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Anonymous wrote:Not exactly “personalities” but there are some very obvious demographic differences between CAP (largely upper middle class, white students) and magnet (many from Indian, Chinese, Korean and other Asian backgrounds often children of immigrants including the few who are white) at Blair. Nice kids either way.

Why is this? Why are there so few wealthy white families in SMCS relative to CAP, and why so many in CAP? Are the upper middle class white kids not as good in STEM or are their families less interested?

Both Blair magnet and CAP are predominantly UMC. This is not NYC, where the test-in magnets are dominated by working class first-generation kids whose parents work in restaurants and dry cleaners. The parents of both sets of kids tend to be feds, or journalists, or attorneys, or scientists, or college professors.

I have an upperclassman in CAP who attended the TPMS STEM magnet, so some visibility on both groups and while Blair magnet does have more first and second generation immigrant kids, they are just as wealthy or wealthier than the CAP kids.

Agree only the wealthiest families can afford to prep their kids sufficiently to get into these programs. I'm told it takes years of AoPS or RM to get to where one might have a shot at SMCS.

You were told wrong. Stop trying to create a myth.

Parent of a kid in SMCS who doesn’t even know what AOPS or RM are.

Another Blair magnet parent here. It's not totally a myth. Many kids have done these, and some don't. I think magnet leans Asian because Chinese, Korean and Indian cultures place more value on academic advancement in STEM than Humanities. MC, UMC and immigrant families often sacrifice for additional stem enrichment like aops, A++, Dr. Li, Hopkins cty, etc. I know one mom who did those things while on a postdoc salary here on h1 visa from China. There are communal support networks too. Humanities were not an option for many of my kid's cohort in magnet. Not all of course. And, this is a few years ago.
I also see a lot of white umc lawyers in my neighborhood who will drop lots of money for Humanities enrichment.
My magnet kids had significant enrichment in arts because I am a professional in the arts. I also used to tutor math, so I helped them with that (to a point). Stem magnets liked the arts kids who could hold their own at math.
I do wish there wasn't an emphasis on pre program enrichment. I don't know how we really get around that though.

PP whose kid doesn’t know what those programs are, I’m an NP who also has a kid in the Blair magnet who not only didn’t prep but doesn’t know what those programs are. I guess we should be very proud that our kids got in based only on their hard work and not parental pressure and outside tutoring?

Do you really think the kids who went to those programs did not do hard work? Many of the kids we know who did not do outside tutoring have parents who have STEM jobs and taught them themselves. I'm not sure why it makes such a difference to you and why you would be more "proud" if a child did not go to the programs. My child did not attend these programs but her friends who went to them are the hardest working in the magnet and the most successful over the two years she has been there.

I think that it’s a much bigger achievement for a kid without all that extra help through tutoring and outside programs to get in to a magnet than a kid who got in due to considerable extra help. Surely that’s obvious?

So help me understand.. why does this type of comparison matter so much to you (and many others on these threads)? Both types of kids worked hard and should be commended for their efforts.. Or are you suggesting that it's a much bigger achievement NOT to work hard at something?

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Anonymous wrote:Some exercise of repetitive calculation patterns is helpful as an aid to long-term memory and improved fluency (reduction in speed and cognitive load) on the mechanical commutational bits. On a hard problem, a lot of the thinking is dead end brainstorming, which isn't the part the kid needs to remember.

What you're calling dead end brainstorming is the most valuable part of learning. Learning how to solve problems by exploring and trying various things is not only important in math, it generalizes to almost everything in life.

It's not about what kids need to remember (which is very little) it's about recognizing, connecting, and putting ideas together.

Come on. People don't have time to re-derive all of math from first principles on every single problem.

They're not rederiving everything. They're using what they already know and learned to solve a problem. Initially they might not know what to do, so they have to try stuff. If the problem doesn't look very similar to a previous problem, then no amount of memory recall will help them. They have explore, find patterns, make analogies, compare/contrast to past problems, etc, i.e they have to actively think. In the process of doing this over time, they slowly build intuition. And this is fantastic training for life, since most desirable jobs (where desirable could mean a combination of stimulating, challenging, high paying, etc) don't have a predefined recipe for success.

Anonymous wrote:Some exercise of repetitive calculation patterns is helpful as an aid to long-term memory and improved fluency (reduction in speed and cognitive load) on the mechanical commutational bits. On a hard problem, a lot of the thinking is dead end brainstorming, which isn't the part the kid needs to remember.

What you're calling dead end brainstorming is the most valuable part of learning. Learning how to solve problems by exploring and trying various things is not only important in math, it generalizes to almost everything in life.

It's not about what kids need to remember (which is very little) it's about recognizing, connecting, and putting ideas together.

