Waitlisted at TJ - now what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Exactly!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can we re-label this thread as “so called adults, fighting over nothing..while their kids are just fine, enjoying HS”

Yes, sure, the changes doubled the number of URM and gave many low-income students opportunities that they were previously denied, but overall it's had little to no impact on anything. I read this thread as a few parents jockeying for an advantage at the expense of the public.

If you believe in entitlement to dole then you resent anyone that works hard. Nobody is asking for anything "at the expense of the public". The ask is to have a process that gives everyone an equal opportunity to public goods. The argument that "overrepresentation" of Asians is solely due to unfair advantages arising from cheating is not just dubious but nefarious.

Just because the new process doubled the URMs does not make the process fair. The end does not justify the means. Or else we can all dispense street justice.

But it was much more fair than the previous process since it gave all students a fair shot not just those at wealthy schools.

The standard cannot be that it was better than the previous one. Or else we can keep defending “separate but equal” as better than overt discrimination.

The previous process was broken. We are not defending that process. But the new one is discriminatory as well. It did not have to be implemented with haste during the pandemic. Proper consultation and change management would have resulted in better ideas and a less polarized community. There have been great ideas on this discussion board as well. Sadly it was not to be.

The new process penalizes Asians for who they are and where they live. It does not evaluate them as individuals. That is wrong.

Agree 100% with this. It is the way they implemented the changes that is the issue. If anyone has followed them closely as I did during the last 2 years, the deception is pure evil.

I agree that the old process was broken but can't see how a race blind admission process where a group that captures over 60% of all seats is being discriminated against.

The overwhelming majority of Regeneron Science Talent search winners are Asian. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of USAMO/JMO qualifiers are Asian. Mathcounts nationals top 56 had like 4 white kids and 52 Asians. Unless you think that every single prestigious STEM national competition is racist since Asians are so grossly overrepresented, maybe you should consider that the Asians generally have higher stats and are achieving at higher levels than everyone else. White people certainly are not underprivileged or under-resourced compared to Asians, yet white people are not achieving much at the highest levels.

Asians are being discriminated against if they have the academic stats to earn 70%+ of the seats, but were cut back to only 60% for reasons not related to academic merit.

Exactly. Why don't we think NBA is racist or Nobel Prize is racist.

For the same reason that we don't think those respective competitions are racist. There isn't a single person in the pro-reform camp who believes that Regeneron or Siemens or Mathcounts are racist.

What we believe is that while SOME of TJ should be represented by winners of these competitions, there's no value in ALL of TJ coming from that very small segment of the academic world.

You will notice that there are essentially zero pro-reform advocates who are out there shouting "60% Asian is STILL TOO MUCH! We should seek to bring that number down even FURTHER!" And that's after two years of this process!

That would be a legitimate viewpoint if the other kids at TJ were coming from a strong segment of the academic world that simply wasn't aligned with the high level competitions. In reality, they're coming from the segment that wasn't smart enough to qualify for Algebra in 7th, wasn't motivated enough to do any STEM ECs or achieve anything whatsoever, wasn't smart or motivated enough to take all Honors, and are just a bunch of random, somewhat above average, pretty good students who could write good essays about how they wanted to attend TJ. Don't act like TJ is handpicking from brilliant, diverse kids like Ivies do. They're picking a bunch of somewhat above average kids for the sole purpose of improving optics.

1) Approximately 20% of the Class of 2025 came in without being in Algebra in 7th grade. As opposed to about 7-8% previously.

2) You have no idea if they were motivated enough to do STEM ECs.

3) We don't have statistics on how many came in without being "all honors".

You literally don't know what you're talking about - like a novice chef, you're throwing your spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

You also literally don't know what you're talking about, considering that you're throwing out numbers that are quite incorrect. According to FCAG, the number of students in 8th grade Algebra increased from 4.5% for the class of 2024 to a whopping 31%. https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Anti-Asian folks don't care about facts, especially the inconvenient ones like: How do Asian students who are mostly middle class with parents often not even able to speak English able to achieve more than wealthier white students, wealthier black and wealthier Hispanic students?

Hard work, involved parents, education-focused home environment, and natural intelligence? Just guessing.

Dropping $20k Curie or places like that doesn't hurt either.

Methinks you got duped when you dropped 20k at Curie. Cause nobody else paid even half the amount.

The poster knows this, and they will followup with made up posts about we spent 10k at Curie over the years and another 10k at other prep places.

