Reasons why one would not accept TJ offer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not wanting to be surrounded by myopic students solely focused on grades. I’ve heard some white students say it’s too Asian.

My white student says this. Actually it was phrased "Mom, I'm the only white kid. Everyone is so nerdy. I don't think I can make friends." I said, "Give it a try. The kids are smart like you. Maybe you'll be surprised by how much you have in common"

She hasn't changed her mind!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how often this poster brings up this Curie and TJ thing.

Ultimately though, even if this ridiculous fairytale were true, the admissions response was not to fix the testing process but instead remove testing almost entirely.

People also forget that there were two other tests, but those are gone as well.

The unnecessary reference to "conservatives" reveals what this is really about for them.

It is worth noting that initially, this was a necessity because under COVID-19 protocols at the time, it wasn't realistic to ask 3,000 applicants to sit for a proctored exam during the worst phase of infections and deaths. This would have had to happen in January or February of 2021 and there was no way it would have worked.

I actually would have been fine with maintaining some testing structure - the existence of the tests wasn't the problem, it was their use as a gatekeeping element. A student under the previous system could have scored in the 99th percentile on both the Quant-Q and the ACT Aspire Science, but if they scored in the 74th percentile on the Aspire Reading, they'd be ineligible to be semifinalists. That process was broken too.

There's nothing wrong with testing as long as it's used as a data point amongst many others in a holistic admissions process and cannot be used by outsiders as evidence of racism in the process. Unfortunately, that's precisely what happens when parents of students whose strongest metric is their exam scores claim that admissions officers are dinging their kids on personality scores because of race - when it's actually their personality.

But they threw out testing. Fine. Now no one can leverage that advantage. But then they punished kids for what their parents do for a living, so instead of equalizing the advantage they just shifted it to another group of kids.

And even further, the lack of differentiation of curriculum in middle school, maybe norm’s for each county, also punished kids who take more rigorous workloads.

They didn’t even consider base schools when assigning their 1.5% to AAP centers.

They achieved their goal. But the results coming in also confirm the critics concern.

DP. No students were punished for what happened. Nor were students punished who want to go to TJ, no matter how much you complain on their behalf.

Yeah penalized in the admissions process is more accurate.

Sounds like you may not be familiar with the current admissions process. No punishment, no penalization.

Some kids receive points because they get free lunch. Kids whose parents make a certain amount of money don’t. Seems like a penalty that is out of a kids control.

Look at the admitted students. It doesn't help much - but those students are no longer totally locked out of the admissions process as they were before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how often this poster brings up this Curie and TJ thing.

Ultimately though, even if this ridiculous fairytale were true, the admissions response was not to fix the testing process but instead remove testing almost entirely.

People also forget that there were two other tests, but those are gone as well.

The unnecessary reference to "conservatives" reveals what this is really about for them.

It is worth noting that initially, this was a necessity because under COVID-19 protocols at the time, it wasn't realistic to ask 3,000 applicants to sit for a proctored exam during the worst phase of infections and deaths. This would have had to happen in January or February of 2021 and there was no way it would have worked.

I actually would have been fine with maintaining some testing structure - the existence of the tests wasn't the problem, it was their use as a gatekeeping element. A student under the previous system could have scored in the 99th percentile on both the Quant-Q and the ACT Aspire Science, but if they scored in the 74th percentile on the Aspire Reading, they'd be ineligible to be semifinalists. That process was broken too.

There's nothing wrong with testing as long as it's used as a data point amongst many others in a holistic admissions process and cannot be used by outsiders as evidence of racism in the process. Unfortunately, that's precisely what happens when parents of students whose strongest metric is their exam scores claim that admissions officers are dinging their kids on personality scores because of race - when it's actually their personality.

But they threw out testing. Fine. Now no one can leverage that advantage. But then they punished kids for what their parents do for a living, so instead of equalizing the advantage they just shifted it to another group of kids.

And even further, the lack of differentiation of curriculum in middle school, maybe norm’s for each county, also punished kids who take more rigorous workloads.

