJ's English department doesn't need to spend their time working on middle school and elementary school grammar - but they don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the thing about prep. There are plenty of kids who get into TJ who did it, and there are plenty of kids who didn't.

Of the kids who did it, there are many of them who didn't need to - but their parents decided to do it anyway, believing it to be a fail-safe.

But the kids for whom prepping is the reason they got in - those kids tend to struggle mightily once they arrive. They are frequently overwhelmed by the workload (which frankly, is overrated thanks to the preponderance of these kids), suffer from impostor syndrome (which creates major mental health issues), and end up faring worse in the college admissions process than they would have otherwise had they stayed at their base school.

TJ prep is a bad bet, especially if you're paying thousands of dollars for it. If it's the reason your kid gets in, they're going to be miserable and likely not very successful when they get there - so you basically shelled out several thousand for the brief thrill of being able to brag to your parent group that your kid got into TJ.

And besides, as a previous poster correctly indicated, there is going to be sweeping change to the admissions process in the very near future anyway.

+1

Taking of x number of kids from each middle school didn’t work out and automatically admitting certain number of black kids outside of the typical admission system each year ( I think it was about 50 per year) didn’t work out as well so don’t expect anything to change.