How does one prep place account for 25% of TJ Admissions?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Who wants to work hard for 4 years with relentless pressure and not have a normal teen dating/social life? C'mon and sign up here! Is TJ's program attractive to more students or is it a case of only interested students are signing up?

Maybe 10% will end up at an Ivy League school. 50% of those who apply to UVA will be rejected.

Unless the school starts admitting more well-rounded kids - if they do, watch those numbers go up QUICK

What are "well-rounded kids"? Why do you assume TJ kids are not well-rounded?

Plenty of TJ kids are well-rounded. Plenty of them are also not. If you are around TJ in any capacity, you know this. If they were, they'd have more success getting into schools like UVA. Perhaps not the Ivies, but definitely UVA.

TJ students as a cohort have the highest average GPA at UVA and attend the best graduate schools. UVA has decreased acceptance rate from TJ over time because their yield rate has been low. Top TJ students go elsewhere.

So insecure you need to make excuses? The TJ students at UVA may have a higher GPA than other HS but it is because they have a much higher hurdle to jump to get in. They are compared to the top TJ applicants, many whom use UVA as a safety school. The lower half to 2/3 of TJ is not getting into the elite schools unless they have a strong hook.

No, just saying UVA should be admitting more if they are the top performing students.

UVA has one of the strictest honor codes around. Cheaters are not tolerated. Possible that this has to do with the low admissions rate?

Didn't stop them accepting Ted Kennedy . . .

These are not convicted cheaters. It is speculation, perhaps from those who are jealous. I suspect UVA saw a low yield from TJ and dialed back acceptances.

The part about yield is correct, but there is a long and detailed history of TJ students cheating. They have a person on their staff for whom about 80% of their job is dealing with Honor Code violations and the ensuing Restorative Justice process. That person wouldn't have a job if it weren't for the fact that TJ students are notorious for bending the rules until they break.

The yield thing is NOT correct. It has no basis in fact. UVA does not yield protect. The yield for TJ students would actually improve if the accepted more TJ kids from the bottom half.

Actually, TJ students think UVA is a joke especially the stem programs.

If that were true, they wouldn't be so busted up every year about not getting in. Nice try.

The number going to UVA (and also other state universities) has been going down. More have been going out of state.

The percentage getting accepted to UVA has been going down as well, and the GPA and SAT standards for TJ kids to get in has been elevating, especially for STEM-only students. Students who can display diversity in their extracurricular activities and go beyond just STEM have been admitted with far lower metrics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone targeting this particular place? Why not post the statistics of other prepping places? maybe other places have 35% or 50% success rate? I'm sure all the prepping places are monitoring and responding in this thread. So please defend yourself and post statistics of your competitors, so that people can make decisions.
On the same note, post which sport coaches have good success rate so that it will help parents who are focusing on sports.
Lets make this thread a one stop shop for advising/advertising

Why are we examining Curie?

Multiple TJ students have stated in public forums that they had access to the Quant Q ahead of time. They have stated that they were asked to go directly after the test and give Curie the specific questions on the test. This is despite having signed a statement that they would not share information about the test.

The TJ prep industry is a very robust and competitive market. There are literally dozens of companies and tutors. That one company was able to get 28% of the class of 2024 is extremely suspect. If it was just on the 28% alone, we might be able to just say okay, they are good at teaching to a test. However, since we have multiple students saying that they HAD A COPY OF THE TEST, it logically leads to that the reaosn that they got 28% of the class is due to wide-spread cheating.

It also is a unique situation because Curie publishes the names of their students that are admitted to TJ/AOS/AET in 2022, 2023 and 2024 on their Facebook page. (They took down the posts with the list of names for 2024 and 2023 yesterday, but the lists are still out there.) They got 51 in 2022, 91 in 2023 and 133 in 2024. Something very suspect is clearly going on - what is the reason for the change from 51 to 133 in just two years?