Classic Trumpian logic - if you repeat a lie often enough - it will appear to be the truth.

Dear Coalition dopes - Trump is on YOUR side

I dont believe he has spoken yet on the issue. But he will definitely endorse the reform crowd. He could do with your skills - how to do drive racist policy without appearing to be a racist. Keep repeating lies (Curie @20K, FCPS has IRS data) and create your own alternate facts - all very Trumpian.

So dont give up hope - you may still get an endorsement - if not for your message but definitely for your tactics. Classic Trumpian.

Congratulations - the stupidest post in the history of this website. And that's a low bar. Well done.

Again - classic Trumpian name-calling. Stupid, Dopes, stooges - your vocabulary will score you a place on his re-election team.

New poster here. I’m confused- aren’t the Tumpians the ones who are against the changes in the application process?

No, the Trumpers are against diversity and are fighting for privilege. They want a corrupt system that favors those who can afford to drop thousands on prep and excludes the less affluent schools.

Remember - all those opposing the woke extremists that authored this reform are not Trumpsters. The reformers are trying to save themselves from disgrace at the next elections by framing the issue as the liberals versus the Trumpsters. The battle is between the woke extremists versus the moderates (just like in SFO). The Trumpsters are on their own.

Wrong the conflict is between the anti-diversity pro-privilege crowd and people who want to ensure that public schools opportunities are open to all not just the wealthy.

Nah, you just want your elitist alma mater to look a little more rainbow so having TJ on your resume will still give you a leg up in leftist circles.

A real reformer would be shutting this time-consuming waste of a school down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Exactly!

Then explain the FARMS bonus points and middle-school minimums. Hardly metrics that equate to "naturally more gifted."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was one of the authors of the FCAG report linked above. As the previous previous poster said, the percentage of admitted students enrolled in Algebra I in 8th grade changed *drastically* from Class of 2024 to Class of 2025.

We have not requested the data yet for the Class of 2026. I think the Class of 2025 will be different than the Class of 2026 in multiple ways, though.

To name a few:

- There was a huge decrease in number of applicants from Class of 2025 to Class of 2026 from 3,034 to 2,544 students. This erases all "progress" made in getting students to apply by "removing barriers" such as the application fee or the prospect of an onerous test. The number of applicants in Class of 2026 is almost identical to the number of applicants for Class of 2024 (in 2024, there were 2,539 applicants). Quite possibly, the reduction in applications came from the same demographics of students who didn't apply to TJ in Class of 2024, mainly students who are not in AAP. (Note: the student racial group that has historically been *least likely* to apply to TJ while meeting the eligibility requirements is white students.).

- The county discontinued the use of points for "underrepresented schools" this year. One of the Supreme Court filings suggested that these points only impacted the outcome for a small number of students (I don't remember the exact number). FCPS announced this change in their letter to students this year. I would bet FCPS staff looked at the outcome for Class of 2026, and figured it didn't have a large impact on the outcome, or wasn't worth the cost in terms of FCPS's vulnerability in the pending lawsuit.

- Starting for Class of 2026, the "honors requirement' is no longer waived. Students enrolled in Algebra I have to be enrolled in the "honors" version, students must be taking "honors" or AAP science, and students must have at least one honors class in social studies or English, except for Young Scholars students who don't have this last requirement. The honors requirement was waived for Class of 2025. While we do not know whether this resulted in admitting many students who did not take honors courses, we do know from the same report that 38% of FCPS admissions went to students not participating in AAP.

- An unfamiliar test structure and content will always result in more drastic changes to who is admitted, and increased familiarity results in students who learn how to do the admissions process better (through parents, teachers, preparatory schools, etc). Similarly, FCPS admissions folk probably didn't know what to expect the first year, and were more likely to have made arbitrary decisions about how to write the rubrics and how many points to give out etc. They probably fine-tuned it this year.

One piece of evidence of a difference in Class of 2026 compared to 2025 is that some of the large AAP centers had many more students admitted this year than last year. As an extreme example, 9 students were admitted from Frost for Class of 2025, while 24 students were admitted from Frost for Class of 2026. On the other hand, many strong middle schools didn't see such increases, and most are still seeing much lower numbers of admitted students than two years ago.

