Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Defenitly top boarding school. TJ is too much stress, too long commute. I know several kids from TJ personally, and I would not want their life for my kid. They have no time for anything else in life other than school. Maximum one club in school. No time for sports, no time for travel, just study, study and study.

Sounds just like boarding school without the benefits!

[Anonymous]

For the record, I like most interviewers have almost no input in the actual admission process. I mostly do interviews so I can keep track of what kids these days are up to and selfishly use it to my kids advantage. But for extracurriculars it is clear that kids who have national-level accomplishments are the ones that have an advantage. There's too many kids who have a smattering of club participation, some school-level leadership, and some varsity sports under their belt for those types of extracurriculars to make a difference - you just have to do some to show you are a rounded applicant, then also be very good at one extracurricular. Oh, and of course, you need to be a stellar student. That's just the baseline.


Thanks, very clear. And very helpful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class

Explain please. Not enough info.

It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.

You're not thinking picture. A TJ kid in the middle of his h.s. class will easily be in the top 10% of his class at V-Tech.

That's a truly stupid statement. I am guessing you didn't go to college or (at least) you didn't go to college in the US. Any advantage a TJ kid has is "gone" by the end of first semester. If you don't work, you can't keep up in college. It doesn't matter which HS you attended.

Not my experience. Top private HS was far more challenging and required more work than college or first year of grad school.

I also know a number of kids from well-regarded publics who really struggled at elite universities--they were simply not as prepared as their private school educated peers. They either never caught up or took years to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class

Explain please. Not enough info.

It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.

You're not thinking picture. A TJ kid in the middle of his h.s. class will easily be in the top 10% of his class at V-Tech.

That's a truly stupid statement. I am guessing you didn't go to college or (at least) you didn't go to college in the US. Any advantage a TJ kid has is "gone" by the end of first semester. If you don't work, you can't keep up in college. It doesn't matter which HS you attended.

Not my experience. Top private HS was far more challenging and required more work than college or first year of grad school.

I also know a number of kids from well-regarded publics who really struggled at elite universities--they were simply not as prepared as their private school educated peers. They either never caught up or took years to do so.

"TJ kids (along with kids from handful of other elite private/public schools) consistently make up the top students at the top universities. "TJ advantage" in terms of the college preparation/exposure received at TJ does not disappear after 1 semester. Many of the top 1% students of the top universities will be TJ grads if those lists were made public.

Also, average TJ grad will easily be one of the top students at place like VaTech, W and M and UVA. I know of one TJ grad who graduated in the bottom 20% and is doing well at UVA."

[Anonymous]

PP If your statement was true TJ would have higher acceptance numbers at elite schools. The elite school numbers for TJ are lower than other elite magnets and privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP If your statement was true TJ would have higher acceptance numbers at elite schools. The elite school numbers for TJ are lower than other elite magnets and privates.

TJ Class of 2016 has students going to Harvard (6), MIT (13), Williams (1), Caltech (3), Harvey Mudd (1), Stanford (7), Berkeley (12), Chicago (13), Michigan (11), Brown (3), USAF (1), USCG (1), Carnegie Mellon (23), Penn (7), Yale (7), Dartmouth (4), Georgia Tech (6), Duke (8), Columbia (9), Cornell (8), Princeton (6), Olin (2), Wellesley (1), Swarthmore (3), Georgetown (5), Vanderbilt (3), Washington U. (2), Purdue (8), Rose-Hulman (2), Rennslauer (6), Rochester Tech (4). That is about 40% of the class of something like 457.

Another 1/3 go to UVA (81), W&M (32), or VA Tech (35).

Others go to places like NYU, UCLA, IU, Notre Dame, Colby, Bowdoin, VCU (6), JMU (3), George Mason (11), U of Colorado, Reed, Oregon State, Miami, USC, schools abroad, Richmond, Case Western, Penn State, GW, Syracuse, Rutgers.

What elite schools are missing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP If your statement was true TJ would have higher acceptance numbers at elite schools. The elite school numbers for TJ are lower than other elite magnets and privates.

TJ Class of 2016 has students going to Harvard (6), MIT (13), Williams (1), Caltech (3), Harvey Mudd (1), Stanford (7), Berkeley (12), Chicago (13), Michigan (11), Brown (3), USAF (1), USCG (1), Carnegie Mellon (23), Penn (7), Yale (7), Dartmouth (4), Georgia Tech (6), Duke (8), Columbia (9), Cornell (8), Princeton (6), Olin (2), Wellesley (1), Swarthmore (3), Georgetown (5), Vanderbilt (3), Washington U. (2), Purdue (8), Rose-Hulman (2), Rennslauer (6), Rochester Tech (4). That is about 40% of the class of something like 457.

Another 1/3 go to UVA (81), W&M (32), or VA Tech (35).

Others go to places like NYU, UCLA, IU, Notre Dame, Colby, Bowdoin, VCU (6), JMU (3), George Mason (11), U of Colorado, Reed, Oregon State, Miami, USC, schools abroad, Richmond, Case Western, Penn State, GW, Syracuse, Rutgers.

What elite schools are missing?

The point is that the students who get into TJ would be in the top 5% of their high schools if they went to their neighborhood school. The top 5% of any high school in this area with similar demographics would do just as well.

[Anonymous]

And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

"They're really fabulous ... the best. You're going to be very impressed by these TJ college results. They're just the tops." - DJT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

Np, the TJ numbers are not particularly impressive given the large size of the class.

[Anonymous]

BS was the best experience. Go for it if you can swing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

Np, the TJ numbers are not particularly impressive given the large size of the class.

Based on the last 5 years, TJ has the most or one of the most acceptances to MIT (10- 17), Princeton (9 - 16), Stanford (10-14), Cornell (12-29), Michigan (14-28), Duke (9- 16), Berkeley (16 - 24), Yale (7 - 11) etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

Np, the TJ numbers are not particularly impressive given the large size of the class.

Based on the last 5 years, TJ has the most or one of the most acceptances to MIT (10- 17), Princeton (9 - 16), Stanford (10-14), Cornell (12-29), Michigan (14-28), Duke (9- 16), Berkeley (16 - 24), Yale (7 - 11) etc.

Common TJ boosters. I hold you to a higher standard analytically than this. The PP was referring to percentage of class and not absolute numbers. Try again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the numbers are not on par with magnets/privates in NY, MA ect

Not true. TJ has the best top college acceptances along with few elite BS nad public magnets.

Np, the TJ numbers are not particularly impressive given the large size of the class.

Based on the last 5 years, TJ has the most or one of the most acceptances to MIT (10- 17), Princeton (9 - 16), Stanford (10-14), Cornell (12-29), Michigan (14-28), Duke (9- 16), Berkeley (16 - 24), Yale (7 - 11) etc.

A top local school - such as St Albans - is sending very similar numbers to those top colleges ... but with a class that's about 1/6th the size of TJ. If we combined the college results of Sidwell, STA, NCS, GDS, and Maret, we'd have a school about the same size as TJ. Want to compare the college results of those two similarly sized groups?