This also wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if the TJ Admissions Office didn't go out of their way every year to say that there's no prep available for the Quant Q and that the exam is supposed to be secure.

Many families, when they hear this, simply accept it and go into the exam blind - which is an enormous disadvantage because of:

a) the time crunch as even prepared students struggle to finish the exam, and
b) the fact that students are judged on a national percentile rather than the raw score, meaning that students who have privileged access are artificially re-setting the curve and eliminating students from the semifinalist pool

Do other companies have access to the exam? Perhaps, but they haven't posted a list of their successful students' names on Facebook and had TJ students with nothing to gain call them out by name for engaging in shady behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is everyone targeting this particular place? Why not post the statistics of other prepping places? maybe other places have 35% or 50% success rate? I'm sure all the prepping places are monitoring and responding in this thread. So please defend yourself and post statistics of your competitors, so that people can make decisions.
On the same note, post which sport coaches have good success rate so that it will help parents who are focusing on sports.
Lets make this thread a one stop shop for advising/advertising

Why are we examining Curie?

Multiple TJ students have stated in public forums that they had access to the Quant Q ahead of time. They have stated that they were asked to go directly after the test and give Curie the specific questions on the test. This is despite having signed a statement that they would not share information about the test.

The TJ prep industry is a very robust and competitive market. There are literally dozens of companies and tutors. That one company was able to get 28% of the class of 2024 is extremely suspect. If it was just on the 28% alone, we might be able to just say okay, they are good at teaching to a test. However, since we have multiple students saying that they HAD A COPY OF THE TEST, it logically leads to that the reaosn that they got 28% of the class is due to wide-spread cheating.

It also is a unique situation because Curie publishes the names of their students that are admitted to TJ/AOS/AET in 2022, 2023 and 2024 on their Facebook page. (They took down the posts with the list of names for 2024 and 2023 yesterday, but the lists are still out there.) They got 51 in 2022, 91 in 2023 and 133 in 2024. Something very suspect is clearly going on - what is the reason for the change from 51 to 133 in just two years?

This also wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if the TJ Admissions Office didn't go out of their way every year to say that there's no prep available for the Quant Q and that the exam is supposed to be secure.

Many families, when they hear this, simply accept it and go into the exam blind - which is an enormous disadvantage because of:

a) the time crunch as even prepared students struggle to finish the exam, and
b) the fact that students are judged on a national percentile rather than the raw score, meaning that students who have privileged access are artificially re-setting the curve and eliminating students from the semifinalist pool

Do other companies have access to the exam? Perhaps, but they haven't posted a list of their successful students' names on Facebook and had TJ students with nothing to gain call them out by name for engaging in shady behavior.

Interesting ideas.

Logically, if Curie is getting a massively larger percentage of the class every year and there are students that say they had the test, it would stand to reason that they have special access to the Quant Q, right?

Similar to the SAT/ACT/PSAT, most families have the children take a short prep class (Fairfax Collegiate, the FCPS program, Kate Darnly for example). If these companies all also had access to the Quant Q, Curie would not have been able to get 28% of the class of 2024 vs 11% of the class of 2022. I sadly think that all signs point to Curie students engaging cheating.

[Anonymous]

Lol. I’m not sure why this information is just now coming to light.

Curie was an open secret at TJ last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lol. I’m not sure why this information is just now coming to light.

Curie was an open secret at TJ last year.

It came to light when a TJ student submitted a Vent to the TJ Vents page anonymously, and then courageous TJ students began to come forward with comments by name that discussed openly what it sounds like has been known for some time.

It is ever-more suspicious given that Curie has now taken down their posts and lists from the classes of 2023 and 2024, who would have theoretically benefited from the privileged access to the exam. I feel for those students, many of whom probably had no idea that what they were getting was obtained unethically, and who are going to be subject to some pretty brutal accusations by their fellow students once the school year begins. TJ is not a place you want to be if people feel you don't belong there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lol. I’m not sure why this information is just now coming to light.

