Older TJ kids: is there regret w/college app results

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ parent here.

We were hearing a lot of senior parents complain last year about college acceptances. A lot of parents thought TJ damaged their kids chances in getting into a prestige school.

However, DC made friends with a lot of seniors. All of them have said the following (with the exception of cal tech and mit kids) - TJ prepared them for college. They joke that they regretted it- but privately, they are having a blast at college and doing really well and some are getting extremely prestigious internships as freshmen.

TJ kids are fine.

This is one of the strongest comments I've ever read on this forum.

The value of TJ lies in three key separators:
1) You are in an environment where literally 100% of your classmates care deeply about school
2) You get access to equipment and resources that - when taken in total - are available at no other high school in America
3) You get three hours of time each week that are embedded in the school day for you to join those classmates in activities that are interesting to you - leaving your after-school time available to do sports or whatever else you want to get into

It is the best public high school in America by orders of magnitude regardless of what some dopey magazines have to say, and the impact of attending stays with you for the rest of your life in the form of invaluable connections and early access to opportunities that aren't even approachable at other highly-rated schools in the DC metro area.

The science high schools in NYC would like to have a word.

Stuyvesant: just under half the school is eligible for free or reduced lunch under federal guidelines. Sends more kids to Ivy+ than TJ on an absolute and per capita basis. Stuy grads report all schools other than MIT, CalTech and Princeton being very manageable compared to high school.

Bronx Science: about half tyhe students were eligible for free reduced lunch. Sends a similar number of students to Ivy+ as Tj and also reports that college is pretty manageable compared to high school.

Brooklyn tech: about 2/3rds of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch. They send significantly fewer kids to ivy+ than TJ but the kids there ALSO comment on college being easier than high school.

The point of this post is twofold.

1. It doesn't matter which magnet school you go to, the high school rigor puts you ina good position to succeed in college.

2. TJ is largely a public magnet school for farily affluent kids. It should be no surprise that smart affluent kiods do well academically. Stuyvesant has singificantly more working class and poor kids and what they accomplish is significantly more extraordinary.

PP. Let me be perfectly clear - I'm not at all stating that TJ's students are the best in the country. I'm saying the school itself - because of what it offers - is the best in the country by a long shot. Stuy and Bronx Science don't offer anything close to the equipment access or the enhanced high school activities experience.

The kids at all of the NYC schools would be much better positioned if they had the TJ experience - and that's not really up for debate on any meaningful level.

8th period just clubs and after school activities. Stuyvesant has those too and because they don't have school busses (everyone just takes the subway), the clubs can go on much later than TJ. The facilities at TJ are not really better, they are different. Stuyvesant has newer and arguably better facilities than TJ, aside from being in the suburbs with umc peers, I am not sure how the Tj experience is better.

Stuyvesant is housed in a 10 story building with numerous college level labs and easy access to all sorts of opportunities that only NYC has to offer. 20%+ of stuy grads go to IVY+ colleges and about 40% go to other top colleges.

... name one piece of advanced equipment that exists at Stuyvesant that's on the level of TJ's mass spectrometer, CNC router, or full-scale planetarium.

Also a nice little shot you pulled there suggesting that the socioeconomic diversity at Stuy is a minus.

Still waiting on this one... add to this the wind tunnel, the DNA sequencers, the waterjet, the motion-capture cameras.... they used to have a cloud chamber....

NP:

You are more annoying by the post. Stuy has https://stuyalumni.org/news/long-awaited-opening-of-the-lin-brothers-robotics-lab/

and
https://stuyalumni.org/news/stuyvesant-unveils-the-new-irwin-zahn-innovation-lab/

Stuy offers a more well rounded education, inc prioritizing humanities AND stem, whereas TJ focuses more on stem.

Now, stop, please. You've used your annoyingness up for 2026 already.

Confirmed - it's not close. Appreciate the effort and Stuy is certainly a fantastic school.

But there's levels to this.

