Private middle school and TJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

febegaj wrote:I see contradicting answers and I am still confused.
So suppose we have 3 middle schools, each with 100 students.
School A is FCPS "lower-performing", school B is FCPS "high-performing" and school C is private.
We have 3 students x,y,z from schools A,B and C respectively. All 3 students have the same academic level.
What are (roughly) the TJ admission odds for each student?

A Good performing student in a low performing school has the best chance of getting into TJ. But depending on the number of qualified students, they may not even use 1.5% quota. Anything unused goes to unallocated

Students from high performing schools (Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run, Cooper) gets > 1.5% when it is all done because when they are ranked with others as part of the unallocated quota, these kids get in.
My son got into TJ from Longfellow and have seen how competitive kids are from these top schools. You pretty much need GPA 4 from those schools to get in + writing the best SPS and STEM response

Private schools have no reserved quota and kids from private are in the unallocated seats

However, a smart kid at Longfellow, Cooper etc has the best overall chance of getting in because they've had so many advantages. Just look at the number of kids that metriculate from these schools. They have the best odds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

febegaj wrote:I see contradicting answers and I am still confused.
So suppose we have 3 middle schools, each with 100 students.
School A is FCPS "lower-performing", school B is FCPS "high-performing" and school C is private.
We have 3 students x,y,z from schools A,B and C respectively. All 3 students have the same academic level.
What are (roughly) the TJ admission odds for each student?

A Good performing student in a low performing school has the best chance of getting into TJ. But depending on the number of qualified students, they may not even use 1.5% quota. Anything unused goes to unallocated

Students from high performing schools (Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run, Cooper) gets > 1.5% when it is all done because when they are ranked with others as part of the unallocated quota, these kids get in.
My son got into TJ from Longfellow and have seen how competitive kids are from these top schools. You pretty much need GPA 4 from those schools to get in + writing the best SPS and STEM response

Private schools have no reserved quota and kids from private are in the unallocated seats

However, a smart kid at Longfellow, Cooper etc has the best overall chance of getting in because they've had so many advantages. Just look at the number of kids that metriculate from these schools. They have the best odds.

Not necessarily true. These are AAP center schools and there will be easily over 150 kids at these schools have perfect or near perfect GPA. Since there is no other input, essays pretty much determine their TJ admission as they carry 2/3rd weight and pretty much the deciding factor. Carson alone has close to 300 kids apply to TJ, which has around 500 kids in AAP alone for each grade. So kids from these schools face intense competition from each other and also disadvantaged kids from these schools for allocated (1.5% quota) and few left over (unused by other schools) seats and as the earlier poster said they need to have perfect GPA along with perfect and well crafted (coached??) essays that can impress the evaluators and put them over others. Yes, there are other advantages with these schools (ex: cohort, variety of electives, tons of after school activities, better academic focus etc) , but TJ is definitely not one of them. If aspiring for TJ, AAP kids are better of rejecting their 'default placement' and choose base middle school instead, but of course kids whose default school is also the center school, are screwed - unfortunately!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

febegaj wrote:I see contradicting answers and I am still confused.
So suppose we have 3 middle schools, each with 100 students.
School A is FCPS "lower-performing", school B is FCPS "high-performing" and school C is private.
We have 3 students x,y,z from schools A,B and C respectively. All 3 students have the same academic level.
What are (roughly) the TJ admission odds for each student?

A Good performing student in a low performing school has the best chance of getting into TJ. But depending on the number of qualified students, they may not even use 1.5% quota. Anything unused goes to unallocated

Students from high performing schools (Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run, Cooper) gets > 1.5% when it is all done because when they are ranked with others as part of the unallocated quota, these kids get in.
My son got into TJ from Longfellow and have seen how competitive kids are from these top schools. You pretty much need GPA 4 from those schools to get in + writing the best SPS and STEM response

Private schools have no reserved quota and kids from private are in the unallocated seats

However, a smart kid at Longfellow, Cooper etc has the best overall chance of getting in because they've had so many advantages. Just look at the number of kids that metriculate from these schools. They have the best odds.

Not necessarily true. These are AAP center schools and there will be easily over 150 kids at these schools have perfect or near perfect GPA. Since there is no other input, essays pretty much determine their TJ admission as they carry 2/3rd weight and pretty much the deciding factor. Carson alone has close to 300 kids apply to TJ, which has around 500 kids in AAP alone for each grade. So kids from these schools face intense competition from each other and also disadvantaged kids from these schools for allocated (1.5% quota) and few left over (unused by other schools) seats and as the earlier poster said they need to have perfect GPA along with perfect and well crafted (coached??) essays that can impress the evaluators and put them over others. Yes, there are other advantages with these schools (ex: cohort, variety of electives, tons of after school activities, better academic focus etc) , but TJ is definitely not one of them. If aspiring for TJ, AAP kids are better of rejecting their 'default placement' and choose base middle school instead, but of course kids whose default school is also the center school, are screwed - unfortunately!

It's a fact. These MS have the highest number of admits so your odds are best there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

febegaj wrote:I see contradicting answers and I am still confused.
So suppose we have 3 middle schools, each with 100 students.
School A is FCPS "lower-performing", school B is FCPS "high-performing" and school C is private.
We have 3 students x,y,z from schools A,B and C respectively. All 3 students have the same academic level.
What are (roughly) the TJ admission odds for each student?

