TJHSST Exam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?

That happened to my kid this year

My kid didn’t manage to finish.

Oh well. They will be going to a great base HS instead and probably have better college prospects with less work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

MS is very different then HS. My kid has a 4.0, probably higher since he has A1H and Geometry, in AAP classes. He has been took a foreign language in 7th and 8th grade. That is 2 HS classes. He has not struggled but has had to study for the language. We have had to have a few conversations about answering completely after we noticed some B's on assignments in LA, Science, and Social Studies. He knew the material but was being lazy in how he answered. But how will he handle 5 HS level classes? How will he handle 5 HS level classes at a school were everyone is scoring in the 99th percentile? MS to HS is a huge transition and the jump is harder for TJ because the expectations are that they are teaching to kids who learn and absorb information quickly.

I think he will be fine, he is a smart kid and we have specifically challenged him with enrichment in areas to encourage developing study skills and to make sure he has been challenged. That is part of the reason he is doing a foreign language, it is more challenging for him. But I am not going to pretend that the work in HS isn't going to be more and that he has not been faced with too many classes where he needs to complete homework at home or study much for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

The direct answer is: yes. The TJ curriculum is more difficult and much faster-paced than what is mandated at other area high schools (and the area high schools are traditionally more difficult than most high schools in the rest of Virginia).

Please read the Freshman TJ reading assignment I posted above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

This is not common.

I don't think most parents know the reading assignments or homework.

But mots parents do go from not even knowing where the cut-off for an A is to knowing the retake policies and other grading policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

No, that is not true. My child is highly independent.

All TJ kids have to be independent and responsible for their own schedule, curriculum, and outcomes. Those who cannot master these independence skills return to their base schools and are replaced by froshmores (a group who have proven exceptionally capable at TJ).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

No, that is not true. My child is highly independent.

All TJ kids have to be independent and responsible for their own schedule, curriculum, and outcomes. Those who cannot master these independence skills return to their base schools and are replaced by froshmores (a group who have proven exceptionally capable at TJ).

Not really. A lot of them limp along and populate the bottom of the class.

If you have to constnatly intervene as a parent, TJ is going to be a long and stressful experience. Likely with a subpar outcome relative to what you would have gotten at your base school

[Anonymous]

Does taking Algebra 2 in 8th grade get student extra points/credit for TJ selection

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does taking Algebra 2 in 8th grade get student extra points/credit for TJ selection

Not really. As long as you are taking the highest level math available at your middle school, I don't think any further acceleration helps.

The majority of their students took alegebra 2 in 8th grade with maybe 1/3rd in 8th grade geometry and a small handful of in pre-calculus. I think there might have been 1 or 2 kids taking algebra in 8th grade. But now it's like 1/3 precalc or higher, 1/3 algebra 2, and 1/3 geometry or lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

No, that is not true. My child is highly independent.

All TJ kids have to be independent and responsible for their own schedule, curriculum, and outcomes. Those who cannot master these independence skills return to their base schools and are replaced by froshmores (a group who have proven exceptionally capable at TJ).

Yes, the student is so independent that the parent knows about the exact reading assignment AND seems to think that many parents are doing the same ("other TJ parents will likely recognize it").

No, this student is not independent. The parent is hand holding the student all the way.

[Anonymous]

Isn't it good that parents are involved? knowing what is going on in the class is not the same as hand holding. Anyway, I come here to say that TJ courses (not all, but most) are just really hard. Kids need to have the necessary academic background and a good support system.

- another TJ parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't it good that parents are involved? knowing what is going on in the class is not the same as hand holding. Anyway, I come here to say that TJ courses (not all, but most) are just really hard. Kids need to have the necessary academic background and a good support system.

- another TJ parent

Absolutely. We always do the homework jointly, both parent and kid together. It is teamwork!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?

I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.

It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.

Correct.

TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).

The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.

For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.

Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.

About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.

I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.

Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.

The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.

The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.

Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.

So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?

Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).

A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.

If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.

And that's a kid from Carson. A kid from Poe is just going to drown unless they are a natural.

NP and a TJ parent of a sophomore. I sadly agree with PP.


Is your 8th grader truly ready for the rigor of TJ?

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the rigor TJ demands: last year, in freshman English, students were assigned this article (other TJ parents will likely recognize it):

https://journals.indexcopernicus.com/api/file/viewByFileId/758634

That article is not a normal reading assignment for most HS freshmen, but it’s not unusual for TJ.

TJ is ranked among the top 5 high schools in the U.S. for ample and good reason: it is very demanding.

Here is something to give you, as a parent, a glimpse of the level of involvement of parents. The parents know exactly reading assignments and homework, etc. Not just your child is going to school, it is parent + child going to school.

Tell us you are not a TJ parent, and know nothing about TJ, without telling us you know nothing about TJ.

No knowledge; only hate and derision. I feel so sorry for you, PP.