So a few pieces of scientific equipment used by maybe 100-200 kids per year on any regular basis (with the vast majority of TJ kids studying CS and engineering rather than astrophysics or DNA (I think Stuy has a DNA sequencer) puts the schools on different levels? TJ has 8 Regeneron scholars this year, Stuyvesant has 10. Where is the huge gap? What are they doing with all that equipment? Perhaps they should send it to stuyvesant so someone gets some use out of it.

I mean, that's kind of what I said earlier - that the Stuy kids would be in much better shape if they attended TJ because of its facilities.

I'm repeating for the umpteenth time that I'm not saying that TJ has better students or better outcomes than Stuy. But if you have one exceptional STEM focused kid and you can choose any high school in the country to send them to, you send them to TJ and it's not remotely close.

We have a heavily stem focused kid and we chose the base school so that college options were optimized. Kid stretched with outside stuff (research, internship, etc), maxed out rigor - and got into a great school.

We purposely did not choose Tj

This is always a problem for kids at TJ.

This year for example, you have a kid who represented USA on the Olympic math team and won a gold. Then you have one or two Regeneron Science Talent Search top 40. Then you have the math team captain which is going to be huge because you are leading a top 3 team in USA. The list goes on in each academic category.

So you are being compared to the above peers by AO's. You are also being compared to these peers by the teachers who are writing the recommendation letters which likewise would not as strong.

It’s in response to the person saying you pick TJ for stem focused kids. No, you don’t always do that…if you’re more interested in the long term.

It really depends on how tail end their talent is.

A 95th percentile kid is going to struggle but might be better off there in the long run.
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive.
A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar.

Much below the 95th percentile and you risk failure.

Stupid response, truly. A 99.85% kid could:

- have a physical health issue
- family issue
- mental health issue
- get distracted w/significant other
- not be well rounded enough

Tons of things could derail a gifted kid…

A below a 95% could
- become passionate about something
- be talented in other ways (visual art, performing art, writing)
- be incredibly dedicated to studies
- have nepotism help with ECs

And tons of things can lift up a smart kid.

[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:TJ parent here.

We were hearing a lot of senior parents complain last year about college acceptances. A lot of parents thought TJ damaged their kids chances in getting into a prestige school.

However, DC made friends with a lot of seniors. All of them have said the following (with the exception of cal tech and mit kids) - TJ prepared them for college. They joke that they regretted it- but privately, they are having a blast at college and doing really well and some are getting extremely prestigious internships as freshmen.

TJ kids are fine.

This is one of the strongest comments I've ever read on this forum.

The value of TJ lies in three key separators:
1) You are in an environment where literally 100% of your classmates care deeply about school
2) You get access to equipment and resources that - when taken in total - are available at no other high school in America
3) You get three hours of time each week that are embedded in the school day for you to join those classmates in activities that are interesting to you - leaving your after-school time available to do sports or whatever else you want to get into

It is the best public high school in America by orders of magnitude regardless of what some dopey magazines have to say, and the impact of attending stays with you for the rest of your life in the form of invaluable connections and early access to opportunities that aren't even approachable at other highly-rated schools in the DC metro area.

The science high schools in NYC would like to have a word.

Stuyvesant: just under half the school is eligible for free or reduced lunch under federal guidelines. Sends more kids to Ivy+ than TJ on an absolute and per capita basis. Stuy grads report all schools other than MIT, CalTech and Princeton being very manageable compared to high school.

Bronx Science: about half tyhe students were eligible for free reduced lunch. Sends a similar number of students to Ivy+ as Tj and also reports that college is pretty manageable compared to high school.

Brooklyn tech: about 2/3rds of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch. They send significantly fewer kids to ivy+ than TJ but the kids there ALSO comment on college being easier than high school.

The point of this post is twofold.

1. It doesn't matter which magnet school you go to, the high school rigor puts you ina good position to succeed in college.

2. TJ is largely a public magnet school for farily affluent kids. It should be no surprise that smart affluent kiods do well academically. Stuyvesant has singificantly more working class and poor kids and what they accomplish is significantly more extraordinary.

