Reply to Excellent, but not crazy competitive school districts in VA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]West Springfield/Lake Braddock/Robinson pyramids.[/quote]

Why?  Lake Braddock and Robinson are very large secondary schools.  Lots of competition going on there, even if there are some other schools with higher test scores. [/quote]

West Springfield, Lake Braddock, and Robinson are all schools that are basically uniformly middle class/upper middle class. There's a bit of racial/ethnic diversity, but economically the kids are all basically normal kids.

For the secondary schools, the size works in both ways. There's plenty for kids to do and it's big enough that there's no dominant "culture." It's much more kids finding their niches. Academically all three are strong enough schools without TJ craziness (note -- even though all three are close-ish to TJ, very few kids actually go to TJ because they are perfectly happy with their home schools.  It's not a pressure cooker area.

It cuts both ways. Kids aren't going to be the tippy top. It's a place where people are fine with their kids going to Tech or JMU or VCU. It's not UVA or die around here (though plenty do attend UVA). [/quote]

That's quite self-serving.  Kids from families with more or less money - and those schools are about 10-16% low-income - are "normal," too.

Also, a large number of kids from Lake Braddock, which has the local AAP center, apply to TJ every year.  They are just admitted at substantially lower rates than at some of the other middle school feeders to TJ.  Perhaps that supports the notion that it's a lower-pressure area, but surely most of the kids who took the test would have gone to TJ if they'd been admitted.  [/quote]

Actually that's not true. In terms of demographics AAP students at lake Braddock pass on TJ at a much higher rate than Demographically similar schools.[/quote]

+1. Our DD graduated from LB and was also in AAP in ES and MS. Quite a few of her friends took the TJ tests to placate their parents and several were admitted. Very few elected to go because they preferred the environment at LB. There were also quite a few that likely would have been admitted but chose not to take the tests because they knew they didn’t want to leave LB.

She also had several AAP friends from MS who went back to their base school for HS (WS, Robo) rather than pursue TJ for those same reasons. 
[/quote]

This might be more convincing if you could show that a substantially smaller percentage of LB AAP kids apply to TJ than the kids from other AAP centers in the county.

Otherwise, such anecdotes ("oh, we never really wanted to go there anyway") aren't very persuasive.  After all, if the area was as relaxed as you claim, kids wouldn't take the TJ tests to placate their parents, because their parents would happily keep them at their base schools. [/quote]

OP  this back and forth arguing by the TJ poster is an example.of the differences in focuses between the TO crazy areas and the more laid back pyramids where TJ  craziness just really is not a focus/big deal.

It is great if kids get in there but also great if their interests are elsewhere. [/quote]

Uh, it was a LB/Robinson/WS poster that brought up TJ in the first instance.  Otherwise it wouldn't be part of the discussion.

There are plenty of other schools for OP to consider, even if the LB/Robinson/WS posters try to portray the schools with higher test scores as "pressure cookers" or pretend the schools that have more low-income kids than those three don't exist.  What about Hayfield or South County?

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