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Anonymous wrote:It's kind of ridiculous that MCPS can't point to a standard example test and say "a student with a grade of X in math course Y would score about Z% on this test."

It does. It’s called syllabus, curriculum, and grading policy.

Usually homework is a good indication of what will be on the test.

What’s ridiculous about this?

It's not true. The syllabus is general, and does not mean the tests are standardized across the classes. Even simple things could vary, like 20minutes vs 40minutes for the same test, and also what questions and how many questions the teacher chooses to put on the test, and how they weight the questions. Kids in the same school sometimes report that different teachers assign and score differently.

Homework may or may not be a good indication of what's on the test.

One important observation that correlates to lots of learning and (usually) translates to good test grades, is the difficulty of the homework assignments. The more difficult the outcome, the better the kids will do on tests (assuming of course they attempt/do the homework). If homework assignments are too easy, kids are not learning much and the scenario is either 1) the test is also easy which means they've had a bad learning outcome and likely get punished in future classes. 2) the test is hard and they're seeing things that they did not see or practice at all on the homework, which is equally bad because they are forced to learn on a timed test and their grade very likely suffers.

On the other hand, if homework is difficult and challenging, and if kids can take the time to persevere through it, the outcomes are usually great: 1) the test feels easier than the homework and the kids who learned by doing the homework can show their understanding and feel good about all the work they put in or 2) the test is perhaps of similar difficulty to the homework, but again those who took the time to learn and understand the concepts should be able to do fine on them (assuming they're given a reasonable amount of time to think). Either way, grades are likely to be good, and most importantly, they've learned a lot and are very well prepared for future classes.

TLDR: Parents should really pay attention to their kid's math homework. If they are not struggling to some degree, they likely are missing out on a prime learning opportunity. In particular, if quizzes and tests are HARDER than the homework, that is a big red flag that grades might suffer without additional inputs. Also, it is the quality (not the quantity) of homework that matters.. i.e working through 40 questions for multiple hours means nothing if almost every question was an exercise (and not a problem). Better to have 5-7 questions that are problems (in that they actually force the student to think from an initial state of "I don't know what to do" to the end state).

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Anonymous wrote:My kid is in first grade and we are working through a calculus textbook at home. Math just comes to him. Would love for him to get a better foundation than I can provide. These college classes sound expensive though. What is the cost?

I have seen claims like this before on DCUM and it blows my mind. I don't think this is actually possible, but I could be wrong! I don't know enough about giftedness. Can you elaborate on how your child has the knowledge and cognitive foundation for calculus at age 6/7?

In terms of your q, if your child is that intelligent, not sure they need to go to college to learn anything. Stick with textbooks and tutors? Or see if DC can audit? There's also MOOCs, which could be a lot better than any inperson instruction where you are at the mercy of who ever gets assigned to teach the course (whereas MOOCs often have amazing teachers). DC must also be able to use a computer by now.

Kid is 6yo and uses computers. He was reading chapter books during K so we focused on math over the summer. Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, etc. I’m not saying he has mastered anything but we are working through a calculus textbook now to keep him interested. I’m really confused what to do about school so I do appreciate the suggestions. I was initially considering college courses as an option a few years from now, but he also deserves a childhood and likes playing with kids his age. We are private people and don’t want any attention.

Teach him the exciting topics of math that students don't get to see in K12. Teach him a little number theory, teach him how to count things, i.e a little combinatorics, introduce probability through games and puzzles. Perhaps give him some interesting problems found from the many math contests out there, e.g Mathcounts at the middle school level has plenty of interesting problems, there's the AMC 8, as well as other various contests. These problems will be exciting for him, and it will give him an opportunity to engage, play, and master the material. It's fine to talk to him about calculus when he's curious and asks for it, but if you want him to enjoy his childhood and have a gifted education, trying to teach him the mechanics of calculus is not really the best idea given how many other exciting mathematical topics are out there. Pick up a math circle book (for example Mathematical Circle Diaries, or any of the other books from the AMS Mathematical Circles library) and work together with him through the many exciting problems. Do lots of puzzle and logic problems to develop his analytical skills. Play chess and other logic and strategy games, teach a bit of programming -- Python is a good one to start as it is very syntax friendly. Challenge him to build an interesting program or toy game so he can actually learn programming skills in a fun way.

Most importantly, be attuned to his changing interests; if he latches onto math contest problems and wants more, great! Or if he just likes reading a math book on his own that's also great! If you find you don't have enough time or ability to devote to developing his education yourself, look to some summer programs for gifted kids to supplement. But if he is truly advanced compared to others his age he may get very bored, so you will have to very careful as to what programs to pick for him.

