Reply to WL IB or TJ or Private

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think first you rule out TJ if he's not interested in STEM, then your decision is between W-L and private. I can give you the W-L side of the debate.

Firstly, if your kids are in the top 50% of students, they will have access to impressive IB, AP and DE classes and mostly impressive teachers. The general education classes are sometimes remedial, which was a surprise. Both my kids have made connections with many of their teachers and have a number to choose from when requesting college letters of recommendation or recommendations for summer jobs. They have participated in the music and athletic programs and made lots of friends.

There is a group of kids who are troublemakers, but they tend not to lash out at kids outside their groups. The administrators are enforcing rules more this year and handing out suspensions and detentions. My kids say they are able to work around these groups with little effort.

In terms of college counseling, WL will keep your kid on track with deadlines and give them access to almost daily visits by college reps. They tend to give more assistance to the kids without means to get their applications done, not one on one counseling. So if you need that, hire someone. We haven't needed it.

My kids tell me regularly how lucky they feel to go to W-L, and I'm sure not everyone has the same positive experience but thought I'd share.[/quote]

XL WL best days are behind it. They are adding another 400 students to the school over the next 3 years. Maybe IB will be insulated from the expanse, but it will just be too big to manage properly. [/quote]

2020 WL Enrollment 2100
2024 WL Enrollment 2500

So will it stop at 2700 or 2900?

TJ is 1900 students[/quote]
TJ will be 2200 students next year. TJ is amazing. But I doubt your kid can count on getting in. There just aren’t that many spots.  [/quote]

Op was offered a spot at TJ[/quote]i
Pretty sure TJ offers are not out. [/quote]

TJ offers don't come out until late April. Private school deposits are usually due before the TJ offers are released. We were in this position last year and took the private spot. I was so glad we did, because the new TJ admissions system is random. The kids who got the spots from our MS were not the top math/science students by any measure-- but they did check the TJ experience factors. Just something to consider if you attend a more diverse APS middle school and don't check those boxes. We also had WL IB as an option, but our kid liked the smaller size of the private school. He's getting so much 1:1 interaction with teachers this year in private school-- that's been the biggest and best change from APS. [/quote]
Absolutely. Of course it’s the admissions system. That’s why your kid didn’t get into TJ. For sure. You know that lots of mediocre APS kids get into the top privates too. [/quote]

In our MS, the majority of the spots went to kids who were *not* in 8th grade Geometry, who did *not* do the science fair, who were *not* winning math competitions, etc... all the things that used to matter for TJ. The standout math and science kids at our middle school did not get the spots. The new admissions system at TJ weights certain experience factors (FARMS, ESL) heavily in admissions. When APS only gets four "allocated" spots per school, it matters. APS kids aren't eligible for the "unallocated" pool spots like the Fairfax kids, so once the four spots at your school are gone, your kid is out of the running. The lawsuit related to this new process has been covered extensively in the Washington Post. [/quote

Huh.  Standout kids at our school got the spots. Wonder why it was so different? Maybe the kids you are talking about had things in their essay that you don’t know about.  Maybe your kid did a crappy job on the problem solving essay or the other one.  A lot of factors. But you go ahead and judge because the didn’t pick YOUR kid!  Please tell us more about how the man is keeping your kid down![/quote]

Um, you are wrong to think TJ is a meritocracy of academics.   That’s what the litigation is about…. Trying to diversify the school based on income and race.    Which is laudable but it’s true that this is both happening and a significant change to the way in. Which TJ picked prior classes. [/quote]

Further, regardless of how you feel about affirmative action, the point of it is to put URMs into institutions like TJ from which they have been excluded based on prior admissions decisions.  That means in fact that URMs with scores that would not meet prior TJ testing criteria are now admitted.   Students, particularly Asian students for TJ, who traditionally had done quite well on eg the exam and entrance criteria are now having fewer admits.  Meaning that it is not necessarily the “top” academic Arlington MS students getting in (which no one could tell you anyway since all the top kids have As meaning there are probably 75 of them at say DHMS/WMS alone.)[/quote]

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