PP. Let me be perfectly clear - I'm not at all stating that TJ's students are the best in the country. I'm saying the school itself - because of what it offers - is the best in the country by a long shot. Stuy and Bronx Science don't offer anything close to the equipment access or the enhanced high school activities experience.

The kids at all of the NYC schools would be much better positioned if they had the TJ experience - and that's not really up for debate on any meaningful level.

8th period just clubs and after school activities. Stuyvesant has those too and because they don't have school busses (everyone just takes the subway), the clubs can go on much later than TJ. The facilities at TJ are not really better, they are different. Stuyvesant has newer and arguably better facilities than TJ, aside from being in the suburbs with umc peers, I am not sure how the Tj experience is better.

Stuyvesant is housed in a 10 story building with numerous college level labs and easy access to all sorts of opportunities that only NYC has to offer. 20%+ of stuy grads go to IVY+ colleges and about 40% go to other top colleges.

... name one piece of advanced equipment that exists at Stuyvesant that's on the level of TJ's mass spectrometer, CNC router, or full-scale planetarium.

Also a nice little shot you pulled there suggesting that the socioeconomic diversity at Stuy is a minus.

Still waiting on this one... add to this the wind tunnel, the DNA sequencers, the waterjet, the motion-capture cameras.... they used to have a cloud chamber....

NP:

You are more annoying by the post. Stuy has https://stuyalumni.org/news/long-awaited-opening-of-the-lin-brothers-robotics-lab/

and
https://stuyalumni.org/news/stuyvesant-unveils-the-new-irwin-zahn-innovation-lab/

Stuy offers a more well rounded education, inc prioritizing humanities AND stem, whereas TJ focuses more on stem.

Now, stop, please. You've used your annoyingness up for 2026 already.

Confirmed - it's not close. Appreciate the effort and Stuy is certainly a fantastic school.

But there's levels to this.

So a few pieces of scientific equipment used by maybe 100-200 kids per year on any regular basis (with the vast majority of TJ kids studying CS and engineering rather than astrophysics or DNA (I think Stuy has a DNA sequencer) puts the schools on different levels? TJ has 8 Regeneron scholars this year, Stuyvesant has 10. Where is the huge gap? What are they doing with all that equipment? Perhaps they should send it to stuyvesant so someone gets some use out of it.

I mean, that's kind of what I said earlier - that the Stuy kids would be in much better shape if they attended TJ because of its facilities.

I'm repeating for the umpteenth time that I'm not saying that TJ has better students or better outcomes than Stuy. But if you have one exceptional STEM focused kid and you can choose any high school in the country to send them to, you send them to TJ and it's not remotely close.

We have a heavily stem focused kid and we chose the base school so that college options were optimized. Kid stretched with outside stuff (research, internship, etc), maxed out rigor - and got into a great school.

We purposely did not choose Tj

This is always a problem for kids at TJ.

This year for example, you have a kid who represented USA on the Olympic math team and won a gold. Then you have one or two Regeneron Science Talent Search top 40. Then you have the math team captain which is going to be huge because you are leading a top 3 team in USA. The list goes on in each academic category.

So you are being compared to the above peers by AO's. You are also being compared to these peers by the teachers who are writing the recommendation letters which likewise would not as strong.

It’s in response to the person saying you pick TJ for stem focused kids. No, you don’t always do that…if you’re more interested in the long term.

It really depends on how tail end their talent is.

A 95th percentile kid is going to struggle but might be better off there in the long run.
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive.
A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar.

Much below the 95th percentile and you risk failure.

Assuming ~550 kids

A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar. =~ barely 1 kid !!!
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive =~ 2 kid!!! (including one from above)
A 95th percentile kid =~ 28 kids !!! (including 3 from above)

Ah, no there are definitely more kids who soar without struggling or thrive from the challenge

[Anonymous]

Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

[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:TJ parent here.

We were hearing a lot of senior parents complain last year about college acceptances. A lot of parents thought TJ damaged their kids chances in getting into a prestige school.