They didn’t even consider base schools when assigning their 1.5% to AAP centers.

They achieved their goal. But the results coming in also confirm the critics concern.

DP. No students were punished for what happened. Nor were students punished who want to go to TJ, no matter how much you complain on their behalf.

Yeah penalized in the admissions process is more accurate.

Sounds like you may not be familiar with the current admissions process. No punishment, no penalization.

Some kids receive points because they get free lunch. Kids whose parents make a certain amount of money don’t. Seems like a penalty that is out of a kids control.

Look at the admitted students. It doesn't help much - but those students are no longer totally locked out of the admissions process as they were before.

1 in 4 students in 2021 were economically disadvantaged. Seems like it had an effect. Removing the testing does the same thing. Removing the testing should have been enough to negate a lot of the wealth advantage that is seen in standardized testing. But nope, needed to actively penalize the other kids for something they could not control.

An interesting change was the young scholars exception for the honors course requirements, yet another penalty levied against kids for things they can’t control. I’d be curious to know how many young scholars got in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how often this poster brings up this Curie and TJ thing.

Ultimately though, even if this ridiculous fairytale were true, the admissions response was not to fix the testing process but instead remove testing almost entirely.

People also forget that there were two other tests, but those are gone as well.

The unnecessary reference to "conservatives" reveals what this is really about for them.

It is worth noting that initially, this was a necessity because under COVID-19 protocols at the time, it wasn't realistic to ask 3,000 applicants to sit for a proctored exam during the worst phase of infections and deaths. This would have had to happen in January or February of 2021 and there was no way it would have worked.

I actually would have been fine with maintaining some testing structure - the existence of the tests wasn't the problem, it was their use as a gatekeeping element. A student under the previous system could have scored in the 99th percentile on both the Quant-Q and the ACT Aspire Science, but if they scored in the 74th percentile on the Aspire Reading, they'd be ineligible to be semifinalists. That process was broken too.

There's nothing wrong with testing as long as it's used as a data point amongst many others in a holistic admissions process and cannot be used by outsiders as evidence of racism in the process. Unfortunately, that's precisely what happens when parents of students whose strongest metric is their exam scores claim that admissions officers are dinging their kids on personality scores because of race - when it's actually their personality.

But they threw out testing. Fine. Now no one can leverage that advantage. But then they punished kids for what their parents do for a living, so instead of equalizing the advantage they just shifted it to another group of kids.

And even further, the lack of differentiation of curriculum in middle school, maybe norm’s for each county, also punished kids who take more rigorous workloads.

They didn’t even consider base schools when assigning their 1.5% to AAP centers.

They achieved their goal. But the results coming in also confirm the critics concern.

DP. No students were punished for what happened. Nor were students punished who want to go to TJ, no matter how much you complain on their behalf.

Yeah penalized in the admissions process is more accurate.

Sounds like you may not be familiar with the current admissions process. No punishment, no penalization.

Some kids receive points because they get free lunch. Kids whose parents make a certain amount of money don’t. Seems like a penalty that is out of a kids control.

Look at the admitted students. It doesn't help much - but those students are no longer totally locked out of the admissions process as they were before.

1 in 4 students in 2021 were economically disadvantaged. Seems like it had an effect. Removing the testing does the same thing. Removing the testing should have been enough to negate a lot of the wealth advantage that is seen in standardized testing. But nope, needed to actively penalize the other kids for something they could not control.

An interesting change was the young scholars exception for the honors course requirements, yet another penalty levied against kids for things they can’t control. I’d be curious to know how many young scholars got in.

For the class of 2027, almost 12% of the successful applicants came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. About 3% are English Language Learners.

https://www.fcps.edu/node/47920

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing how often this poster brings up this Curie and TJ thing.

Ultimately though, even if this ridiculous fairytale were true, the admissions response was not to fix the testing process but instead remove testing almost entirely.

People also forget that there were two other tests, but those are gone as well.

The unnecessary reference to "conservatives" reveals what this is really about for them.

