A data-backed approach to understand the TJ Admissions Process

[Anonymous]

All this is so confusing. English isn't my first language. I have an accent and people ask me where I am really from all the time. We try to speak to kids at home in a language other than English. My kids have an accent too that they try to hide. How many points do I get for experience? Or do I have to be only Latino or African origin for experience factor? Others don't really have experiences? Do I need to show an ancestry test - what if it shows African DNA. So many worms in can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Race was not considered. Middle school and unknown experience factors were. I hope FCPS keeps those factors secret.

LOL right. Not much of a secret when FARMS went up from 2% to 25% - you think it's an accident?

No, that is a product of including kids from every school. The 1.5% of kids from the MS traditionally not represented will have included a majority of kids who were FARMS. And ELL. Does that make up 25%? Probably not but I doubt that the experience factors are as large a factor as some folks think. There are 26 MS in FCPS, how many of those schools had not sent a kid to TJ in ages? And how many of those schools are high FARMS schools?

There is also cross-over between the various factors people are mentioning, I would guess that many of the ELL are also FARMs kids. I don’t know the exact percentage, I have not seen the data. I am aware that ELL can be non-Hispanic, at Fox Mill we have kids who are native Japanese speakers and are learning English who are ELL. I would guess that the majority of ELL speakers are Spanish speaker but I don’t know what percentage.

As for the comments about how race had to be a factor, the drop in Asian acceptances is more likely due to the increase in kids from schools that normally don’t have any kids accepted. That 1.5% adds up across the schools that normally don’t send anyone. If those schools are now sending 8 kids a piece, then there is your difference. The reality is that the schools that normally don’t send kids are less likely to have a larger Asian population. The Asian families that are focused on TJ move to get their kids into MS at the feeder schools, not Herndon MS and the schools who send a lot fewer kids. The MS inclusion served to diversify the population in important ways, I suspect that it is not going to be as easy to over turn as many people on this board think.

I do believe that the original numbers showed that a higher percentage of Asian kids were accepted then applied, even if the overall number of Asian students at the school dropped. I suspect that it is going to be hard to garner much sympathy when the acceptances still led to a greater then 50% Asian student body while increasing the number URM and ELL and FARMs kids at the same time.

The reality is that TJ is a public school and it should be available to everyone in the system and not just the kids at specific schools whose families are only focused on TJ.

Totally agree! I hope they step it up next year to provide more opportunities for less affluent kids.

[Anonymous]

I’m very suspicious that the FARMS numbers reflect reality. With all of the chatter about how easy this one is to game because it relies on self-reporting, I would really hope the school board would ask for an analysis. (Ie how many of the admitted farms kids were farms in prior years)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All this is so confusing. English isn't my first language. I have an accent and people ask me where I am really from all the time. We try to speak to kids at home in a language other than English. My kids have an accent too that they try to hide. How many points do I get for experience? Or do I have to be only Latino or African origin for experience factor? Others don't really have experiences? Do I need to show an ancestry test - what if it shows African DNA. So many worms in can.

Is your family low income? Do you and your spouse have college degrees?

Those are two qualities that can make a difference in the opportunities children may have access to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this is so confusing. English isn't my first language. I have an accent and people ask me where I am really from all the time. We try to speak to kids at home in a language other than English. My kids have an accent too that they try to hide. How many points do I get for experience? Or do I have to be only Latino or African origin for experience factor? Others don't really have experiences? Do I need to show an ancestry test - what if it shows African DNA. So many worms in can.

Is your family low income? Do you and your spouse have college degrees?

Those are two qualities that can make a difference in the opportunities children may have access to.

I thought we were looking at holistic experiences here. How low is low? should I keep it artificially low? what about other experiences? are they to be diminished or only certain races have valuable experiences? How do I qualify to be a certain race? DNA test? Skin color? You are confusing me more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

easy solution - don't go to a center. For the sake of argument, this is a public high school, not NASA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

We all understand that you are upset your Carson kid got waitlisted. There is a difference between what is fair and what is legal. The court will decide if it is legal for the school board to change admissions in a manner to include all middle schools so the entire county benefits from having TJ in Fairfax and funded by taxpayers. If each school could only send one kid to a county wide spelling bee that has first, second and third prizes, would it be fair to the second place finisher at a school being excluded from the spelling bee even though she may be the second best speller in the county? I think so. It she was excluded because she didn't have the right experience factors so they sent someone else in her place, that is a different story. Please let the court decide what Fairfax county can and cannot do. If you do not like the end result, feel free to vote in elections, run for school board, advocate for change, move to another county, or support closing down TJ.

[Anonymous]

Give it time, dear. NYC's Stuyvesant is like 75-80% Asian and the fact that half of them live at the poverty level doesn't stop the attacks claiming Asian privilege.

Folks on this board love to compare TJ to Stuyvesant despite the fact that the Asian American community in NYC is wildly different, demographically and economically, than the Asian American community in NoVa. You can't claim marginalization just because a some folks whose parents came from the same landmass than yours happen to be poor in a totally different city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Give it time, dear. NYC's Stuyvesant is like 75-80% Asian and the fact that half of them live at the poverty level doesn't stop the attacks claiming Asian privilege.