However, DC made friends with a lot of seniors. All of them have said the following (with the exception of cal tech and mit kids) - TJ prepared them for college. They joke that they regretted it- but privately, they are having a blast at college and doing really well and some are getting extremely prestigious internships as freshmen.

TJ kids are fine.

This is one of the strongest comments I've ever read on this forum.

The value of TJ lies in three key separators:
1) You are in an environment where literally 100% of your classmates care deeply about school
2) You get access to equipment and resources that - when taken in total - are available at no other high school in America
3) You get three hours of time each week that are embedded in the school day for you to join those classmates in activities that are interesting to you - leaving your after-school time available to do sports or whatever else you want to get into

It is the best public high school in America by orders of magnitude regardless of what some dopey magazines have to say, and the impact of attending stays with you for the rest of your life in the form of invaluable connections and early access to opportunities that aren't even approachable at other highly-rated schools in the DC metro area.

The science high schools in NYC would like to have a word.

Stuyvesant: just under half the school is eligible for free or reduced lunch under federal guidelines. Sends more kids to Ivy+ than TJ on an absolute and per capita basis. Stuy grads report all schools other than MIT, CalTech and Princeton being very manageable compared to high school.

Bronx Science: about half tyhe students were eligible for free reduced lunch. Sends a similar number of students to Ivy+ as Tj and also reports that college is pretty manageable compared to high school.

Brooklyn tech: about 2/3rds of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch. They send significantly fewer kids to ivy+ than TJ but the kids there ALSO comment on college being easier than high school.

The point of this post is twofold.

1. It doesn't matter which magnet school you go to, the high school rigor puts you ina good position to succeed in college.

2. TJ is largely a public magnet school for farily affluent kids. It should be no surprise that smart affluent kiods do well academically. Stuyvesant has singificantly more working class and poor kids and what they accomplish is significantly more extraordinary.

PP. Let me be perfectly clear - I'm not at all stating that TJ's students are the best in the country. I'm saying the school itself - because of what it offers - is the best in the country by a long shot. Stuy and Bronx Science don't offer anything close to the equipment access or the enhanced high school activities experience.

The kids at all of the NYC schools would be much better positioned if they had the TJ experience - and that's not really up for debate on any meaningful level.

8th period just clubs and after school activities. Stuyvesant has those too and because they don't have school busses (everyone just takes the subway), the clubs can go on much later than TJ. The facilities at TJ are not really better, they are different. Stuyvesant has newer and arguably better facilities than TJ, aside from being in the suburbs with umc peers, I am not sure how the Tj experience is better.

Stuyvesant is housed in a 10 story building with numerous college level labs and easy access to all sorts of opportunities that only NYC has to offer. 20%+ of stuy grads go to IVY+ colleges and about 40% go to other top colleges.

... name one piece of advanced equipment that exists at Stuyvesant that's on the level of TJ's mass spectrometer, CNC router, or full-scale planetarium.

Also a nice little shot you pulled there suggesting that the socioeconomic diversity at Stuy is a minus.

Still waiting on this one... add to this the wind tunnel, the DNA sequencers, the waterjet, the motion-capture cameras.... they used to have a cloud chamber....

NP:

You are more annoying by the post. Stuy has https://stuyalumni.org/news/long-awaited-opening-of-the-lin-brothers-robotics-lab/

and
https://stuyalumni.org/news/stuyvesant-unveils-the-new-irwin-zahn-innovation-lab/

Stuy offers a more well rounded education, inc prioritizing humanities AND stem, whereas TJ focuses more on stem.

Now, stop, please. You've used your annoyingness up for 2026 already.

Confirmed - it's not close. Appreciate the effort and Stuy is certainly a fantastic school.

But there's levels to this.

So a few pieces of scientific equipment used by maybe 100-200 kids per year on any regular basis (with the vast majority of TJ kids studying CS and engineering rather than astrophysics or DNA (I think Stuy has a DNA sequencer) puts the schools on different levels? TJ has 8 Regeneron scholars this year, Stuyvesant has 10. Where is the huge gap? What are they doing with all that equipment? Perhaps they should send it to stuyvesant so someone gets some use out of it.