One thing to keep in mind as people debate discrimination in the current process, and the relative merits of the admitted students: we do not know whether the admitted students from any one school, any one racial demographic or any one socioeconomic stratum are the ones that would be admitted if letters of recommendation and/or test scores and/or information about extracurriculars were included for evaluation in a holistic fashion. An essay-based test and GPA can only tell FCPS so much about a student. FCPS can admit a lot of mediocre students of every racial type, and without discrimination. No particular racial outcome addresses the problem of an admissions process that does not measure whether kids are "gifted" or "advanced", even though these are the words used in the state mandate for governor's schools. A student who has amazing talent that would be observed through advanced coursework, passionate and stellar performance in Science Olympiad, and teachers who rave about their brilliance, may write an average "wait pool"-level essay. Which doesn't-stand-out-essay-writers is eventually admitted might be a random process that doesn't identify that student who would have been obvious from other lenses. We should be collecting more information about these students, even if student seats are partially distributed according to school.

Thank you for your detailed message.

Two things: one positive, one negative…

Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

Positive - a lot of pro-reform individuals agree with you that we should be adding layers to this process. I for one am a strong believer in a revamped teacher recommendation form that requires teachers to compare the applicants with other students in their class along various indicators, and that allows for each teacher to write more deeply either on behalf of or against a very limited number of students. One imagines a teacher writing positively about students who stood out in terms of class participation and contribution to the total academic environment, while perhaps writing negatively about a student caught cheating or who displayed more interest in grades than learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Naturally more gifted in receiving handouts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

I'm stunned that there were 400+ 8th graders who couldn't maintain a 3.5 GPA in middle school classes with grossly inflated grades, yet still thought TJ would be a good idea. Did they expect TJ to be easier than their middle school?

There are 3 huge, glaring mistakes that make the new process a complete sham.
1. GPA is so absurdly devalued. Considering just how easy it is to get As in even AAP classes, kids with lower than a 3.85 are unlikely to be successful at TJ.
2. Removal of teacher recommendations. This has been covered extensively, so no need to rehash.
3. Using attending school rather than zoned for the 1.5% allotment. Penalizing people for attending AAP Centers for more rigorous coursework is insane.

They could easily fix all of these, but then the process would be unlikely to result in the demographics the school board desires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

I'm stunned that there were 400+ 8th graders who couldn't maintain a 3.5 GPA in middle school classes with grossly inflated grades, yet still thought TJ would be a good idea. Did they expect TJ to be easier than their middle school?

There are 3 huge, glaring mistakes that make the new process a complete sham.
1. GPA is so absurdly devalued. Considering just how easy it is to get As in even AAP classes, kids with lower than a 3.85 are unlikely to be successful at TJ.
2. Removal of teacher recommendations. This has been covered extensively, so no need to rehash.
3. Using attending school rather than zoned for the 1.5% allotment. Penalizing people for attending AAP Centers for more rigorous coursework is insane.

They could easily fix all of these, but then the process would be unlikely to result in the demographics the school board desires.

Students in AAP centers are no longer penalized for attending them. The "underrepresented schools" experience factor - which I'll grant was redundant given the 1.5% allotment - is no longer a part of the selection process as of the 2026 group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

I'm stunned that there were 400+ 8th graders who couldn't maintain a 3.5 GPA in middle school classes with grossly inflated grades, yet still thought TJ would be a good idea. Did they expect TJ to be easier than their middle school?

There are 3 huge, glaring mistakes that make the new process a complete sham.
1. GPA is so absurdly devalued. Considering just how easy it is to get As in even AAP classes, kids with lower than a 3.85 are unlikely to be successful at TJ.
2. Removal of teacher recommendations. This has been covered extensively, so no need to rehash.
3. Using attending school rather than zoned for the 1.5% allotment. Penalizing people for attending AAP Centers for more rigorous coursework is insane.

They could easily fix all of these, but then the process would be unlikely to result in the demographics the school board desires.

Students in AAP centers are no longer penalized for attending them. The "underrepresented schools" experience factor - which I'll grant was redundant given the 1.5% allotment - is no longer a part of the selection process as of the 2026 group.

Nope. They still are penalized. The 1.5% allotment is by attending school rather than zoned, meaning that the competition will be quite fierce in the AAP Centers that pull from neighboring MS and nearly nonexistent in the MS without AAP who have had all of their top students syphoned off to the AAP center. MS without AAP will be sending kids to TJ who either weren't among the 20% of FCPS kids who qualified for AAP or who qualified for AAP but chose the less rigorous academic option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

I'm stunned that there were 400+ 8th graders who couldn't maintain a 3.5 GPA in middle school classes with grossly inflated grades, yet still thought TJ would be a good idea. Did they expect TJ to be easier than their middle school?

