Reply to Huge changes to TJ admissions test beginning next year

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It would be interesting if they could somehow come up with a test that can't be prepped for.  My kid did not prep, but we knew a lot of kids who did prep very extensively during middle school.

Not all, but many of those kids who prepped had to continue that "prep" mindset while they were at TJ. There were kids there who had to have tutors and outside help for a number of courses every year, plus they needed summer school and extra help for that each summer. Some kids privately took summer courses then took the same course during the school year in hopes of getting a better grade.

My kid and other friends of his who did not prep did not need all this outside help and managed to graduate with high GPAs and are at great schools now, most of them majoring in engineering, physics, math, and other STEM fields.

[b]I would love to see what the school would be like if it were populated by kids who hadn't prepped and didn't need outside help to understand their course work. [/b]
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Sure, you'd also love to see everything go back to how it was in 60's, correct? I figure prep is a the pejorative term to address a group of kids who work very hard to make it sound they are somehow not natural. Asian kids and their parents work double hard because of people like you will not give them an equal opportunity if they simply were equal. They have to do 120% in order to be equal, not 100% because of prejudice like this.[/quote]

[quote=Anonymous]Some people can never understand or conveniently ignore that Asian immigrants and their children who have no systemic advantages built in for them will have to work extra hard to simply get equal opportunity. This is the reason for all the extra courses taken, not because they cannot keep up. If they simply kept up with kids with systemic advantages then they will not be considered smart enough. Go figure! that is the irony. [/quote]

Why do you guys get so defensive?  We are not going to stop prepping.  They will keep claiming they don't while they secretly do, all the while spouting "my kid is naturally talented, so was his brother, and his cousin, and her sister, and my grandpa.."  :P .  Why even bother responding?  Nothing said on DCUM is going to change anything about prepping, NOTHING.   Remember the proverb "the dogs bark, but the caravan goes on"... Let barking dogs bark...[/quote]

Not being defensive. I am relatively new to this forum, and by extension to all this asian bashing that goes on with thinly vieled terms. I used to be under the impression that most Americans understood Asians as a group worked harder at academics while their peers worked harder at sports. It doesn't matter to me much either way. My kid went to a prep center because everyone else also went, but he barely did any work in between other than school work and in the end he got admission because he was very good at problem solving and very good at writing. So it was mostly a check mark for us. He also scored in the 99th perccentile for verbal and 98th percentile for math. His writing skills were very good since 3rd grade and so second cut wasn't going to present too many problems. May be without the classes he would have scored little less, but good enough for admission too TJ anyway. Could be have skipped the prep class and played a sports instead? hecck, yeah, I think so. But, we didn't try that option because all his friends were going and ended up at TJ, and if he didn't make it and went to base school he would have no friends at all to start with. That wasn't a good option to start high school. I guess his friends and their parents thought the same way too. In the end, as I said earlier, the kids who make the finalist pool will get there with or without prep, doing the prep is a choice that some people take do avoid some of the situations I mentioned. [/quote]

I wouldn't look at this as racist in any way.  Majority of the preppers happen to be Asian so people who don't prep/too lazy to prep pick on them.  Fact is, there are kids in TJ who shouldn't be there.  The only way they got there was either through some sort of affirmative action or through extreme preparation.   Some white kids that should be in do not get in because their spots were taken by someone who extreme prepped.  But, that's the  reality.  Getting upset about it is not going to change squat.  Anyone who has been here for more than one generation knows that getting into TJ does not really matter.  It's only High School, after all.  First generation parents from highly competitive countries don't trust this sentiment and want to get in to the best schools.  Both sides need to chill out.   You can't shame the preppers into not prepping.  You can't motivate the non-preppers to prep.  Things just ARE.  FWIW, I'm an Asian parent whose kid prepped for one semester and got in.  We already live in a great school district so if he hadn't gotten in it wouldn't have mattered.  If he doesn't do well at TJ, he'll move to the base school.  There are more important things in life.

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