Any suggestion / advise from Ivy League students for TJ students
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Anonymous
College admissions consultants flat out tell you that it is far more difficult to get into a top college from TJ than it would be at your base school. The same SAT scores and grades at a base school are better for elite college admissions than they are at TJ given school will not have a class from Northern Virginia that is almost completely TJ students. |
Anonymous
That is because it has a higher caliber of students. The question is how well does an average TJ student do with college admissions? And would the outcome be better if this student had stayed at a base school? Presumably the TJ education has value. But the colleges have quotas per high school, so they might be more willing to take a top student from South Lakes over a middle of pack student at TJ. |
Anonymous
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Dont go to TJ because you want to get into a top college. Go to TJ if that aligns with the child's interests and aptitude.
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Anonymous
Weird because TJ has much better admission stats than any base school |
Anonymous
That wasn't true even a few years ago. It only had students who were better prepped which I guess might improve SAT scores. |
Anonymous
This may be less the case moving forward as TJ students become more diverse in terms of their academic profiles, interests, and goals. For a long period, a huge number of TJ students were virtually indistinguishable from one another on paper. |
Anonymous
Ours said the opposite. They said if you do well at TJ you have the best possible chances. |
Anonymous
Eagle Scout demonstrates grit and an ability to follow through with a long term project (character traits a lot of college students don't have). It's also not associated with Asian Americans so well worth considering. Google it. It got my kid into top schools. |
Anonymous
This is actually very true. There are thousands of kids nationwide who become Eagle Scouts every year but very few of them also carry an elite academic profile in terms of both performance and advancement. It would definitely be a separator because it is an indicator of diligence, responsibility, and long-term goal-setting and achievement. |
Anonymous
But the type of student who gets into TJ would be far from average at the base school, and therefore base school admissions state wouldn't apply. This is also true for places like Philips and Andover - the people who work for them, who you would expect to incentivize applications to earn more, actually say the same thing: don't come in here for Ivy admissions. How many TJ students does an Ivy admit? Maybe 10? Being one of those in much harder than being the 1 or 2 who would get in from a base school due to the level of the competition - the average TJ student would be in the top 5% or higher at their base school |
Anonymous
| read "how to be a high school superstar" and Cal Newport's blog posts on admission |
Anonymous
That's conjecture. They might've also done better at TJ where they were engaged and had a stronger peer group. |
Anonymous
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The best answer to this question, based on decades of history at the school, is pretty simple:
It's INSANELY hard to get into an Ivy from TJ if you are a stereotypical TJ student - that is to say, your focus is entirely on STEM, you have no compelling interests outside of STEM, you seek to maximize your STEM courses and advancement to the extent possible, and your "non-STEM" extracurriculars are things like Debate and Model UN. Those kids have an extraordinarily hard time getting into Ivies from TJ, and would definitely be better served at their base school The kids who actually get in are the kids who have an excellent academic resume but support it with deep engagement in non-STEM activities (athletics, arts, and the like) and even coursework. They also have the ability to speak effusively and authentically about something of significance that they've done that serves others, and would not traditionally be thought of as a way into college. Put simply, they're more interesting than the typical TJ kid. Even the highest performing of those relatively one-dimensional STEM-only types tend to end up at, say, UVA. |
Anonymous
That's a very big if - "doing well" here doesn't mean passing or getting good grades, it means being the best of the best |
Anonymous
They might "do better" on absolute terms, but the odds of their class rank at TJ somehow being higher than the class rank at their base school is negligible |