Folks on this board love to compare TJ to Stuyvesant despite the fact that the Asian American community in NYC is wildly different, demographically and economically, than the Asian American community in NoVa. You can't claim marginalization just because a some folks whose parents came from the same landmass than yours happen to be poor in a totally different city.

Sure, let's pretend that it's a complete coincidence that Asians dominate two of some of the most selective public schools in America. Yes, the Asians at Stuy have nothing in common with Asians at TJ.

Let's also pretend that the Asian domination at Stuy causes no controversy whatsoever, or that their poverty level shields them from the attacks from equity advocates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

easy solution - don't go to a center. For the sake of argument, this is a public high school, not NASA

There are AAP center middle schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

easy solution - don't go to a center. For the sake of argument, this is a public high school, not NASA

There are AAP center middle schools?

Yep, the hothouse flowers are kept away from the masses through 8th grade

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All this is so confusing. English isn't my first language. I have an accent and people ask me where I am really from all the time. We try to speak to kids at home in a language other than English. My kids have an accent too that they try to hide. How many points do I get for experience? Or do I have to be only Latino or African origin for experience factor? Others don't really have experiences? Do I need to show an ancestry test - what if it shows African DNA. So many worms in can.

Is your family low income? Do you and your spouse have college degrees?

Those are two qualities that can make a difference in the opportunities children may have access to.

What about other qualities that can make a difference in the opportunities children may have access to? Like past experiences/history of discrimination? Does a black kid with higher income and/or college-educated parents qualify?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

We all understand that you are upset your Carson kid got waitlisted. There is a difference between what is fair and what is legal. The court will decide if it is legal for the school board to change admissions in a manner to include all middle schools so the entire county benefits from having TJ in Fairfax and funded by taxpayers. If each school could only send one kid to a county wide spelling bee that has first, second and third prizes, would it be fair to the second place finisher at a school being excluded from the spelling bee even though she may be the second best speller in the county? I think so. It she was excluded because she didn't have the right experience factors so they sent someone else in her place, that is a different story. Please let the court decide what Fairfax county can and cannot do. If you do not like the end result, feel free to vote in elections, run for school board, advocate for change, move to another county, or support closing down TJ.

Answer to the PP's question: Depends on skin color of Liberty student.

And as the responder says, it is not a fairness question. All sorts of unfair things were legal in this country and this is one more of them. Only the boogeyman is the Asian as they are not too many of them and they vote for Democrats anyway. If you want to change it, fight the system or suck it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tjtestprep.com/data

The middle school you attend plays a very significant role in admissions

Carson, Longfellow, Kilmer, and Rocky Run MS now admit students at lower rates

This new admission process is totally unfair towards kids from AAP center schools. For example it is much more difficult to make the cut off in Carson (AAP center) than in Franklin (base school) due to higher competition. Except for may be 3 or 4 AAP kids from my kids elementary school, who chose to go to Franklin (for personal reasons), all of the 100+ kids from AAP class went to Carson, which is the default. I wish the admission process is based on 'base' middle school instead of the school they actually attend.

To understand the competition, I believe around 50% of my kids AAP class qualified for presidential medal (names announced at 6th grade graduation ceremony) where as the less than 10% of PBL class got it. In addition, AAP kids participate at much higher rate of participation in most of the STEM activities/fairs, digital leadership, writing etc compared non AAP kids.

For the sake of the argument, How do you feel NASA reserving 4 research slots to top two students from MIT and top two students from Liberty University with out taking individual merit into consideration? Do you consider it is fair to rest of the MIT class who also wanted to get into NASA but lose out to Liberty?

We all understand that you are upset your Carson kid got waitlisted. There is a difference between what is fair and what is legal. The court will decide if it is legal for the school board to change admissions in a manner to include all middle schools so the entire county benefits from having TJ in Fairfax and funded by taxpayers. If each school could only send one kid to a county wide spelling bee that has first, second and third prizes, would it be fair to the second place finisher at a school being excluded from the spelling bee even though she may be the second best speller in the county? I think so. It she was excluded because she didn't have the right experience factors so they sent someone else in her place, that is a different story. Please let the court decide what Fairfax county can and cannot do. If you do not like the end result, feel free to vote in elections, run for school board, advocate for change, move to another county, or support closing down TJ.

PP here - my kid isn't waitlisted, at least not yet as he is still a rising 8th grader. But, I do know a few who got waitlisted as well as few who got selected. I was just trying to make a point about how this new process is not fair to AAP centers. What should be fair is either get rid of AAP centers or change admissions to be based on 'base' middle school. I understand the diversity and every region should have a representation, but students shouldn't be punished for choosing to go to center school vs base school. My kid thinks there will be 'well over' 50 kids who get all A's in 7th grade and also took algebra I and its not easy to make the cut-off (ex: all his friends got A's) because it is a center school and so it boils down to 'other' (?) factors. I will be really surprised if I am the only one upset about this change. However, on the long run, it doesn't really matter as Oakton HS is pretty good and offers most of the AP courses that TJ offers - at least this is what I have been telling my kid.