There are 3 huge, glaring mistakes that make the new process a complete sham.
1. GPA is so absurdly devalued. Considering just how easy it is to get As in even AAP classes, kids with lower than a 3.85 are unlikely to be successful at TJ.
2. Removal of teacher recommendations. This has been covered extensively, so no need to rehash.
3. Using attending school rather than zoned for the 1.5% allotment. Penalizing people for attending AAP Centers for more rigorous coursework is insane.

They could easily fix all of these, but then the process would be unlikely to result in the demographics the school board desires.

Students in AAP centers are no longer penalized for attending them. The "underrepresented schools" experience factor - which I'll grant was redundant given the 1.5% allotment - is no longer a part of the selection process as of the 2026 group.

Nope. They still are penalized. The 1.5% allotment is by attending school rather than zoned, meaning that the competition will be quite fierce in the AAP Centers that pull from neighboring MS and nearly nonexistent in the MS without AAP who have had all of their top students syphoned off to the AAP center. MS without AAP will be sending kids to TJ who either weren't among the 20% of FCPS kids who qualified for AAP or who qualified for AAP but chose the less rigorous academic option.

The competition for those allotted spaces at the AAP centers will be fierce, sure, but students who are not selected for those spaces are still every bit as eligible for the unallocated spaces as are everyone else in the pool of qualified applicants. So no, they're not penalized with respect to the rest of the pool of applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Negative - the initial number of applicants for this class was 2940, which represented a slight decrease from the previous year. The number in the neighborhood of 2500 that others are throwing out and that FCPS tossed out in the new data was the number of qualified applicants remaining after the semester GPA cutoff. If interest in TJ declined year-over-year, it only did so slightly. This information is available in the Director of Admissions’ deposition and is publicly searchable.

I'm stunned that there were 400+ 8th graders who couldn't maintain a 3.5 GPA in middle school classes with grossly inflated grades, yet still thought TJ would be a good idea. Did they expect TJ to be easier than their middle school?

There are 3 huge, glaring mistakes that make the new process a complete sham.
1. GPA is so absurdly devalued. Considering just how easy it is to get As in even AAP classes, kids with lower than a 3.85 are unlikely to be successful at TJ.
2. Removal of teacher recommendations. This has been covered extensively, so no need to rehash.
3. Using attending school rather than zoned for the 1.5% allotment. Penalizing people for attending AAP Centers for more rigorous coursework is insane.

They could easily fix all of these, but then the process would be unlikely to result in the demographics the school board desires.

Students in AAP centers are no longer penalized for attending them. The "underrepresented schools" experience factor - which I'll grant was redundant given the 1.5% allotment - is no longer a part of the selection process as of the 2026 group.

Nope. They still are penalized. The 1.5% allotment is by attending school rather than zoned, meaning that the competition will be quite fierce in the AAP Centers that pull from neighboring MS and nearly nonexistent in the MS without AAP who have had all of their top students syphoned off to the AAP center. MS without AAP will be sending kids to TJ who either weren't among the 20% of FCPS kids who qualified for AAP or who qualified for AAP but chose the less rigorous academic option.

The competition for those allotted spaces at the AAP centers will be fierce, sure, but students who are not selected for those spaces are still every bit as eligible for the unallocated spaces as are everyone else in the pool of qualified applicants. So no, they're not penalized with respect to the rest of the pool of applicants.

They aren't penalized in the general pool. I'll agree on that point. If it is significantly easier to get selected for TJ from the higher SES non AAP MS than it is from the lower SES AAP center to which the gen ed MS is a feeder, one could argue that the kids attending the AAP center are being penalized. Case in point is Thoreau vs. Jackson. Thoreau is much wealthier, yet it is still easier to get into TJ there than Luther Jackson, since many of the top kids zoned to Thoreau attend Jackson for AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

At some point, good leaders need to make unpopular decisions that are universally "better" even if the usual voter base is against it. Input from stakeholders would overwhelmingly be from parents belonging to the the top 3 feeder middle schools. We'd be stuck in shouting matches at every SB meeting for the next year and nothing would really get accomplished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Exactly!

Then explain the FARMS bonus points and middle-school minimums. Hardly metrics that equate to "naturally more gifted."

If they could be successful to get into TJ without being able to afford prep, they must be super gifted!