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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Most of the TJ students attending UVA are average or below average students except for those students getting ton of merit aid or going for the in-state tuition. UVA is still considered a safety at TJ. TJ kids would not brag about getting into UVA. Average or below average student is not doing fine.[/quote]

Bear in mind that every student at TJ has to keep their GPA above 3.0, so an average student at TJ is very different from an average student elsewhere.[b] Have you seen the average SAT scores at TJ? [/b]
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Have you heard college admission is more than just SAT scores? [/quote]

Sorry, I was not indicating that college admission was based solely on SAT scores. I was pointing out that, because the lowest possible GPA at TJ is 3.0 and the average SAT is 1466 (M and CR), the "average" student at TJ is very different from the "average" student at other high schools. At other FCPS high schools, GPAs can range to well below 3.0 and the average SAT for FCPS is 1126 (M and CR). "Average" is dependent on the characteristics of the individuals in the  group. 
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If you have a pretty good student, it's not hard to get mid 1400 SAT score from your  home school. Plus the fact [b]colleges probably prefer picking 1460 kids from  home schools vs 1460 kids from TJ[/b], what is the benefit of all the beating and grinding at TJ?  [/quote]

"I've heard many admissions officers for elite colleges talk about how they "know" the high schools in their assigned region. I've always thought this a somewhat preposterous claim.

There are something like 30,000 high schools in the U.S. There's no way they can really know more than a small fraction of them. What's telling is that when admissions officers for elite colleges and universities come to our area, they all do their little dog-and-pony show at all of the most exclusive private high schools and at a handful of the wealthiest suburban schools. They generally don't bother with urban schools except for an occasional foray specifically seeking out potential URM candidates. As best I can tell they spend little or no time in public schools in less affluent suburbs or in small town.

In some ways this is just efficient from their point of view; it's the high-end private high schools and most affluent suburban public high schools that are going to have the largest concentrations of potentially qualified applicants, so they might as well invest their time and energy where it's likely to yield the greatest rewards. So the admissions officers cultivate relationships with the GCs at those schools, and the GCs are only too happy to reciprocate because it gives the kids coming out of their schools an inside track over some random perfect GPA, 1550 SAT CR + M kid with great extracurriculars and impressive academic drive coming from some less distinguished school where such stats are more of a rarity and therefore the school rarely, if ever, sends its graduates to elite private colleges.

It's no wonder that half or more of the student bodies at most elite private colleges are full-pays, given where those colleges do their heaviest recruiting. Bottom line, I think when admissions officers say they "know the schools" in their region, they pretty much just mean they know and have relationships with the schools they consider to be the top feeder schools--[b]elite private high schools and public schools[/b] in the most affluent suburban districts--and they relegate all the other schools (a far larger number) to a generic classification of "other."[/quote]

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