It is worth noting that initially, this was a necessity because under COVID-19 protocols at the time, it wasn't realistic to ask 3,000 applicants to sit for a proctored exam during the worst phase of infections and deaths. This would have had to happen in January or February of 2021 and there was no way it would have worked.

Academies of Loudoun did in person testing that year. TJ splits its testing across multiple sites so it should have been easier for them.

[Anonymous]

Why are so few girls being accepted now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: - but I will own up to being the person who was first in on the reporting with TJ students acknowledging that their Curie courses had shown them questions that ended up on the Quant-Q exam prior to them sitting for it.

I do not know if this program still exists, but when people talk about the $5K Curie course, what they're referring to is the flagship 16-month TJ Prep program that students would register for going into their 7th grade year. This was an immensely popular course that Curie offered that was buffered by students who had reported back specific questions from when they sat for the Quant-Q exam themselves, despite having signed an agreement not to do so. Curie offers many other less expensive courses, but this was the one that made the most impact with respect to TJ Admissions.

This is a guess, and is not known.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are so few girls being accepted now?

More now than before. But TJ is not majority female because they don't want to go. Work on your daughters - or accept that they aren't interested.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are so few girls being accepted now?

What is the evidence for this? I read that the number of girls went up, which is expected with an admissions process that prioritizes essay writing.

[Anonymous]

There was a race based admissions program before. Why weren't the records from this time shown to the public? They could have evaluated the impact of this program, the grades and later success of admitted students, compared to the admissions evaluation scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are so few girls being accepted now?

What is the evidence for this? I read that the number of girls went up, which is expected with an admissions process that prioritizes essay writing.

From the link above. Female students represent 43.4%. - class of 2027

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not wanting to be surrounded by myopic students solely focused on grades. I’ve heard some white students say it’s too Asian.

My white student says this. Actually it was phrased "Mom, I'm the only white kid. Everyone is so nerdy. I don't think I can make friends." I said, "Give it a try. The kids are smart like you. Maybe you'll be surprised by how much you have in common"

She hasn't changed her mind!

you have been trying desperately to play whites against the asians, rather foolishly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: - but I will own up to being the person who was first in on the reporting with TJ students acknowledging that their Curie courses had shown them questions that ended up on the Quant-Q exam prior to them sitting for it.

I do not know if this program still exists, but when people talk about the $5K Curie course, what they're referring to is the flagship 16-month TJ Prep program that students would register for going into their 7th grade year. This was an immensely popular course that Curie offered that was buffered by students who had reported back specific questions from when they sat for the Quant-Q exam themselves, despite having signed an agreement not to do so. Curie offers many other less expensive courses, but this was the one that made the most impact with respect to TJ Admissions.

This is a guess, and is not known.

It is the only reasonable explanation for how Curie could have shown lengthy, complicated, multi-step word problems to their students in the years after the first time the QQ was administered.

What other possible explanation could there be?

[Anonymous]

Do they have any tours of the school before you decide or do you have to decide right away?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: - but I will own up to being the person who was first in on the reporting with TJ students acknowledging that their Curie courses had shown them questions that ended up on the Quant-Q exam prior to them sitting for it.

I do not know if this program still exists, but when people talk about the $5K Curie course, what they're referring to is the flagship 16-month TJ Prep program that students would register for going into their 7th grade year. This was an immensely popular course that Curie offered that was buffered by students who had reported back specific questions from when they sat for the Quant-Q exam themselves, despite having signed an agreement not to do so. Curie offers many other less expensive courses, but this was the one that made the most impact with respect to TJ Admissions.

This is a guess, and is not known.

It is the only reasonable explanation for how Curie could have shown lengthy, complicated, multi-step word problems to their students in the years after the first time the QQ was administered.

What other possible explanation could there be?

The more complicated the questions the less likely they got it from students.
Was this a written test? Perhaps they picked up a copy from the testing.
You said how they posted names of admitted students. This is very common in India. What else is common there- bribing government officials for test papers.
Maybe they paid someone at the company that makes the test.
Maybe they followed the research papers written about Quant-Q and got problems that way.
Perhaps there were Curie people involved in the creation of the test to begin with.