Reply to How does one prep place account for 25% of TJ Admissions?

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Reply to "How does one prep place account for 25% of TJ Admissions?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everything seems to be about “gaining an edge” and exploiting every possible angle with these TJHSST families. They absolutely suck all the fun out of high school with their grim zero-sum game mentality.  It provides quite a window as to why applications from other students have been declining sharply. [/quote]

Says the racist who cannot work hard.[/quote]

TJ grad here who managed to get in without prepping, succeed without cheating, and graduate with a 4.1/1560/$10K+ in scholarship offers...all with minimal parental oversight. Sorry about your need to control your kid's entire life at any cost rather than actually raise a self-motivated individual. [/quote]

Why are you bragging about 4.1 weighted gpa? It’s not bad but that is bottom half and 10k in scholarship money is way below average for TJ grad. [/quote]

Probably because they have a good life and don't care about your assertion that they were bottom half. Might have been top half in other areas and gotten into great schools. Also, depending on when they graduated, 4.1 may very well have been very high - TJ and FCPS used to operate on a much different grading scale back in the day where APs received only a .5 weight and you needed a 94 to get a 4.0, and a 93.4 was a 3.5.[/quote]

Ding ding ding. Early oughts grad. Post-APs didn't carry any extra GPA weight. 4.1 was top 10% of class.   And guess what? This many years out, having attended TJ is literally nothing more than a fun conversation topic.

It's really pathetic that a specific cohort of parents (characterized mostly by their access to resources, lest you accuse me of being racist) has ruined AAP and TJ. Forcing your child to do nothing but prep and study and participate solely in academic extracurricular activities is not going to make them smarter, more capable, better people.  You can scoff at "well rounded" all you want, but my writing and communication skills are what have helped me succeed in my career, not my [long-since-lost] ability to do multi-variable calculus.

I 100% believe that shady things are happening at specific test prep centers. I'm saddened that current students seem to be okay with that, much like they seem to be okay with rampant cheating just to get through basic their four years there. But just like the rise of private "college application counselors" when I was in high school, where wealthy parents paid for EXTENSIVE manipulation of their child's essays and application package - on evidence at TJ still today in the explosion of clubs and activities so that everyone can be "president" or "chair" of something - trying to get the parents of these kids NOT to cheat and game the academic system in favor of their children is like playing whack-a-mole. I'm with PP(s) who have opined that an entirely school-based identification, application, and selection process is the only way to even attempt to curb this influence, and it needs to start with AAP selection.
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I agree with you generally but disagree with you that TJ students are not well-rounded or lack communication skills. I was pleasantly surprised that many TJ students I had met were "well-rounded" and had very good communication skills (speaking, writing, creativity etc.) and I felt that they would make great politicians due to their "soft skills/people skills). I think we have to get away from the notion that students who excel in STEM lack communication skills or that they are somehow not well-rounded/one-dimensional. For example, my TJ kid loved math and science but was also into history, government/politics, creative writing, music etc. and there were many kids like that at TJ unless things changed significantly in the last 4-5 years.[/quote]

There are a fair number of kids who are well-rounded at TJ, and I'm not surprised that the ones you met were - they tend to be the most gregarious and comfortable with social interaction with adults. As has been discussed fairly thoroughly here, there's a core group of them that are absolute rockstars and genuinely belong at a school that offers what TJ offers (which is much more diverse from an academic perspective than most people understand).

I would be willing to bet you that most of these students were not in prep classes for years at great expense to their parents to get them to TJ. But there's a VERY large number of these students who fit that profile, and the tendency is that - irrespective of race - these students struggle mightily, complain constantly about the workload, and contribute very little to the school environment because they're too busy trying to keep their heads above water. You don't usually meet these students. Why? They're too busy studying. Those students are not well-rounded and frequently do lack communication skills - and there are enough of them in the population that that becomes the stereotype.[/quote]

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