Anonymous wrote:I think that PP was saying that on timed tests things go faster if you have certain things memorized. I don't have a math degree but I do have a degree in a related field and I used to be one of those kids who would derive things on every test and would often run out of time.

I am worried my child is starting to go down a similar route and have emphasized trying to explicitly memorize those formulas.

A very simple example would be that if you memorize the two point slope formula you wouldn't have to take the time to solve a set of simultaneous equations or if you remembered how to factor the difference of squares you could spend your time on other more complicated parts of a problem.

It's like multiplication. Sure I don't need to memorize it really but it make things go a lot faster.

Sure, memorization is fine when studying for the types of tests given in K12. The reason for that is because most, or all of the problems on tests and quizzes are amenable to memorization (as long as students remember formulas along with recipes for solving a set of standard problems, they are likely to do very well on most tests). But this highlights a few major problems with education: 1) In the real world, and at work, nobody cares whether one memorizes or not. A problem exists, and whoever can come up with a good solution for it gets rewarded. In that sense students are effectively wasting precious formative years 'learning' but not understanding. 2) Students graduate high school, many going on to top ranked colleges, and potentially becoming leaders in the workforce, yet they believe that learning is nothing more than just 'absorbing' information and spitting it back out on tests. They are 'A' students, yet it's quite possible they've learned almost nothing from school despite going through all the steps in the current process. Some luckily correct in college, often when they get their first initial shock of 30% on an exam and realize their method of studying isn't the same as learning. Others may never know what it means to understand; e.g to be able to explain something in simple and logical terms to their kids, or to others around them. And sadly, there are some who realize that while they may be capable of thinking, it is far too inconvenient and much easier to get others to do that hard work.

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Anonymous wrote:My daughter's Alg 2 Honors teacher told the class it is the hardest math class they will take, especially for this year. Because Alg 1 was right after Covid and then they had Geometry and now they are in high school and expectations and speed of the class are high.

I have no thought to pull her out of honors if needed but so far she is doing ok. She said the first week was stuff she never heard, but the last 2 days things were a little easier.

What is this honors society tutoring? Do I contact a counselor about this?

Extremely unlikely. Much more likely is she forgot after 14 months of not doing algebra while going through the poorly structured geometry curriculum.

I'm going to defend that first PP. I think her daughter is probably right that she has not seen certain types of problems before because if she is a 9th grader I think she might have done C2.0 which was terrible. While certain subjects may have been covered they were not covered well enough for kids to actually understand the material. So when they get to Alg. 2 and start getting problems that deal with the same subject but are more complex and require 3-4 steps and not just 1-2 steps you might feel lost.

DD's math teacher also gave a bunch of "review" problems that were much harder than what she saw in Alg. 1. DD did cover exponents in Alg 1 but it was really basic but the review problems had exponents of exponents involving multiple variables and to her that was "new."

Yes, this all too common and the root cause is a lack of problem solving in schools. At its core, problem solving means take something that a student does not know how to initially do, and via logic and reasoning break it down into things that are familiar. Students who are exposed to problem solving are able to do this reduction to known ideas often; the more problem solving they've practiced, the more easily they can recognize a problem as just a more complicated version of a previous problem, but having the same essential ideas.

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Anonymous wrote:As a tutor I can say that Algebra Ii is a very common place to fall apart, and it’s usually because kids haven’t learned to keep strictly to a linear organization of algebraic manipulation and haven’t learned to write equations. It also can be because they are not memorizing formulas and key concepts (sometimes not even able to recognize what is “key”). And, in Algebra 2 it can be that their underlying memorization and application of fractions and exponents/roots and graphing is weak, so because they don’t know or remember they can’t apply the simple rules to more complex ideas.

Some kids really need a good tutor to do homework with them and explicitly enforce the linear organization/manipulation, re-teach earlier concepts and identify what current concepts and formulas have to be memorized.

Some schools have some kind of after school help program but often there’s no higher level math teacher there. Sometimes peer tutors are good but sometimes they can only explain an answer not identify the underlying student problems. Asking the teacher for help at lunch isn’t a great long term solution. (Sometimes the teacher is actually the problem.)

Dropping down from honors is OK, but can be frustrating for bright students because the non-honors pace is much slower and the kids have even more, different kinds of problems with the math. Those students just need better or different explanations than they get from class.

I'm quite surprised that as a tutor, you put so much emphasis on memorization. I've found that the exact opposite is true; the kids who try to memorize things have not understood the ideas, and as a result can only remember very little the following year. They continue to try to do this, but memorizing becomes harder and harder to do, due to the faster pace of new concepts introduced in higher level math classes. In their world, math is just a huge number of facts to be memorized. But in reality, everything is quite tightly connected by a small number of key ideas. If they would instead focus on understanding these key ideas well, they would not need to memorize almost anything because whenever they forget, they will be able to reconstruct most of the things they memorize, similar to first principles thinking. In addition, practicing problem solving by wrestling with problems that they don't initially know how to approach (as opposed to mechanical/procedural exercises that are solved by straightforward application of rules) also gives them the techniques and ability to quickly reconstruct things whenever they don't remember the details.

