How important is TJ for college?

[Anonymous]

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Depends. If you aim at UVA, TJ is a way to go. If your child is an average or below average at TJ (your class rank could be a lot better at a regular home base high school, then you may not get into your first choice.

[Anonymous]

one of my kid attended tj, the 2nd got accepted but attended base school instead..both got into uva. The 2nd kid wasn't a good fit at tj since he's very laid back, not driven at all like the first child.

[Anonymous]

Did your child like TJ?

[Anonymous]

Q: How important is TJ for college?

A: Not at all.

- Someone with a STEM PhD.

[Anonymous]

Not at all. A kid smart and driven enough for TJ will get into a great college from their base school. You go to TJ for the peer group and the experience and the education. You don’t go for a college edge.

Exception: if you have a strong interest in an area of STEM, like engineering or CS, and take the advanced classes and do a mentorship and/ or research lab in that area, it might help you get into a top engineering or CS school. So if you take 2 years of post-AP CS and do substantive senior research in CS, plus a summer internship, you might have an easier path to Carnegie Melon’s program CS.

— TJ parent

[Anonymous]

If you are sending your kid to TJ to get into a better college, statistics show that that it is a mistake.

If you assume every kid at TJ would be in the top 5% of the base school (maybe not a good assumption, but lets use that), they would probably all get in to UVA/VT/WM at the base school. Instead, some are rejected.

If you look at the elites, there are more kids from the rest of Fairfax County than at TJ.

With that said, if you are going todo cutting edge research at TJ (possible, but rare), and you find TJ's academics not particularly challenging (I know one kid), they TJ is a plus. The top 10 kids at TJ do very well. But it is hard to be the best of the best of the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depends. If you aim at UVA, TJ is a way to go. If your child is an average or below average at TJ (your class rank could be a lot better at a regular home base high school, then you may not get into your first choice.

We have 4 kids in our street who went to UVA. They did not go to tj.

[Anonymous]

I don't think TJ helps you get into colleges you wouldn't have been able to get into anyway.

There is a reasonable population of students who get into colleges based more on their SAT scores than their GPAs from their home schools.

I do think TJ helps you graduate from colleges you might not have been able to graduate from otherwise.

[Anonymous]

I think it's very important if you can get in (my kids couldn't). The quality of STEM education for the four years is worth gold. And yes the top o fthe class go Ivy but everyone goes somewhere decent. If my kids had the test scores I would have definitely done TJ.

[Anonymous]

If you have an unhooked kid who wants to go to HYPSM, Caltech or top 5 SLAC and they do very well at TJ (almost 4.0 UW GPA, interesting extracurriculars/internship), then they will have a good chance at being able to get into one of those schools. If they perform the same at their base school, they will have a much smaller chance of getting into any of those schools. Those are the kids TJ makes a positive difference for as far as college admissions.

Conversely, there are kids who don't do well academically at TJ and their college admissions chances are probably hurt by going there - ie:they'd get into UVA at base school, but they won't at TJ unless they're in the top 50%

Either way, it's a tremendous school - college admissions shouldn't be the reason someone does or doesn't go there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends. If you aim at UVA, TJ is a way to go. If your child is an average or below average at TJ (your class rank could be a lot better at a regular home base high school, then you may not get into your first choice.

We have 4 kids in our street who went to UVA. They did not go to tj.

We have kids in our community who went to TJ and then, went to Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, CMU CS, Cal tech, Dartmouth, Duke, Cornell, UC Berkley, Vanderbilt, and MIT. Some of them who graduated from these schools are working in startups in bay area as well as on wall street (Quants).

We also have kids who went to TJ and then UVA, VA Tech and WM. They are also doing well (med schools and Wall street).

[Anonymous]

It's not important.

The big benefit of going to TJ is that kids around you have very high expectations for themselves and so the baseline expectation among peers is very high. Being in that kind of environment, where going to UVA is kind of average, can be good for some kids. It's an environment of positive examples and everyone living it. Now, if your kid is not up to that level academically then it can be detrimental. Thankfully where you are on that ladder of college exclusivity is not determined until middle of senior year.

So if you go to TJ, you aren't around HS drop outs. That might positively influence your child. Your child might work a little harder because everyone around them is. When they graduate, they have friends at Harvard, Yale, UVA (tons of people), William and Mary... college rate is around 99% and the 1% is due to people who do special things during gap year. When they are in their 30's they will know a ton of doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs.

Having access to specialized engineering classes is another benefit at TJ.

Now does going to TJ automatically get you in the better college for being the same kid that they would be at the base school? Absolutely not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have an unhooked kid who wants to go to HYPSM, Caltech or top 5 SLAC and they do very well at TJ (almost 4.0 UW GPA, interesting extracurriculars/internship), then they will have a good chance at being able to get into one of those schools. If they perform the same at their base school, they will have a much smaller chance of getting into any of those schools. Those are the kids TJ makes a positive difference for as far as college admissions.

Conversely, there are kids who don't do well academically at TJ and their college admissions chances are probably hurt by going there - ie:they'd get into UVA at base school, but they won't at TJ unless they're in the top 50%

Either way, it's a tremendous school - college admissions shouldn't be the reason someone does or doesn't go there.

This is absolutely not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have an unhooked kid who wants to go to HYPSM, Caltech or top 5 SLAC and they do very well at TJ (almost 4.0 UW GPA, interesting extracurriculars/internship), then they will have a good chance at being able to get into one of those schools. If they perform the same at their base school, they will have a much smaller chance of getting into any of those schools. Those are the kids TJ makes a positive difference for as far as college admissions.

Conversely, there are kids who don't do well academically at TJ and their college admissions chances are probably hurt by going there - ie:they'd get into UVA at base school, but they won't at TJ unless they're in the top 50%

Either way, it's a tremendous school - college admissions shouldn't be the reason someone does or doesn't go there.

This is absolutely not true.

I can see why it would seem like you have to be at TJ to get into HYPSM.

The average student at TJ goes to UVA. They don't go to HYPSM, Caltech, and the top 5 SLAC (not sure what that even is just that it's very exclusive.) For someone to go to HYPSM, they have to be pretty darn special. Admissions officers at HYPSM actually know TJ. They come and visit the school and I've literally given them tours while I was a student there. I think they try to visit, over the years, any school that sends them 50+ applications/year. So if they see an application from a FCPS base school, they would question why they are not at TJ. They know the region, they know the admissions process, they know you can transfer in after freshman year, they even know what the school looks like!

If the student has a good explanation-- like they were transfers from a different state Junior year, I honestly don't think it hurts to apply from the base school. In fact, you'd be such a stand out that your teacher recommendations would be a lot more glowing than at TJ where every student is good and teachers find it hard to make each student stand out.

But is the same kid who is UVA material going to get into Harvard just because they are applying from TJ? No. It doesn't work like that.

Also, a 4.0 GPA and "interesting" extracurriculars from TJ are not going to get you into Harvard. You need more ooomph than that. I guess it depends on how interesting it is. Participation in Model UN is not going to cut it. I can say that.