I mean, that's kind of what I said earlier - that the Stuy kids would be in much better shape if they attended TJ because of its facilities.

I'm repeating for the umpteenth time that I'm not saying that TJ has better students or better outcomes than Stuy. But if you have one exceptional STEM focused kid and you can choose any high school in the country to send them to, you send them to TJ and it's not remotely close.

We have a heavily stem focused kid and we chose the base school so that college options were optimized. Kid stretched with outside stuff (research, internship, etc), maxed out rigor - and got into a great school.

We purposely did not choose Tj

This is always a problem for kids at TJ.

This year for example, you have a kid who represented USA on the Olympic math team and won a gold. Then you have one or two Regeneron Science Talent Search top 40. Then you have the math team captain which is going to be huge because you are leading a top 3 team in USA. The list goes on in each academic category.

So you are being compared to the above peers by AO's. You are also being compared to these peers by the teachers who are writing the recommendation letters which likewise would not as strong.

It’s in response to the person saying you pick TJ for stem focused kids. No, you don’t always do that…if you’re more interested in the long term.

It really depends on how tail end their talent is.

A 95th percentile kid is going to struggle but might be better off there in the long run.
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive.
A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar.

Much below the 95th percentile and you risk failure.

Stupid response, truly. A 99.85% kid could:

- have a physical health issue
- family issue
- mental health issue
- get distracted w/significant other
- not be well rounded enough

Tons of things could derail a gifted kid…

A below a 95% could
- become passionate about something
- be talented in other ways (visual art, performing art, writing)
- be incredibly dedicated to studies
- have nepotism help with ECs

And tons of things can lift up a smart kid.

These are what we call exceptions that prove the rule.

And, I didn't say under 95th percentile = failure. I said it could lead to failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

This is overly pessimistic.

The student at the 50th percentile probably would not have done much better than UVA at their base school and that is about where they will end up from TJ.

The bottom half will do worse purely from a college admissions perspective.

[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:TJ parent here.

We were hearing a lot of senior parents complain last year about college acceptances. A lot of parents thought TJ damaged their kids chances in getting into a prestige school.

However, DC made friends with a lot of seniors. All of them have said the following (with the exception of cal tech and mit kids) - TJ prepared them for college. They joke that they regretted it- but privately, they are having a blast at college and doing really well and some are getting extremely prestigious internships as freshmen.

TJ kids are fine.

This is one of the strongest comments I've ever read on this forum.

The value of TJ lies in three key separators:
1) You are in an environment where literally 100% of your classmates care deeply about school
2) You get access to equipment and resources that - when taken in total - are available at no other high school in America
3) You get three hours of time each week that are embedded in the school day for you to join those classmates in activities that are interesting to you - leaving your after-school time available to do sports or whatever else you want to get into

It is the best public high school in America by orders of magnitude regardless of what some dopey magazines have to say, and the impact of attending stays with you for the rest of your life in the form of invaluable connections and early access to opportunities that aren't even approachable at other highly-rated schools in the DC metro area.

The science high schools in NYC would like to have a word.

Stuyvesant: just under half the school is eligible for free or reduced lunch under federal guidelines. Sends more kids to Ivy+ than TJ on an absolute and per capita basis. Stuy grads report all schools other than MIT, CalTech and Princeton being very manageable compared to high school.

Bronx Science: about half tyhe students were eligible for free reduced lunch. Sends a similar number of students to Ivy+ as Tj and also reports that college is pretty manageable compared to high school.

Brooklyn tech: about 2/3rds of the school was eligible for free or reduced lunch. They send significantly fewer kids to ivy+ than TJ but the kids there ALSO comment on college being easier than high school.

The point of this post is twofold.

1. It doesn't matter which magnet school you go to, the high school rigor puts you ina good position to succeed in college.