Math is very much like a sport or a hobby; in order to do well and improve, one has to actively practice and challenge themselves in order to be able to extend the range of their abilities and become more skilled at it.

Memorization doesn’t exclude understanding. Yes, hopefully you are not memorizing a lot. But, at the end of the day, if you are in Algebra 1 and you are about to take the coordinate graphing unit test and you can not write down from memory the point slope equation of a line, the standard form equation of a line, and the equation for slope, you are not going to do well on the test. You can’t keep re-deriving a formula every time you need it, especially when your performance is time-constrained. I find you bolded expectation highly unrealistic.

The idea of memorization is core to almost every class in MS, HS, college and beyond.

I don’t think requiring so much memorization is necessarily a great idea. Everyone’s working memory capacity is different, and some very bright kids, highly capable of mathematical reasoning can’t even memorize the multiplication table. Working memory is not necessarily correlated with intelligence, and it would be better, in the name of neurodivergence, if school allowed open book tests or gave out formula sheets, but they don’t. Since school doesn’t (currently) work like that, and many kids don’t understand the implicit rules of the classroom, I explicitly tell students when they have to memorize a formula.

The above is a great example of how not to memorize. Take point slope form: Most kids have to force themselves to remember the cryptic looking formula y - y0 = m(x - x0), and hope that they don't mess it up on the test. But how many teachers actually show them that this is simply a restatement of the definition of slope, an idea which students are intimately familiar with at that point in the course as e.g 'rise/run' or change in y/change in x, etc. Yet the above is nothing more than just that, divide both sides by x - x0 and we get:

(y - y0)/(x - x0) = m

The left hand is the expression for slope (change in y divided by change in x), and the right hand side represents the actual slope of a particular line. So if we draw a line, label a fixed point (x0, y0) on it, label it with a slope m, and label any other arbitrary point on the line as (x, y), every student knows how to compute the slope of the line using the two labeled points. And that's all there is to it.

Anonymous wrote:As a tutor I can say that Algebra Ii is a very common place to fall apart, and it’s usually because kids haven’t learned to keep strictly to a linear organization of algebraic manipulation and haven’t learned to write equations. It also can be because they are not memorizing formulas and key concepts (sometimes not even able to recognize what is “key”). And, in Algebra 2 it can be that their underlying memorization and application of fractions and exponents/roots and graphing is weak, so because they don’t know or remember they can’t apply the simple rules to more complex ideas.

Some kids really need a good tutor to do homework with them and explicitly enforce the linear organization/manipulation, re-teach earlier concepts and identify what current concepts and formulas have to be memorized.

Some schools have some kind of after school help program but often there’s no higher level math teacher there. Sometimes peer tutors are good but sometimes they can only explain an answer not identify the underlying student problems. Asking the teacher for help at lunch isn’t a great long term solution. (Sometimes the teacher is actually the problem.)

Dropping down from honors is OK, but can be frustrating for bright students because the non-honors pace is much slower and the kids have even more, different kinds of problems with the math. Those students just need better or different explanations than they get from class.

I'm quite surprised that as a tutor, you put so much emphasis on memorization. I've found that the exact opposite is true; the kids who try to memorize things have not understood the ideas, and as a result can only remember very little the following year. They continue to try to do this, but memorizing becomes harder and harder to do, due to the faster pace of new concepts introduced in higher level math classes. In their world, math is just a huge number of facts to be memorized. But in reality, everything is quite tightly connected by a small number of key ideas. If they would instead focus on understanding these key ideas well, they would not need to memorize almost anything because whenever they forget, they will be able to reconstruct most of the things they memorize, similar to first principles thinking. In addition, practicing problem solving by wrestling with problems that they don't initially know how to approach (as opposed to mechanical/procedural exercises that are solved by straightforward application of rules) also gives them the techniques and ability to quickly reconstruct things whenever they don't remember the details.

Math is very much like a sport or a hobby; in order to do well and improve, one has to actively practice and challenge themselves in order to be able to extend the range of their abilities and become more skilled at it.

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Anonymous wrote:Would these be good for a strong math student, but not one who is into competitions?
Are they fun or rote?

As other posters have said, it depends.

But I take a bit of an issue with your question. First off, "rote" is typically used as a derogatory term by those wanting to push their snakeoil "critical thinking" humbug. But let's apply the principle of charity here and assume by "rote" you mean that something is being repeated in order to learn it by heart.

