Reasons why one would not accept TJ offer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wierd they couldn’t figure out new questions every year?

They did. The notion that the problems seen at Curie were the exact same as those asked in future admissions test is false. "Buying the answers" really means "buying past questions and answers".

Personally, I think the solution would have been to publicly release past exams to reduce the benefit of places like Curies

No, it's not that kind of test. The solution was to scrap it and change to a different type of test. Which they did. Problem solved. People complain, but people complain about everything.

The test was the SHSAT. The current "test" isn't actually a test. It's a combination of "what I did for my summer vacation" combined with "why I really really really want to go to TJ"

Which is why you are so happy that your kid doesn't have to go to a school filled with those sorts of kids!

We were at the open house last night. My kid is going next year but when he came home and told me about the test, I was like "Oh, so it's a lottery?"

No doubt the kids are all bright because they had to meet the cutoff. I am glad to see the increase in free/reduced lunch kids but the intent behind the change was to move the goalpost to get a particular racial result. The current method is so random, and its very hard to argue that something that is effectively a lottery is racist. Those hearings were racist AF.

How many Black and Hispanic students did you see last night? Not many I bet.

I was at my older ones HS Basketball game and didnt see any Asian American students? Where is equity, I had to wonder!

Their team must not have been playing against TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

Sure it does not. But is the idea behind admitting under-qualified 8th grade algebra 1 students and setting them up to face TJ rigor and inhumanely subject them to stress?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

Sure it does not. But is the idea behind admitting under-qualified 8th grade algebra 1 students and setting them up to face TJ rigor and inhumanely subject them to stress?

Being one in a cohort of 150 is not inhumane or stressful. No matter how many times you bemoan their existence. They're fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

Sure it does not. But is the idea behind admitting under-qualified 8th grade algebra 1 students and setting them up to face TJ rigor and inhumanely subject them to stress?

I am trying to figure out if you are one of the people who thinks that the rigor at TJ should be decreased so that kids with Algebra 1 from lower SES schools have a better chance of succeeding and staying or if you are someone pretending to care about the welfare of kids from lower SES schools with only Algebra 1 attending TJ in order to affect change so that the bar is raised on admissions and more Asian kids are admitted. I can't quite figure it out. Eiher way, I don't think you actually care about the kids, I think you care about achieving a specific goal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wierd they couldn’t figure out new questions every year?

They did. The notion that the problems seen at Curie were the exact same as those asked in future admissions test is false. "Buying the answers" really means "buying past questions and answers".

Personally, I think the solution would have been to publicly release past exams to reduce the benefit of places like Curies

No, it's not that kind of test. The solution was to scrap it and change to a different type of test. Which they did. Problem solved. People complain, but people complain about everything.

The test was the SHSAT. The current "test" isn't actually a test. It's a combination of "what I did for my summer vacation" combined with "why I really really really want to go to TJ"

Which is why you are so happy that your kid doesn't have to go to a school filled with those sorts of kids!

We were at the open house last night. My kid is going next year but when he came home and told me about the test, I was like "Oh, so it's a lottery?"

No doubt the kids are all bright because they had to meet the cutoff. I am glad to see the increase in free/reduced lunch kids but the intent behind the change was to move the goalpost to get a particular racial result. The current method is so random, and its very hard to argue that something that is effectively a lottery is racist. Those hearings were racist AF.

How many Black and Hispanic students did you see last night? Not many I bet.

The more accurate measure would be what percentage of Blacks/Hispanics who applied and got in? The raw number in each class means nothing.

[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.

Top colleges don't think many of these kids are myopic. More TJ grads go to top colleges than any other Virginia school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wierd they couldn’t figure out new questions every year?

They did. The notion that the problems seen at Curie were the exact same as those asked in future admissions test is false. "Buying the answers" really means "buying past questions and answers".

Personally, I think the solution would have been to publicly release past exams to reduce the benefit of places like Curies

No, it's not that kind of test. The solution was to scrap it and change to a different type of test. Which they did. Problem solved. People complain, but people complain about everything.

The test was the SHSAT. The current "test" isn't actually a test. It's a combination of "what I did for my summer vacation" combined with "why I really really really want to go to TJ"

Which is why you are so happy that your kid doesn't have to go to a school filled with those sorts of kids!

We were at the open house last night. My kid is going next year but when he came home and told me about the test, I was like "Oh, so it's a lottery?"