2. TJ is largely a public magnet school for farily affluent kids. It should be no surprise that smart affluent kiods do well academically. Stuyvesant has singificantly more working class and poor kids and what they accomplish is significantly more extraordinary.

PP. Let me be perfectly clear - I'm not at all stating that TJ's students are the best in the country. I'm saying the school itself - because of what it offers - is the best in the country by a long shot. Stuy and Bronx Science don't offer anything close to the equipment access or the enhanced high school activities experience.

The kids at all of the NYC schools would be much better positioned if they had the TJ experience - and that's not really up for debate on any meaningful level.

8th period just clubs and after school activities. Stuyvesant has those too and because they don't have school busses (everyone just takes the subway), the clubs can go on much later than TJ. The facilities at TJ are not really better, they are different. Stuyvesant has newer and arguably better facilities than TJ, aside from being in the suburbs with umc peers, I am not sure how the Tj experience is better.

Stuyvesant is housed in a 10 story building with numerous college level labs and easy access to all sorts of opportunities that only NYC has to offer. 20%+ of stuy grads go to IVY+ colleges and about 40% go to other top colleges.

... name one piece of advanced equipment that exists at Stuyvesant that's on the level of TJ's mass spectrometer, CNC router, or full-scale planetarium.

Also a nice little shot you pulled there suggesting that the socioeconomic diversity at Stuy is a minus.

Still waiting on this one... add to this the wind tunnel, the DNA sequencers, the waterjet, the motion-capture cameras.... they used to have a cloud chamber....

NP:

You are more annoying by the post. Stuy has https://stuyalumni.org/news/long-awaited-opening-of-the-lin-brothers-robotics-lab/

and
https://stuyalumni.org/news/stuyvesant-unveils-the-new-irwin-zahn-innovation-lab/

Stuy offers a more well rounded education, inc prioritizing humanities AND stem, whereas TJ focuses more on stem.

Now, stop, please. You've used your annoyingness up for 2026 already.

Confirmed - it's not close. Appreciate the effort and Stuy is certainly a fantastic school.

But there's levels to this.

So a few pieces of scientific equipment used by maybe 100-200 kids per year on any regular basis (with the vast majority of TJ kids studying CS and engineering rather than astrophysics or DNA (I think Stuy has a DNA sequencer) puts the schools on different levels? TJ has 8 Regeneron scholars this year, Stuyvesant has 10. Where is the huge gap? What are they doing with all that equipment? Perhaps they should send it to stuyvesant so someone gets some use out of it.

I mean, that's kind of what I said earlier - that the Stuy kids would be in much better shape if they attended TJ because of its facilities.

I'm repeating for the umpteenth time that I'm not saying that TJ has better students or better outcomes than Stuy. But if you have one exceptional STEM focused kid and you can choose any high school in the country to send them to, you send them to TJ and it's not remotely close.

We have a heavily stem focused kid and we chose the base school so that college options were optimized. Kid stretched with outside stuff (research, internship, etc), maxed out rigor - and got into a great school.

We purposely did not choose Tj

This is always a problem for kids at TJ.

This year for example, you have a kid who represented USA on the Olympic math team and won a gold. Then you have one or two Regeneron Science Talent Search top 40. Then you have the math team captain which is going to be huge because you are leading a top 3 team in USA. The list goes on in each academic category.

So you are being compared to the above peers by AO's. You are also being compared to these peers by the teachers who are writing the recommendation letters which likewise would not as strong.

It’s in response to the person saying you pick TJ for stem focused kids. No, you don’t always do that…if you’re more interested in the long term.

It really depends on how tail end their talent is.

A 95th percentile kid is going to struggle but might be better off there in the long run.
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive.
A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar.

Much below the 95th percentile and you risk failure.