Yes, actually, successful competitors end up memorizing things, including but not limited to:
- all squares until at least 27^2
- all cubes until at least 11^3
- all powers of two until at least 2^16
- Pascal's triangle until at least 6 choose k
- triangular numbers until at least 55
- all primitive Pythagorean triples until their sum exceeds 90
- Heronian triangles with small areas
- fraction to decimal conversion for powers of 2, for 3, 7, 9, and 11 (at least).

So if you think that, for instance, being asked to answer questions like "what's the hundredth digit after the period of 13/9" or "compute 32*38 in your head" is rote and you should use a calculator then Mathcounts is not for you.

A quick recall of math facts and a high level of fluency in mental arithmetic is however a characteristic of most famous mathematicians from Gauss to von Neumann.

Your description suggesting that one should memorize a lot of things in order to be successful in Mathcounts, while not inaccurate, is a bit overblown and I would not want others reading this to take your advice to heart. While *some* of the above listed items are useful mainly because they can appear again and again in problems, one can do quite well in Mathcounts through states and even nationals without needing to memorize the above. Below are three fine points to consider for those interested in doing well in Mathcounts:

1) Practicing doing lots of challenging problems (i.e from past math contests) is the number one way to become really good. This is true for any math contest, not just Mathcounts (and generally true for many skills in life). By practicing problem solving, students tend to internalize and/or pick up the patterns related to a subset of the above mentioned "facts" without having to explicitly memorize them. Problem solving ideas and techniques, (i.e reasoning through the mathematics), is much more important than the above list of facts.

2) As a corollary, many difficult Mathcounts problems are not made difficult due to the above facts you stated. They are difficult because they require creative ideas, which can usually only be acquired via lots of practice working on problems (point #1 above) and careful reasoning.

3) Mathcounts as a contest does have a weakness in that it tends to turn off many students who are not very quick at computations but nevertheless are excellent problem solvers. These type of students may feel (and rightfully so) that they cannot compete at the highest levels simply because of the speed of the rounds (30 questions in 40 minute Mathcounts Sprint round, Target/Countdown rounds, etc). For example, there are significant numbers of students who could solve some AIME problems but not actually be able to finish Mathcounts rounds because of the very short allotted time. It is sad that they cannot have a chance to display their deep problem solving skills simply because they cannot make it far enough in the competition (i.e to states and beyond where Mathcounts problems are more interesting/difficult and they can shine). Not all is lost though, as many of these students are aware and looking forward to many high school math contests that are not quite so focused on speed.

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Anonymous wrote:Yes, you should complement. Have your child enroll in RSM or AoPS either concurrently or shortly before. That's what we did. School instruction is insufficient in multiple ways. First, students aren't doing any problem solving in school (all they do is textbook worksheets and SOL prep); second, they don't do any mathematical writing in school; third, the school curriculum is abridged for an advanced student (e.g., no complex numbers in Algebra 1, no linear programming). Fourth, school math is much less fun.

In short, if your child is gifted and interested in math then you cannot rely on the school curriculum.

Is this a joke? Why would there be complex numbers in Algebra I? You sound nutty.

When covering math at a level appropriate for mathematically gifted students you introduce complex numbers before the quadratic formula. For instance, AoPS's textbook does so in Chapter 12.

That's not The Correct Way handed down from God.
Chapter 10 is factoring, which has the same problem (some problems don't have solutions) that the quadratic formula has (chapter 13), until i is introduced.

i is very much a teaser in AoPS Algebra 1. Algebra 2 reintroduces i and covers it in a lot more detail.

I know

Still, one of the last writing problems in Algebra 1 was factoring z^4+1=0 using elementary means. Which I thought was really cool.

do you mean z^4 - 1 = 0? That can be factored using alg1 and introduces imaginary numbers. z^4 + 1 is much harder to factor.

Nope, I meant z^4+1=0. (Now that I think about it, it was actually z^4 + 4 = 0, which gives nice integer solutions.) Don't use the polar form, though. Set z=a+bi and see where this gets you.

Setting z = a+bi will work, but it's a quite lengthy to work through the algebra (expanding by binomial theorem, forming two separate equations and solving each of the cases). Much simpler is to rewrite the expression as the square of a binomial by completing the square, i.e:

z^4 + 4 = (z^2 + 2)^2 - 4z^2

Now apply difference of squares to turn the above into a product of two quadratics. The four roots are easily extracted with the quadratic formula, two for each of the quadratics. (Bonus for students who have studied polar/exponential form of complex numbers: Plot the roots of z^4 + 4 in the complex plane, and also plot the roots of z^4 - 4... what interesting observation can you make? Can you explain how they are related to each other and exactly why this is the case?)