Curie was an open secret at TJ last year.

It came to light when a TJ student submitted a Vent to the TJ Vents page anonymously, and then courageous TJ students began to come forward with comments by name that discussed openly what it sounds like has been known for some time.

It is ever-more suspicious given that Curie has now taken down their posts and lists from the classes of 2023 and 2024, who would have theoretically benefited from the privileged access to the exam. I feel for those students, many of whom probably had no idea that what they were getting was obtained unethically, and who are going to be subject to some pretty brutal accusations by their fellow students once the school year begins. TJ is not a place you want to be if people feel you don't belong there.

I'm curious to see how TJ will treat this- do they do anything to the students they have or do they just brush it under the rug?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lol. I’m not sure why this information is just now coming to light.

Curie was an open secret at TJ last year.

It came to light when a TJ student submitted a Vent to the TJ Vents page anonymously, and then courageous TJ students began to come forward with comments by name that discussed openly what it sounds like has been known for some time.

It is ever-more suspicious given that Curie has now taken down their posts and lists from the classes of 2023 and 2024, who would have theoretically benefited from the privileged access to the exam. I feel for those students, many of whom probably had no idea that what they were getting was obtained unethically, and who are going to be subject to some pretty brutal accusations by their fellow students once the school year begins. TJ is not a place you want to be if people feel you don't belong there.

I'm curious to see how TJ will treat this- do they do anything to the students they have or do they just brush it under the rug?

I don't think there is anything that they can realistically do to the students who were named on the list. There's no way to know if they knew what was up when their parents signed them up for the course, and no way to determine whether the privileged prep was what qualified them for the school. It would be an unmitigated disaster for them to remove over 200 students, substantially all of whom are Indian, from the school in one fell swoop.

What they should do is ramp up their academic integrity program, and serve as advocates for meaningful change to the admissions process to begin with the immediate ceasing of use of the Quant-Q exam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who wants to work hard for 4 years with relentless pressure and not have a normal teen dating/social life? C'mon and sign up here! Is TJ's program attractive to more students or is it a case of only interested students are signing up?

Maybe 10% will end up at an Ivy League school. 50% of those who apply to UVA will be rejected.

Unless the school starts admitting more well-rounded kids - if they do, watch those numbers go up QUICK

What are "well-rounded kids"? Why do you assume TJ kids are not well-rounded?

Plenty of TJ kids are well-rounded. Plenty of them are also not. If you are around TJ in any capacity, you know this. If they were, they'd have more success getting into schools like UVA. Perhaps not the Ivies, but definitely UVA.

I'm a TJ parent and I am not in the business of judging other children. My child is happy at school, has a good group of friends, and is pretty well-rounded for me. That is all that matters. And, what is the fascination with UVA? College acceptance rates from TJ are quite good. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

"Well-rounded" is code for a way to discriminate against Asians in college admissions.

Asians can't be well rounded?

That isn't what was said. "Well rounded" is subjective, so it is a way to rationalize not accepting a group with the highest objective (standardized tests, GPA, rank) measures.

Asians certainly can be well-rounded, and many of them from TJ are. And many students from other races are not well-rounded at all.

College is a business, and they have determined over the years that the objective measures that you cited are poor predictors of whether or not a student will be of future value to the school through things like donations, fame, and increased applications.

Much like TJ, elite universities would see a decrease in applications, and therefore prestige, and therefore eventually rankings, if their classes were 75-80% Asian. It's not good business for them, therefore, to make decisions based on poor indicators of what will generate interest and wealth for them.

And yet TJ maintains its ranking as the best high school and the prestige despite the 70% Asian students and constant attacks and undermining.

[Anonymous]

Your TJ student is put in an impossible position. Cheat along with the 75% or take the lower grade. Cheating is so widespread at TJ there is no avoiding it.