A Good performing student in a low performing school has the best chance of getting into TJ. But depending on the number of qualified students, they may not even use 1.5% quota. Anything unused goes to unallocated

Students from high performing schools (Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run, Cooper) gets > 1.5% when it is all done because when they are ranked with others as part of the unallocated quota, these kids get in.
My son got into TJ from Longfellow and have seen how competitive kids are from these top schools. You pretty much need GPA 4 from those schools to get in + writing the best SPS and STEM response

Private schools have no reserved quota and kids from private are in the unallocated seats

However, a smart kid at Longfellow, Cooper etc has the best overall chance of getting in because they've had so many advantages. Just look at the number of kids that metriculate from these schools. They have the best odds.

Not necessarily true. These are AAP center schools and there will be easily over 150 kids at these schools have perfect or near perfect GPA. Since there is no other input, essays pretty much determine their TJ admission as they carry 2/3rd weight and pretty much the deciding factor. Carson alone has close to 300 kids apply to TJ, which has around 500 kids in AAP alone for each grade. So kids from these schools face intense competition from each other and also disadvantaged kids from these schools for allocated (1.5% quota) and few left over (unused by other schools) seats and as the earlier poster said they need to have perfect GPA along with perfect and well crafted (coached??) essays that can impress the evaluators and put them over others. Yes, there are other advantages with these schools (ex: cohort, variety of electives, tons of after school activities, better academic focus etc) , but TJ is definitely not one of them. If aspiring for TJ, AAP kids are better of rejecting their 'default placement' and choose base middle school instead, but of course kids whose default school is also the center school, are screwed - unfortunately!

It's a fact. These MS have the highest number of admits so your odds are best there.

Well, you need to consider that there are 300 kids who apply from Carson and about 25-30 would get into TJ, including disadvantaged kids. Yes, the raw number is higher, but the ratio of admitted vs applied is far lower than other schools. Then you also need to consider that these are center schools and Carson has about 500 kids in AAP alone (representing chantilly, oakton, south lakes, westfields and herndon school pyramids - which is why so many AAP kids concentrated in one school). Grading at center schools, especially AA classes, is expected to be tougher and extremely competitive as teachers tend to compare the students work with other students in the class. Compare this to a non center school, where hardly 20-30 kids apply and 10 kids get into TJ. I guess you can do the math!

I am not saying TJ shouldn't admit kids from other schools, just pointing that when it comes to TJ, center schools have disadvantage. If you need an example, DD has perfect GPA, tons of STEM at school (not considering off-school activities), well liked by teachers couldn't get into TJ. Our neighbor kid has B+/A- in couple of courses, one in math and took Algebra I in 8th grade (assuming kid hasn't lied) got admitted to TJ, because there is less of a competition and/or has stellar essays or whatever, you get the point!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

febegaj wrote:I see contradicting answers and I am still confused.
So suppose we have 3 middle schools, each with 100 students.
School A is FCPS "lower-performing", school B is FCPS "high-performing" and school C is private.
We have 3 students x,y,z from schools A,B and C respectively. All 3 students have the same academic level.
What are (roughly) the TJ admission odds for each student?

A Good performing student in a low performing school has the best chance of getting into TJ. But depending on the number of qualified students, they may not even use 1.5% quota. Anything unused goes to unallocated

Students from high performing schools (Longfellow, Carson, Rocky Run, Cooper) gets > 1.5% when it is all done because when they are ranked with others as part of the unallocated quota, these kids get in.
My son got into TJ from Longfellow and have seen how competitive kids are from these top schools. You pretty much need GPA 4 from those schools to get in + writing the best SPS and STEM response

Private schools have no reserved quota and kids from private are in the unallocated seats

However, a smart kid at Longfellow, Cooper etc has the best overall chance of getting in because they've had so many advantages. Just look at the number of kids that metriculate from these schools. They have the best odds.

Not necessarily true. These are AAP center schools and there will be easily over 150 kids at these schools have perfect or near perfect GPA. Since there is no other input, essays pretty much determine their TJ admission as they carry 2/3rd weight and pretty much the deciding factor. Carson alone has close to 300 kids apply to TJ, which has around 500 kids in AAP alone for each grade. So kids from these schools face intense competition from each other and also disadvantaged kids from these schools for allocated (1.5% quota) and few left over (unused by other schools) seats and as the earlier poster said they need to have perfect GPA along with perfect and well crafted (coached??) essays that can impress the evaluators and put them over others. Yes, there are other advantages with these schools (ex: cohort, variety of electives, tons of after school activities, better academic focus etc) , but TJ is definitely not one of them. If aspiring for TJ, AAP kids are better of rejecting their 'default placement' and choose base middle school instead, but of course kids whose default school is also the center school, are screwed - unfortunately!

It's a fact. These MS have the highest number of admits so your odds are best there.

Well, you need to consider that there are 300 kids who apply from Carson and about 25-30 would get into TJ, including disadvantaged kids. Yes, the raw number is higher, but the ratio of admitted vs applied is far lower than other schools. Then you also need to consider that these are center schools and Carson has about 500 kids in AAP alone (representing chantilly, oakton, south lakes, westfields and herndon school pyramids - which is why so many AAP kids concentrated in one school). Grading at center schools, especially AA classes, is expected to be tougher and extremely competitive as teachers tend to compare the students work with other students in the class. Compare this to a non center school, where hardly 20-30 kids apply and 10 kids get into TJ. I guess you can do the math!

I am not saying TJ shouldn't admit kids from other schools, just pointing that when it comes to TJ, center schools have disadvantage. If you need an example, DD has perfect GPA, tons of STEM at school (not considering off-school activities), well liked by teachers couldn't get into TJ. Our neighbor kid has B+/A- in couple of courses, one in math and took Algebra I in 8th grade (assuming kid hasn't lied) got admitted to TJ, because there is less of a competition and/or has stellar essays or whatever, you get the point!

Carson got 50 in the class of 2026.