TJ blacklisted from T10?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Instead of implementing DEI-based quotas at TJHSST, they should have created another TJHSST elsewhere in Northern Virginia. Given the population growth in this area, there are more than enough gifted students, and there is more than enough demand among parents, for a second STEM-focused high school in the area.

With all the population growth around the metro lines, why has no one thought to put a Governor’s high school or another STEM-focused high school next to a metro station? Now would seem the time to do that, while land is still available adjacent to the silver line stations. That sure beats some casino or stadium.

You’ve got to be kidding. The last thing they want is another STEM magnet. The current crowd would never have opened TJHSST as a magnet. They are too timid to unwind it, but happy to tinker with who gets to go there if that serves their political agenda.

[Anonymous]

This is why Stanley Zhong was rejected by so many colleges when appeared to be a standout student and got hired at Google : He had an unweighted 3.96 grade point average and scored 1590 on his SATs. He had also been a finalist in multiple global computer coding contests and founded a free electronic signature startup called RabbitSign. (His dad works at Google so not sure if there was some nepotism involved. )

He attended Gunn High School where that doesn't even put you in the top 5% of students.

Colleges that rejected his application include MIT, CMU, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC LA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, California Polytechnic State University, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech, University of Wisconsin and University of Washington. The two colleges that accepted his application are University of Texas (UT) and University of Maryland.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:TJ admissions has been changed to eliminate merit criteria and admit based on skin color. It shouldn't be surprising if students are receiving C grades and find it challenging to secure admission to top-tier schools.

Current seniors are the last class before the change in admissions so they are still the “old way”.

And the last class to suffer admission caps at the T10 now that TJ has a clear DEI message.

Starting next year, my expectation is that TJHSST acceptance to the top schools will fall significantly (but still be much better than McLean Hs and Langley HS) because relatively lower standardized test scores will offset any university DEI admission factors.

You are predicting next year's SAT average at TJ will be much lower than recent years? Easy enough to check. Come back next year and tell us.

Yeah I think someone posted that the PSAT average dropped by over 100 points for the first DEI class.

The drop is irrelevant. TJ will still have the same top students with high scores going to the T10 but now will also have students with excellent DEI factors, including an essay on getting through TJ despite being poor, not Asian/white, etc.

If that actually pans out they should be happy because then they will look better compared to their peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I looked at this for the published matriculation data of graduating classes back in 2019 and then again in 2022.

TJ had about
- 8% HYPSM
- 6% next tier of privates (ranked 6-14)
- 20% public Top-4 (UVA, Mich, Cal, UCLA)
- 1% top SLACs/international
- 16% next tier of privates (15-25)
- 16% next tier of publics (6-15)
- 16% next tier of publics (16-25)
- 4% next tier of privates (26-55)
- 4% next tier of publics (26-50)
- 5% other VA publics or local schools
- 4% everything else

Compare to Mclean which was
- 1% HYPSM
- 2% next tier of privates (ranked 6-14)
- 11% public Top-4 (UVA, Mich, Cal, UCLA)
- 2% top SLACs/international
- 4% next tier of privates (15-25)
- 8% next tier of publics (6-15)
- 7% next tier of publics (16-25)
- 7% next tier of privates (26-55)
- 8% next tier of publics (26-50)
- 28% other VA publics or local schools
- 22% everything else

McLean has a larger percentage of graduating kids who were not listed and/or not attending college, so even though ~3% of those listed went to a top 14 private, that probably reflects closer to top ~2% of class... and also doesn't factor in hooks, which I suspect play a bigger role in aggregate for admitted McLean students than for admitted TJ students.

But hooks aside, if you drew the line at say top-15 publics and top 25 privates, at TJ you've got the top 2/3 of the class getting in, whereas at McLean it's the top 1/4. Definitely TJ isn't getting shunned historically. Hopefully they'll print matriculation again end-of-year for class of 2024 and we can see if the data has actually moved significantly in terms of where kids are matriculating to from our HS's... otherwise it's just anecdotes.

Anonymous wrote:Where can you see this data for other FCPS high schools? Awesome stats to know about.

It's usually in the school newspaper, I don't have a full list of links to data from prior years but here's a few I found without much trouble:
- https://www.saxonscope.com/news-2/2017/06/15/langley-high-school-class-of-2017-college-list-senior-superlatives/#modal-photo
- https://thebullelephant.com/college-destinations-for-tjhsst-class-of-2019/

Sometimes they've been posted to this forum in the past as well for certain schools. But there's no central or systematic source that I'm aware of, just cobbled together from what I can find online, and of course with some caveats that the lists aren't comprehensively including every member of a graduating class necessarily, there could be some false reports, etc. but feel pretty confident that these give you a "close to accurate" look at what the matriculation picture looks like for a given class/school.

[Anonymous]

McLean Class of 2022: https://issuu.com/the_highlander/docs/the_highlander_-_may_2022_-_senior_edition