[Anonymous]

In this country to do well, you either have to be White or bust your ass like Asians and get good/prestigious education.

Asian students are doing well around the globe. Why look at TJ? Look at all schools in DMV, country, world and Asian-Americans are at the top.

Now, if you are White, you really don't have to be good in studies. Oh well!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In this country to do well, you either have to be White or bust your ass like Asians and get good/prestigious education.

Asian students are doing well around the globe. Why look at TJ? Look at all schools in DMV, country, world and Asian-Americans are at the top.

Now, if you are White, you really don't have to be good in studies. Oh well!

I'm white, and I agree with you that as a whole, Asians work a lot harder than white people or any other groups. That's why they're overrepresented in AAP and TJ. One important question to consider is whether AAP and/or TJ are intended for the kids who are the most ahead through hard work, or whether they're intended for the kids who are naturally the smartest. There's going to be some degree of culture clash on that question, since (white) American culture generally prizes natural aptitude over hard work, while Asian culture generally prizes the hard work over the natural aptitude.

We've seen on this forum that many white parents feel that their smart kids deserve to be on top, and they're upset that other kids are working harder and thus doing better than their kid. For TJ, the obvious solution is free prep classes run by FCPS for all, but I don't think a lot of the non-Asians would be satisfied with that. They don't want their kids to do prep activities and catch up with the Asians. They want the Asians to stop putting their kids in prep classes, so their own bright children will shine more without the hard work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In this country to do well, you either have to be White or bust your ass like Asians and get good/prestigious education.

Asian students are doing well around the globe. Why look at TJ? Look at all schools in DMV, country, world and Asian-Americans are at the top.

Now, if you are White, you really don't have to be good in studies. Oh well!

I'm white, and I agree with you that as a whole, Asians work a lot harder than white people or any other groups. That's why they're overrepresented in AAP and TJ. One important question to consider is whether AAP and/or TJ are intended for the kids who are the most ahead through hard work, or whether they're intended for the kids who are naturally the smartest. There's going to be some degree of culture clash on that question, since (white) American culture generally prizes natural aptitude over hard work, while Asian culture generally prizes the hard work over the natural aptitude.

We've seen on this forum that many white parents feel that their smart kids deserve to be on top, and they're upset that other kids are working harder and thus doing better than their kid. For TJ, the obvious solution is free prep classes run by FCPS for all, but I don't think a lot of the non-Asians would be satisfied with that. They don't want their kids to do prep activities and catch up with the Asians. They want the Asians to stop putting their kids in prep classes, so their own bright children will shine more without the hard work.

Except that this thread is not about prep in general. It’s about evidence that one particular company coached 28% of the incoming class on how to cheat on the admissions test.

This is not a racial issue. Full stop. That one company engaged in this kind of behavior and was so successful at cheating should be a concern for everyone. Our children deserve better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In this country to do well, you either have to be White or bust your ass like Asians and get good/prestigious education.

Asian students are doing well around the globe. Why look at TJ? Look at all schools in DMV, country, world and Asian-Americans are at the top.

Now, if you are White, you really don't have to be good in studies. Oh well!

I'm white, and I agree with you that as a whole, Asians work a lot harder than white people or any other groups. That's why they're overrepresented in AAP and TJ. One important question to consider is whether AAP and/or TJ are intended for the kids who are the most ahead through hard work, or whether they're intended for the kids who are naturally the smartest. There's going to be some degree of culture clash on that question, since (white) American culture generally prizes natural aptitude over hard work, while Asian culture generally prizes the hard work over the natural aptitude.

We've seen on this forum that many white parents feel that their smart kids deserve to be on top, and they're upset that other kids are working harder and thus doing better than their kid. For TJ, the obvious solution is free prep classes run by FCPS for all, but I don't think a lot of the non-Asians would be satisfied with that. They don't want their kids to do prep activities and catch up with the Asians. They want the Asians to stop putting their kids in prep classes, so their own bright children will shine more without the hard work.