No doubt the kids are all bright because they had to meet the cutoff. I am glad to see the increase in free/reduced lunch kids but the intent behind the change was to move the goalpost to get a particular racial result. The current method is so random, and its very hard to argue that something that is effectively a lottery is racist. Those hearings were racist AF.

How many Black and Hispanic students did you see last night? Not many I bet.

The more accurate measure would be what percentage of Blacks/Hispanics who applied and got in? The raw number in each class means nothing.

Yesterday’s TJ admissions release has those stats. It’s actually relatively proportional overall. The big oddball is that FARMs status meant you were twice as likely to get in vs your rate in the applicant pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wierd they couldn’t figure out new questions every year?

They did. The notion that the problems seen at Curie were the exact same as those asked in future admissions test is false. "Buying the answers" really means "buying past questions and answers".

Personally, I think the solution would have been to publicly release past exams to reduce the benefit of places like Curies

No, it's not that kind of test. The solution was to scrap it and change to a different type of test. Which they did. Problem solved. People complain, but people complain about everything.

The test was the SHSAT. The current "test" isn't actually a test. It's a combination of "what I did for my summer vacation" combined with "why I really really really want to go to TJ"

Which is why you are so happy that your kid doesn't have to go to a school filled with those sorts of kids!

We were at the open house last night. My kid is going next year but when he came home and told me about the test, I was like "Oh, so it's a lottery?"

No doubt the kids are all bright because they had to meet the cutoff. I am glad to see the increase in free/reduced lunch kids but the intent behind the change was to move the goalpost to get a particular racial result. The current method is so random, and its very hard to argue that something that is effectively a lottery is racist. Those hearings were racist AF.

How many Black and Hispanic students did you see last night? Not many I bet.

The more accurate measure would be what percentage of Blacks/Hispanics who applied and got in? The raw number in each class means nothing.

Yesterday’s TJ admissions release has those stats. It’s actually relatively proportional overall. The big oddball is that FARMs status meant you were twice as likely to get in vs your rate in the applicant pool.

Not odd. Someone posted the scoring. FARMS is worth more than twice as much as GPA. 90 point bonus , while a 3.5 minimum GPA vs 4.0 is worth 37.5 points.

[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.

Top colleges don't think many of these kids are myopic. More TJ grads go to top colleges than any other Virginia school.

It's closer to like 3rd in the nation behind places like Phillips Academy (where everyone is rich) and Stuyvesant (where everyone is poor).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real Curie Owner,
If you’re legit, I feel bad for you that your company has some a negative stigma by most of the community. You seem well intentioned.

I don’t have a problem with the type of work you mention in your example of helping a kid pre-learn the material before a class. But many many people thought that prepping for a test meant to find intrinsic scholastic aptitude was gaming the system. That’s what the test was scrapped and it’s never getting brought back.

Prepping for a test is not gaming, it's called studying. I've never heard of curie but doing some googling, it looks like it's run by indians. They are kicking our ass because they want it more than we do. They are willing to watch their children struggle and cry and do hard things in the hopes their children can realize the american dream ... and so the baton for immigrant model minority is being passed from east asian to south asian just as it was passed from jew to east asian decades ago. Sure there will still be east asians populating top programs for a while but you can see the tide changing.

You're a couple years out of date. FYI

Get off my lawn!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We didn't believe our child would be in the top 10% or even the top 25% at TJ, so we declined the offer last year. Child was part of middle school math club, but there was significant gap between their math proficiency and that of students on the school's MathCounts team. We knew this gap would only be wider if our child were to attend TJ.

+1 here. The peer group at TJ is so high-achieving that if your kid isn't far-and-away the highest-achieving at his MS, DC will be mediocre at TJ. In that case, you/DC have to decide whether the opportunities at TJ outweigh the suppressed college choices.

People keep saying this but I'd like to see some data. I went to a magnet school in nyc and people said there was a penalty in college admissions because harvard wouldn't accept more than ~10 kids per year from my high school. After recent data released by harvard during the affirmative action litigation, it turns out that the penalty for attending my high school approximated the asian racial penalty. Staying at your base school doesn't make you any less asian, going to tjhsst doesn't make you any more asian. We don't know what the future looks like but i'd like to see data before believing that uva is flat out lying about discriminating against tj students.

Seems you already have the data.

