Reply to Older TJ kids: is there regret w/college app results

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have a 12th grader at TJ and definitely thinking about the original question--any regrets based on college results?

UVA is an outlier--it will be harder to get into UVA from TJ than base school.

But outside of that, there are definite pluses and minuses.  The folks that got into Michigan last year, etc say that they are very well prepared.  Same for other schools. Only folks at Cal Tech and MIT have said that college is harder than high school.

In terms of college results (and you can't go by the IG shares right now bc there are many TJ seniors with REA or SCEA acceptances that aren't sharing...people sharing now are ED admits bc they are committed) it's a bit nuanced.  I think for the top students--there's an advantage bc colleges WILL look at the TJ students and likely admit some.  In other words, some TJ students will be discussed in committee. For the "bottom" students, they are all going to really respectable schools--they have all finished calc in 11th grade, maybe 12th grade.  So the "floor" for the lowest GPAs are all solid schools, with names you've heard of. This is perhaps one of the differences compared to our base school. In naviance, there are some schools that accept 100% of TJ applicants (Clemson).

For the top 25% etc, it looks like folks are getting good results (not UVA, as mentioned above).  We feel more confident that our student is more likely to get a T10-20 acceptance, and more resigned to the fact that they might not get a UVA acceptance. But class rank isn't factored in as much as it was 20 yrs ago. And the experiences (engineering lab, for example, or ECs) have made for great essay topics.

There are some TJ students, who get perfect SATs and stratospheric grades, but who don't get prestigious acceptances, and that feeds a narrative of "well, then who can get in?".  But they are also folks who didn't really have much impact on the school--they just studied. On the flip side, there are many more who have the high scores (GPA/SAT), the national science competition awards, and are also leading several clubs and making a huge impact on the school's community and the local community. Those folks go to Yale.

So far, we've been very happy with the TJ experience for our student. And we're good, so far, with the college options.  TJ is not for everyone--and that's key.  But I don't know that I would be worried about a negative college impact unless increasing chances at UVA is the goal. [/quote]

TJ Sophomore parent here and my kid is doing well grade wise but we are white knuckling it a bit academically.  I feel like he is being challenged in a way that he would not be at his base school and intellectually, I know that he will be better off in the long run with a better more rigorous education but I went to an ivy+ school where I met my spouse and it is a sizable part of our identity.  We wanted something like that for him.  I see really smart seniors getting rejected from schools that make my jaw drop.  Did they submit a limerick for their essay or something?

UVA is really starting to look like a fantastic landing spot but [b]they don't like TJ kids for some reason.[/b][/quote]

This is false. They don't like [i]boring[/i] TJ kids.[/quote]

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Most TJ kids have a lot going on with ECs. UVA is fine with TJ but what they do not do anymore that they used to do is take a really large swath of TJ kids in recognition that being top half of the TJ class took probably as much work as top 10% at many base schools. [/quote]

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