AAP isn't supposed to be about hard work, it's supposed to be about intelligence - that's why the test are done in early elementary and focus on cognitive abilities and not acquired knowledge. That's also why some people have a problem with it- hard work is explicitly not rewarded, intelligence, regardless of whether it's paired with hard work, is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lol. I’m not sure why this information is just now coming to light.

Curie was an open secret at TJ last year.

It came to light when a TJ student submitted a Vent to the TJ Vents page anonymously, and then courageous TJ students began to come forward with comments by name that discussed openly what it sounds like has been known for some time.

It is ever-more suspicious given that Curie has now taken down their posts and lists from the classes of 2023 and 2024, who would have theoretically benefited from the privileged access to the exam. I feel for those students, many of whom probably had no idea that what they were getting was obtained unethically, and who are going to be subject to some pretty brutal accusations by their fellow students once the school year begins. TJ is not a place you want to be if people feel you don't belong there.

I'm curious to see how TJ will treat this- do they do anything to the students they have or do they just brush it under the rug?

I don't think there is anything that they can realistically do to the students who were named on the list. There's no way to know if they knew what was up when their parents signed them up for the course, and no way to determine whether the privileged prep was what qualified them for the school. It would be an unmitigated disaster for them to remove over 200 students, substantially all of whom are Indian, from the school in one fell swoop.

What they should do is ramp up their academic integrity program, and serve as advocates for meaningful change to the admissions process to begin with the immediate ceasing of use of the Quant-Q exam.

I think the students on the list can kiss T10 schools goodbye- any admissions office that starts to assemble a student profile is going to run across their name on the Currie list now that it's being published and passed around

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In this country to do well, you either have to be White or bust your ass like Asians and get good/prestigious education.

Asian students are doing well around the globe. Why look at TJ? Look at all schools in DMV, country, world and Asian-Americans are at the top.

Now, if you are White, you really don't have to be good in studies. Oh well!

I'm white, and I agree with you that as a whole, Asians work a lot harder than white people or any other groups. That's why they're overrepresented in AAP and TJ. One important question to consider is whether AAP and/or TJ are intended for the kids who are the most ahead through hard work, or whether they're intended for the kids who are naturally the smartest. There's going to be some degree of culture clash on that question, since (white) American culture generally prizes natural aptitude over hard work, while Asian culture generally prizes the hard work over the natural aptitude.

We've seen on this forum that many white parents feel that their smart kids deserve to be on top, and they're upset that other kids are working harder and thus doing better than their kid. For TJ, the obvious solution is free prep classes run by FCPS for all, but I don't think a lot of the non-Asians would be satisfied with that. They don't want their kids to do prep activities and catch up with the Asians. They want the Asians to stop putting their kids in prep classes, so their own bright children will shine more without the hard work.

I think a lot of this is true but I also think that what white and asian parents seem to have in common in this area with regard to AAP/TJ is the sharing of information and resources in a way that excludes other groups. At the same time other groups do not have the same access to knowledge which results in less successful applying and access to AAP/TJ.

I'm not asian or white but very much involved with our children's education overall and day to day. Even given that, I had never heard or nor knew of prepping for things like the NNAT and CogAT. I had never even heard of those tests until we got the sores back. By the time I realized that I could put together a parent recommendation and that these were the tests that determined whether a kid was in pool, I had no idea what my kid's NNAT score was, couldnt find it and had about 1 month (during the Xmas season) to get together a parent package. Thankfully my kid scored in the 99th percentile and was automatically put in pool and accepted in AAP in the first round. Another thing is that I had no idea how many things my child was eligible for with scores like this and I was really annoyed with the school for not flagging it for me as a parent. I've since signed my kid up for lots of other enrichment opportunities but that is only because i've stumbled into finding those things. There isnt a community of people sharing those resources like (I believe) white and asian families do.