I don't have a monopoly on data. I may be missing something but it seems to me that UVA admissions has been getting way more selective and TJ has been getting way more asian and those two factors combine to make it APPEAR as if it is harder to get into UVA from TJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

Sure it does not. But is the idea behind admitting under-qualified 8th grade algebra 1 students and setting them up to face TJ rigor and inhumanely subject them to stress?

Being one in a cohort of 150 is not inhumane or stressful. No matter how many times you bemoan their existence. They're fine.

Are they fine? The counselor may say a B or occasional C is fine but is it really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We didn't believe our child would be in the top 10% or even the top 25% at TJ, so we declined the offer last year. Child was part of middle school math club, but there was significant gap between their math proficiency and that of students on the school's MathCounts team. We knew this gap would only be wider if our child were to attend TJ.

+1 here. The peer group at TJ is so high-achieving that if your kid isn't far-and-away the highest-achieving at his MS, DC will be mediocre at TJ. In that case, you/DC have to decide whether the opportunities at TJ outweigh the suppressed college choices.

People keep saying this but I'd like to see some data. I went to a magnet school in nyc and people said there was a penalty in college admissions because harvard wouldn't accept more than ~10 kids per year from my high school. After recent data released by harvard during the affirmative action litigation, it turns out that the penalty for attending my high school approximated the asian racial penalty. Staying at your base school doesn't make you any less asian, going to tjhsst doesn't make you any more asian. We don't know what the future looks like but i'd like to see data before believing that uva is flat out lying about discriminating against tj students.

Seems you already have the data.

I don't have a monopoly on data. I may be missing something but it seems to me that UVA admissions has been getting way more selective and TJ has been getting way more asian and those two factors combine to make it APPEAR as if it is harder to get into UVA from TJ

You explained Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"A lot of these folks X" -> stereotyping a whole race based on experiences with a very small number -> racist.

If you got mugged by an African-American, would you go around talking about how black people are thugs?

DP. The person above is not stereotyping an entire race with that comment.

The fact that there are a large number of upper-middle class and "wealthy" Asians who are attempting to protect their prior privileged access to an exceptional academic opportunity says nothing about Asians more broadly.

The fact that by and large, they are not publicly joined by members of other races (except occasionally by people who are married to Asians acting in the self interest of their biracial children or Asian stepchildren) is what permits the person above to refer to the group as "Asian".

It is Asians who are making this argument publicly, but it is far from all Asians.

There is a school similar to TJ in NYC where they also tried to change the admissions criteria for similar reasons. The school was almost 80% asian and they talked about how asian families were buying their way into the school. Then it was pointed out that asians have a higher poverty rate than blacks or hispanics in NYC because they are all immigrants. Most of the asian students were on free/reduced lunch, a higher propiortion than the school in general which was about 40% free/reduced lunch. Money has nothing to do with it, it's all about race.

If money is what gets you into tj, there would have been more white kids. White people in northern virginia are wealthier than asians and yet the biggest absolute increase in population under the new admissions process was among white students.

It is clear that some parents want their kids to get great opportunities but don't necessarily want their kids to stress out and bust their ass to earn them.

Counter-point: the previous admissions process was incentivizing behavior that took "stressing out" and "busting your ass" to a deeply unhealthy level for many students, who would then get in to TJ and crash hard. It wouldn't appear that they were crashing hard because of the sheer volume of external support they were receiving, but the evidence came in the form of self-harming behavior.

The previous method was competitive and merit based. The current method looks pretty random.

Allocating social resources based on merit might create more stress but it also leads to more efficient allocation.
Academic stress happens everywhere, if those kids don't get into tj, their parents don't give up on their kids. The academic stress is still there.
It's not like tj has the highest suicide rate in the area.

Sure it does not. But is the idea behind admitting under-qualified 8th grade algebra 1 students and setting them up to face TJ rigor and inhumanely subject them to stress?

There have ALWAYS been Algebra 1 students who got into TJ. Indeed, for most of the school’s early existence, the majority of students entering were coming in from Alg1.

Some of the school’s most outstanding graduates, even in recent years, have entered from Alg1.

But you’re going to sit here and pretend that you care about them and their well-being as an excuse to advance your pernicious self-serving narrative that TJ should only be for kids who are in Geometry or higher - or that kids who are in Pre-calc or above should be automatic admits.

Alg1 TJ students do not need your support. They have been doing splendidly and will continue to do so while you cry your crocodile tears. Enough already with this nonsense.