Anonymous wrote:My kids love math, but I just can't imagine making them do this. Especially not math kangaroo, which is my least favorite competition math program... I think this would spoil it for them. These contents may be somewhat helpful for older kids since the practice may help reinforce some concepts but memorizing a bunch of plug-and-chug problem types seems like a good way to turn math into drudgery.

Curious which level of Math Kangaroo problems you found to be very plug and chug? The problems I had tried with my kid (level 5-6) seemed to me to be on the opposite spectrum, almost too much puzzle/logic vs computational.

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Anonymous wrote:DC is a rising 7th grader, will be in Algebra 1 and is generally a strong student. He will apply for TJ but if not accepted then he will be equally happy at McLean HS as well.

I am just trying to gauge realistic chances, I googled and it said 62 kids but then on this board someone mentioned 42, I would appreciate if someone can share the correct number. TIA!

Seems like Longfellow kids have some of the best odds of any school!

No... quite literally the exact opposite. If one takes a randomly chosen applicant from the FCPS pool, applying from Longfellow is one of the worst odds as there is a very, very small chance the applicant would fall in the top 1.5%. Take a randomly chosen applicant and send them from Poe MS, then there is a higher probability that they would fall into the top 1.5% of reserved seats.

The odds of getting into TJ from Longfellow were higher than from any other AAP center with a substantial number of TJ applicants, at least last year, as the prior post indicates.

There are some middle schools that only had a limited number of applicants to TJ in the Class of 2026. Schools with less than 20 applicants included Stone (11), Whitman (13), Herndon (15), Liberty (16), and Poe (17). So, depending on the number of kids at those schools who ended up admitted to TJ, either based on the 1.5% set aside or from the residual pool, the admissions rate from some of those schools likely was higher than the rate at Longfellow (26.2%). But then, if you don't get into TJ, you don't have McLean as your back-up option.

I have no idea how they determine top students at Longfellow or anywhere else. My kid is a freshman at mclean. He probably would have gotten into TJ on the old system (he just kills math tests - no idea why). He had all A’s in honors classes at Longfellow. I look at his friend group who also didn’t get into TJ and there are some strong science/math kids there. But the kids that did go to TJ also appear to be strong students - so no complaints on quality of the class. He’s having a great experience at McLean. Your kid will be fine either way.

Between all the grade inflation and application gaming, it's difficult for them to differentiate students beyond a point. Regardless, I'm sure there are many equally strong opportunities available at McLean. One of my kid's is applying next year. They're a total rockstar. Won all kinds of math awards at the state level even. Straight A's in the highest track etc, but I realize it's kind of a crap shoot. Still I'm not really clear whether they'd really be better off at TJ. Their homeschool Langlely is also great so either way I'm fine with however way it goes.

Just math awards does not get the kid to get into TJ. If you look at scoring rubric, 1/3 score is gpa, 1/3 is SPS answers, 1/3 is stem problem and writing the answer. If the kid can solve problem but is a poor writer, they won’t make it

Either way the suggestion that the new system introduces more uncertainty into the process is correct. The net result is that people are less inclined to believe the top candidates are being admitted to TJ and more inclined to shrug when their kid doesn’t get in. Maybe that’s what FCPS wanted.

If by uncertainty, you mean fairness then I agree.

I don't mean that. It's a more subjective process, borne of pandering for political gain, with a not-so-healthy dose of anti-Asian bias tossed into the mix.

Wasn’t it meant to address cheating on an entrance test?

You can’t be that naive.

I know! For years families were gaming admissions which culminated in some prep centers creating question banks so their customers would effectively have early access to the test. These affluent families would buy their way into TJ. So glad they put an end to the cheating with the improved selection criteria. It's also greatly reduced the toxicity at TJ and helped foster a collegial atmosphere.

No one was able to buy their way into TJ.

The "improved" selection criteria is a pork-barrel approach that guarantees seats to schools regardless of whether the students from those schools are the highest achieving in the region or possess the greatest STEM aptitude. It's diminished TJ's reputation and invited debates among current TJ freshmen and sophomores as to which students truly belong there, and which students simply got into because they were among the small number of applicants from schools that weren't AAP centers and generally don't elicit much interest in TJ.

Curious how the old process is guarantee students who got in are posses the greatest STEM aptitude and are the highest achieving student?

Nothing is guaranteed, but they looked at awards won and extracurriculars. Someone who made state MathCounts or USAJMO in 7th grade(about 10 in the entire country) would not be rejected like they have been the past few years.

Someone keeps bringing up USAJMO as though it should be a golden ticket into TJ. There is a lot more to being a strong contributor to a full-service elite high school than scoring well in a math competition.

