Reply to TJ admissions: Top 1.5% means what exactly?

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Reply to "TJ admissions: Top 1.5% means what exactly?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It guarantees spots to kids at every Middle School who has an interest and meets the general requirements. It makes TJ representative of all of FCPS by insuring that qualified kids from each MS have an opportunity to attend.

That 1.5% has to have met the basic criteria

1) 3.5 GPA (The average GPA last year was a 3.98)
2) Completed or taking Algebra Honors and at least one other Honors Math class (7th Grade Honors or Geometry Honors)
3) Completed 2 years of Honors Science
4) Completed at least 2 other Honors classes (History, English)
5) Successfully completed the math essay

[/quote]

And the 1.5% from any of the middle schools can include Asians or Whites or whatever race happens to be at that school. The expectation is that the MS that have been underrepresented at TJ are typically poorer schools with a larger AA and Hispanic population. Since the kids know that they have a chance at being accepted, because of the 1.5% rule, there is an expectation that kids from all MS will apply. They know that they have a shot about being accepted, because they are no longer held to standards that benefit UMC and MC families who are more informed about TJ early on and push outside math enrichment so their kids are more likely to be in Algebra Honors in 7th, take Geometry in the summer, and Algebra II H in 8th. And the kids know that there will some kids from their current school attending TJ so it feels less daunting.

[b]People can choose to move to the under-represented MS to increase their chances of getting into TJ if they want. I am sure that those MS would be happy to welcome in more high achieving kids to boost their existing cohort and hopefully encourage other kids to push themselves Academically.[/b][/quote]

This prob will happen or has happened now. 1.5% is nothing but feels like a quota system. [/quote]

It’s not nothing when there is one TJ and 24 middle/secondary schools. Most TJ kids getting in from FCPS are now getting in through the set-aside quotas. [/quote]

There are twenty-four MS so 36% of the class are set aside quotas. Mind you, many of those MS were sending above that quota before hand. Removing the top 5 Middle Schools from that number, 28.5% of the seats are set aside by quota. What percentage actually comes from Loundoun and Arlington? I would guesstimate that 25% of the class is accepted through the old admissions style process but it is probably higher then that.

[b]As for the kids at the AAP Centers, if you choose to send your kids to the AAP Centers, that is where you are choosing for your kids to compete for the TJ 1.5%. If you choose to send your kid to the Center, then that is where you are entered.[b] If you want to stay at your Base because you think that TJ might be easier to get into from your Base, that is on you. But the idea that you would include kids at their base schools pools when you choose not to attend that school is silly. The Base School does not get to count your kids SOL scores or other scores. They don't get the advantage of having more kids that are academically driven and the positives that come from that. Why should you get the "positive" of an easier TJ pool?[/quote]

For middle school, which is where I understand kids to apply to TJ, my kids are zoned for the AAP middle school, so they will be there regardless of whether they are selected for AAP. Our elementary is not an AAP center, nor does it have a local level 4 (although I believe that is set to change eventually). There were less than 10 parents at the online AAP meeting and less than 30% of the 3rd graders passed the reading SOL last spring. It is hardly what many here would consider a good school. Similarly our assigned high school is on the bottom end of the list of high schools, along with many of our neighboring high schools. I don't harbor any illusions that my kids will actually qualify for TJ, but it seems unfair that what FCPS identifies are the brightest kids are clustered at specific schools and then these schools are given the same minimum percentage of students as schools that some of those kids would have attended if they weren't identified as being advanced.  I hardly feel our ES and HS are significantly better than neighboring ES and HS  with similar or better test scores that feed into the same AAP MS and then split again.

Also your math is wrong. It isn't necessarily 36% of TJ. It's 1.5% of each middle school. A middle school that has more students in one grade than the TJ class, will have more than 1.5 % of the TJ class and one that has less will have less than 1.5%. To use an extreme example, if a middle school has 200 kids/grade, they would get 3 as part of the 1.5% which will be about 0.6% of TJ (using 500 for the number of seats) while a school that has 1000 kids/grade will get 15 as part of the 1.5%, which is about 3% of TJ. Assuming the AAP center middle schools are larger, this will account for some of the difference. [/quote]

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