Assuming ~550 kids

A 99.85 percentile kid is going to soar. =~ barely 1 kid !!!
A 99.7 percentile kid is going to be challenged but will thrive =~ 2 kid!!! (including one from above)
A 95th percentile kid =~ 28 kids !!! (including 3 from above)

Ah, no there are definitely more kids who soar without struggling or thrive from the challenge

550 kids is how many kids at TJ. There are about 30,000 kids in each grade level in the catchment area from which TJ kids are selected.
That means there are about 45 kids in the catchment area that are in the 99.85 percentile. Not all of them are going to TJ but enough of them are that the number is greater than 1.
There are about 1500 kids in the catchment area at or above the 95th percentile. More than enough to fill TJ but we don't do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

This is overly pessimistic.

The student at the 50th percentile probably would not have done much better than UVA at their base school and that is about where they will end up from TJ.

The bottom half will do worse purely from a college admissions perspective.

You think 50% at TJ for class GPA will get into UVA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

This is overly pessimistic.

The student at the 50th percentile probably would not have done much better than UVA at their base school and that is about where they will end up from TJ.

The bottom half will do worse purely from a college admissions perspective.

You think 50% at TJ for class GPA will get into UVA?

Shit. You're right. 4.4 is probably top 20%

Still, the previous poster was overly pessimistic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

You're just wrong. The numbers of matriculations to elite schools blows this argument out of the water, to say nothing of acceptances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

You're just wrong. The numbers of matriculations to elite schools blows this argument out of the water, to say nothing of acceptances.

I don't know about that.

Pre-2025, sure. With less than a third of the class reporting there were like 50 Ivy+ admissions and I know several other HYPSM admits that didn't post in 2024 but this last year? It was less than half the prior year. I wouldn't be surprised if they had 10% Ivy+

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

You're just wrong. The numbers of matriculations to elite schools blows this argument out of the water, to say nothing of acceptances.

I don't know about that.

Pre-2025, sure. With less than a third of the class reporting there were like 50 Ivy+ admissions and I know several other HYPSM admits that didn't post in 2024 but this last year? It was less than half the prior year. I wouldn't be surprised if they had 10% Ivy+

All your numbers are so wrong, not even in the ballpark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Purely from college admissions perspective and subjectively from our experience

1. Top 10% of TJ kids have a high chance of being admitted to T20

2. The next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) have a slightly better or about the same college outcomes as base HS, T20 is unlikely but do well in the rest of T50

3. For remaining 80% they would be shut out of T30 and it is likely they would have had a better outcome from base HS

You're just wrong. The numbers of matriculations to elite schools blows this argument out of the water, to say nothing of acceptances.

I don't know about that.

Pre-2025, sure. With less than a third of the class reporting there were like 50 Ivy+ admissions and I know several other HYPSM admits that didn't post in 2024 but this last year? It was less than half the prior year. I wouldn't be surprised if they had 10% Ivy+

All your numbers are so wrong, not even in the ballpark.

141 on this page is less than a third of 480 https://www.instagram.com/tj2024destinations/
There were about 50 Ivy+ and i know that it does not represent all the Ivy+

The 2025 page has less than half the reported Ivy+ as the 2023 class https://www.instagram.com/tj2025destinations/
so assuming a similar level of participation by Ivy+ students, there is a huge drop.

[Anonymous]

For the class of ‘22, TJ’s class of ‘23 school profile lists where 10 or more seniors (per college) were headed:

https://tjhsst.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/inline-files/2022-23%20TJHSST%20Profile_0.pdf

Through an annual survey of all seniors, 99 percent of TJHSST students in the class of 2022 reported they would be attending a four-year college or university as their
post secondary plan intention.

The list below reflects colleges or universities where 10 or more TJHSST students in the Class of 2022 reported a decision to attend.
Carnegie Mellon University
College of William & Mary
Cornell University
George Mason University
Purdue University-Main Campus
University of Chicago
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Maryland-College Park
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus
University of Virginia-Main Campus
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

So the above was at least 130 students.

—-

Then TJ changed their profile so it lists all schools where kids are going. Very interesting change because it takes up a massive amount of room on the school profile:

https://tjhsst.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/inline-files/TJHSST%20School%20Profile%2025-26%20V.2._0.pdf