+1, it's not a good idea to have any single accomplishment or background serve as a slam-dunk guarantee into TJ. If there is, you can be assured that striver families will move heaven and earth and sacrifice any amount of their child's well-being that is necessary to get them in. That's why I like the new admissions process; there is no golden path.

In vast majority of the cases, you have a very valid point that no single achievement should as a slam-dunk. I agree with that in general.

There are a few exceptions like USAJMO. You do need to understand what it entails - and no just reading up online about it does not tell you much, you need to actually experience something like that. It is like saying a two time MVP in NBA should not be an automatic choice for the next season. Dont go too deep into this analogy, just trying to make a point about the level of significance of USAJMO at a young age.

Someone who is or was even close to qualifying for USAJMO by 8th grade should be an automatic admit to TJ. We are talking about maybe 20 kids across the entire nation, forget Virginia. No you cannot just prep to it.

Serious question: why? What evidence does that one achievement give that a student will be a superior contributor to the overall environment?

What evidence is there that the existing "tests" for TJ will be a superior contributor?

What evidence do you have that such a student would not be a superior contributor to the overall environment? As I mentioned when you have no idea what it takes to get to that level, you end with questions like yours.

No one has really explained either what it means to make a superior contribution to the overall environment. It's a matter of opinion so you can just say whatever you want.

It's a matter of opinion because for each student, it is different. For some, it might be providing a unique perspective to classroom discussions. For others, it might be (in the case of TJ) the ability to give your friends a memorable moment through a performance at I-Nite. For still others, it might be genuinely caring about the experience that others are having within the academic environment, and working towards lifting others up instead of relentlessly comparing oneself to others. Or perhaps it's the ability contribute to an athletic team (like the 2008 boys soccer state champions) that raises the profile of the school.

TJ isn't an academy - it's a full service high school. If it wants to genuinely attract the best and brightest - something it hasn't done for decades given the decline in application numbers - then it needs to be a place where the best and brightest of all types and backgrounds WANT to go. Otherwise it will continue to top flawed ranking systems that overselect for test-taking ability while continuing to fail to produce much in terms of real STEM impact.

What the heck? You truly believe that a kid who "makes a memorable moment" or is a decent athlete is contributing something important to the school, but the kid who is winning a bunch of awards with the TJ Math team and making the school recognized on a national stage isn't? That is some grade A crazy mental gymnastics there.

The USAJMO thing is a red herring anyway. The number of 7th or 8th graders in the TJ catchment who qualify for JMO is miniscule. There's at best one kid every handful of years. It would be impossible for anyone to make any sweeping statements about whether kids like that contribute positively to TJ, as there are so very, very few. Unless something is majorly wrong with the kid's application, any kid who has the mathematical skills and motivation to qualify for JMO in middle school absolutely belongs at TJ. From Day 1 of 9th grade, that kid would be one of the top kids on the TJ math team, and thus they'd be guaranteed to make a positive contribution to TJ.

TJ doesn't need any help being recognized on a national stage. They need a lot of help being seen as a desirable destination for students in the Northern Virginia area among non-Asian communities.

We have nearly three times as many students in the catchment area as we had in 2000, but fewer applicants to TJ year over year than we did at that point. That's a problem and suggests strongly that the school isn't getting the students it should.

Many highly qualified kids don't want to attend TJ, simply because they and their parents understand that they'll get better college admissions if they're at the top of their base school than they get if they're middle of the pack at TJ. Some others don't want to attend because it's too much work. These aren't problems that need to be solved.

Or maybe they and their parents are just tired of the constant politics around TJ and know they won’t have to put up with the nonsense at their base schools. TJ has become something between a punching bag and a joke.

This argument doesn't make sense. There is likely a lot LESS politics at TJ than around your typical high school. The only politics is conversations and culture wars about TJ, click bait politics about TJ in the news (whether for or against changes, etc), but this is all irrelevant to any family with kids attending TJ. Most kids or families at TJ could care less about other people's politics about their school. If someone wants to apply and attend TJ, they do it for their own situation and personal reasons, not because they're being influenced by politics, which is just noise.

It makes plenty of sense, especially when you consider the declining interest and number of applications to this school.

The declining interest in not at all because of politics. The declining interest is because TJ is deemed too competitive and not many kids are ready to devote 4 years of high school commuting to another school to be immersed in academics

And see, this is where I take issue. There is functionally no difference between the TJ experience of 15, 20, 25 years ago and the experience of today EXCEPT for the attitudes of students and their families.

If the attitudes of students and their families is what is dissuading kids from applying to TJ, and therefore watering down the applicant pool and eventual group of students selected, then the Admissions Office needs to take a hard look at who they're admitting to the school. There's no excuse for application numbers to be below 4-5000 given the growth in the area.

