Why is there such a racial/ethnic disconnect with TJ Admissions?

[Anonymous]

I was looking at the statistics for the TJ admissions this year. Why is the racial/ethnic makeup so much different from that of Fairfax County, and neighboring counties, as a whole? I do not believe any one particular race is smarter than another, so please don't tell me that. I don't think one race tries harder than another race either. But it is quite obvious that certain segments of our society are under-represented, and the trend looks to be getting worse. Why is this happenning?

[Anonymous]

Because one group studies in their free time while the other watches TV or plays computer games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because one group studies in their free time while the other watches TV or plays computer games.

+1

[Anonymous]

Because one group studies as a hobby instead of playing around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because one group studies in their free time while the other watches TV or plays computer games.

+2. I don't think race should be used in admissions. Maybe SES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was looking at the statistics for the TJ admissions this year. Why is the racial/ethnic makeup so much different from that of Fairfax County, and neighboring counties, as a whole? I do not believe any one particular race is smarter than another, so please don't tell me that. I don't think one race tries harder than another race either. But it is quite obvious that certain segments of our society are under-represented, and the trend looks to be getting worse. Why is this happenning?

It's not just TJ admissions but almost all of the elite selective public magnet high schools are majority Asians including Stuyvesant, Bronx School of Science, Hunter, Lowell etc. This is also true for winners of well-known competitions such as Intel, Intel ISEF, Siemens, Google, AMC, Chemistry, Biology Physics Olympiad, National Spelling Bee, Chess Tournaments, Rubik's Cube Competitions, basically anything that can be assessed objectively.

Asians also have the highest average CR, Math and Writing SAT scores. If you exclude intelligence and effort, you excluded pretty much all potential explanations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because one group studies in their free time while the other watches TV or plays computer games.

+100.

Plus the other group is busy in texting/$exting, video gaming.

[Anonymous]

I think effort and cultural pressures and norms are the explanation. We're living in Asia for a couple of years and it is absolutely a different story over here. Their educations are far more rigorous and the expectations are much higher.

[Anonymous]

Actually one of the reasons that Asians in the US are overrepresented in academic achievements is because you have a unbalanced sample set. The majority of the Asians who come to the US do so to come for college, graduate school or to accept high tech or otherwise highly skilled positions. It is very difficult for Asians to emigrate to the US except for academic reasons. Many other races have alternative means of emigrating to the US, but education and highly skilled positions are the vast majority of the opportunities for Asians. So, you have an exceptionally highly intelligent subset of Asians that become US immigrants and end up staying in the US. The average and even slightly above average Asian students don't come to the US. These Asians then breed offspring who tend to be more intelligent than average for their race. That plus most Asian cultures stress academic achievement as a standard make them more competitive in academic situations.

The reason that TJ and selective schools tend to be overrepresented vs other public schools is that Asians place such a high stress on education that many of them will try to send their children to advance or magnet programs even if they have to move to do so and fewer leave their children in public schools, so you have a higher percentage of the Asian population going to select schools leaving fewer in the public school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually one of the reasons that Asians in the US are overrepresented in academic achievements is because you have a unbalanced sample set. The majority of the Asians who come to the US do so to come for college, graduate school or to accept high tech or otherwise highly skilled positions. It is very difficult for Asians to emigrate to the US except for academic reasons. Many other races have alternative means of emigrating to the US, but education and highly skilled positions are the vast majority of the opportunities for Asians. So, you have an exceptionally highly intelligent subset of Asians that become US immigrants and end up staying in the US. The average and even slightly above average Asian students don't come to the US. These Asians then breed offspring who tend to be more intelligent than average for their race. That plus most Asian cultures stress academic achievement as a standard make them more competitive in academic situations.

The reason that TJ and selective schools tend to be overrepresented vs other public schools is that Asians place such a high stress on education that many of them will try to send their children to advance or magnet programs even if they have to move to do so and fewer leave their children in public schools, so you have a higher percentage of the Asian population going to select schools leaving fewer in the public school system.

Actually many Asians come to US based on family connections more so than based on employment. In addition, Asians who come to US on student visas to attend colleges/graduate schools are on temporary visas so they must leave US once schooling is complete unless they are offered permanent positions and offer of permanent employment is not that common due to their lack of permanent resident status/citizenship/clearance etc.

As for relocating, that may happen in some cases but it is not common due to high cost and other issues such as obtaining new jobs etc. with relocating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually one of the reasons that Asians in the US are overrepresented in academic achievements is because you have a unbalanced sample set. The majority of the Asians who come to the US do so to come for college, graduate school or to accept high tech or otherwise highly skilled positions. It is very difficult for Asians to emigrate to the US except for academic reasons. Many other races have alternative means of emigrating to the US, but education and highly skilled positions are the vast majority of the opportunities for Asians. So, you have an exceptionally highly intelligent subset of Asians that become US immigrants and end up staying in the US. The average and even slightly above average Asian students don't come to the US. These Asians then breed offspring who tend to be more intelligent than average for their race. That plus most Asian cultures stress academic achievement as a standard make them more competitive in academic situations.

The reason that TJ and selective schools tend to be overrepresented vs other public schools is that Asians place such a high stress on education that many of them will try to send their children to advance or magnet programs even if they have to move to do so and fewer leave their children in public schools, so you have a higher percentage of the Asian population going to select schools leaving fewer in the public school system.

Actually many Asians come to US based on family connections more so than based on employment. In addition, Asians who come to US on student visas to attend colleges/graduate schools are on temporary visas so they must leave US once schooling is complete unless they are offered permanent positions and offer of permanent employment is not that common due to their lack of permanent resident status/citizenship/clearance etc.

As for relocating, that may happen in some cases but it is not common due to high cost and other issues such as obtaining new jobs etc. with relocating.

In my experience (my parents are Asians who came over in the 1950's), many of the Asians who come over for family connections do so for education and are sponsored by the family members. They come to attend school here and stay and they do tend to be among the cream of the crop. I've seen many, many families where the smartest of the cousins comes to the US and are sponsored by the one family member who came over in the previous generation (the uncle or aunt). That family member sponsors them, they study and they stay and they end up sponsoring the next of the cousins/nieces/nephews who will come over. So your two categories, those with family connections and those coming for education include a largely overlapping subset of the more intelligent members of large families who can stay beyond student visas. I've personally seen hundreds of such candidates.

[Anonymous]

TJ doesn't impose quota on Asians like some other schools do.

[Anonymous]

Personally I think they should make TJ all Asian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because one group studies in their free time while the other watches TV or plays computer games.

in a nutshell, this is it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually one of the reasons that Asians in the US are overrepresented in academic achievements is because you have a unbalanced sample set. The majority of the Asians who come to the US do so to come for college, graduate school or to accept high tech or otherwise highly skilled positions. It is very difficult for Asians to emigrate to the US except for academic reasons. Many other races have alternative means of emigrating to the US, but education and highly skilled positions are the vast majority of the opportunities for Asians. So, you have an exceptionally highly intelligent subset of Asians that become US immigrants and end up staying in the US. The average and even slightly above average Asian students don't come to the US. These Asians then breed offspring who tend to be more intelligent than average for their race. That plus most Asian cultures stress academic achievement as a standard make them more competitive in academic situations.

The reason that TJ and selective schools tend to be overrepresented vs other public schools is that Asians place such a high stress on education that many of them will try to send their children to advance or magnet programs even if they have to move to do so and fewer leave their children in public schools, so you have a higher percentage of the Asian population going to select schools leaving fewer in the public school system.

well yeah that and they send their kids to TJ prep classes starting in 6th grade. Don't laugh - I saw this with my own eyes.