Reply to Algebra 1 in 7th grade TJ app

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My child got a A- in Algebra 1 in 7th grade. Is it OK for TJ app next year?

PS. We don't care if the child gets into TJ or not but just trying to understand the implications of a A-

[/quote]

If your school sent more than 1.5% of its 8th graders to TJ then an A- will reduce but not eliminate your chances.

On the bright side, your high school is probably pretty good.

Your chances of getting into UVA or VT are probably better from your base school than from TJ.

[b]With the new (almost random) process, the peer effect is very good at base schools.  A lot of times the brightest kids don't get into TJ and there is a critical mass of highly competitive kids to form a peer group[/b].[/quote]

This is nonsense, fyi.  There is no more or less of a "critical mass" at base schools as there was under the old admissions process.[/quote]

NP, there are a number of schools that send the largest numbers of kids to TJ, while those numbers are still high, they aren't quite as high as they used to be, leaving more kids at the base school than before.  Even if a few more leave for private than before, it's likely not nearly as many as the reduction in TJ transfers out of that school (that is, more kids remain at base than before).

In addition, the admissions are no longer quite as skewed towards those who are most advanced in math from a given school, so even if the number of transfers remained constant, there's a slightly higher mix of kids in the most advanced math classes (Geometry in 7th or 8th) than their used to be, since a few more of the outgoing TJ transfers from that school are now kids who wouldn't have taken Geo until 9th.

I'm not making any judgment call as to whether this is a good or bad thing, but clearly there is an effect of base schools having a larger cohort of the most advanced students than they did previously. Whether that delta is significant enough to constitute a "critical mass" is dependent both on school and one's opinion of what constitutes a "critical mass" in the first place.[/quote]

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