Right but applications should be an easy fix; market and increase awareness at every middle school. Send flyers about any TJ events such as the yearly Techstravaganza event where everyone can go check out all the exhibits and get excited about the school. And make applications free if they are not. All this if done, would vastly outweigh any kind of noise posted about TJ being 'toxic' on these boards; as the visibility is much wider.

In my honest opinion, I think the real culprit today vs 20 years back is that students and parents are more privileged; in the sense that they want more things "for free" or closer to free as before. They realize that TJ is not a golden ticket to a top college even though it could be amazing academically. 20 years ago, students on average were more curious about learning new things. Today on average they are less curious and more focused on "how do I get from A to B as quickly as possible" instead of "how do I learn as much as possible". With the former attitude, TJ doesn't make sense anymore; it's too much work compared to more or less coasting at a base school and being close to home. I agree with you though, that the negative "Asian cutthroat environment" stereotype doesn't help either (and this was different 20 years ago, Asians were not a majority yet).

Personally for someone who wants to learn as much as possible and is genuinely interested in math and science, TJ is a no brainer, it operates in a different ballpark than normal high schools.

Given how the TJ graduates that I know have fared post-TJ, I’m not convinced that the TJ experience is appreciably better than attending a strong base school, which has its own advantages in terms of socialization, convenience and sense of community. I do sense that some alumni may not have much on their resumes that’s better than having attended TJ, and it’s critical to this community to tout the school’s alleged advantages, and even as overall interest in the school wanes.

They keep trying out different narratives, whether it’s the notion that TJ is a community of self-selected, quirky kids; that it’s an important instrument of social mobility; or that the current admissions process has somehow actually led to a stronger student body than in the past. Mostly they just create noise to try and perpetuate a school that at this juncture could probably be put to other and better uses with far less drama.

For a kid genuinely interested in math and science and willing and able to take advantage of the numerous post AP electives that are offered with experienced teachers who majored in their field and with tiny classes and strong peer group? TJ is a far better choice, it's not even close. It's an even better experience than college since those classes are typically small.

For a kid who did not 100% want to go of their own accord and is mostly motivated by grades in order to please their parents and get into a good college, but not really interested in learning? Yeah sure, TJ may not be a great place compared to a good base school.

Also keep in mind that kids can change during the high school years, Unmotivated freshmen/sophomores can become highly motivated and inspired in their upper years and vice-versa (some can burn out by graduation).

How good of a fit is it for the kids who weren't smart enough and/or motivated enough to take Algebra before 8th grade? TJ is letting a lot of those kids in these days.

It's probably a struggle initially as the kids might feel a lot of pressure or might feel like they are 'behind', in the sense they are not as accelerated as most of the other students. But it can be overcome if they are motivated and work extra hard on their assignments, go in to extra help when it's offered, always ask lots of questions to their teachers (and write down all the questions they have when stuck on homework problems), etc.

It's not really as much about specific content (aka algebra 1, etc) as it is about learning how to problem solve. Unlike base schools, TJ will test a lot more problem solving abilities (i.e being able to apply the concepts to problems in a non-standard, nonlinear, non plug and chug way), so it is critical that the students who have not been exposed to much problem solving, work on a lot of extra problems when they enter. Once they have that problem solving base built up, I believe they should be fine in the TJ environment.

Anonymous wrote:Thanks so much. DC is hard working, also doing the quiz and unit tests of KA. I am planning to use IXL questions and will find out SOL questions too. Basically we are targetting on complting geometry before summer geometry starts.

Yep that's a good plan and would help ease the course and hopefully he'll also get to enjoy part of the summer.

Be aware that geometry teaches proofs which if done correctly, are an extension of deductive reasoning. But he may not initially enjoy it, especially if it's taught in a very rigid way. It would be helpful for him to see a proof as just an exercise in writing a bunch of logically connected statements and practice trying them out.

Anonymous wrote:DC, an 8th grader now will be taking geometry in summer. His friends are discouraging him as its very intense. DC is doing Khan academy these day and near to completion. Will that help the summer geometry. The worst scenario, if DC drops it after 2 weeks of start of the course then what will DC lose in long run. Will DC will be able to take AP physics later?

You know your child best. If he is really motivated and wants to accelerate so as to skip it during the school year, he should try it in the summer. If he is learning geometry from another source such as KA on his own currently, that would certainly help. However, be aware that while KA explains the concepts well in the videos, I'm not familiar whether they provide enough practice problems for him to work through. Maybe others can chime in whether KA has systematically developed problem sets in addition to their flagship videos.

In general, introducing concepts with videos is a good initial step (and I believe KA does a pretty good job in the videos), but the bulk of the learning in math is done by trying to solve problems using the concepts just learned. If he is not solving geometry problems along with watching videos, it's unclear if he is learning/retaining much.