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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It really is a mindset and in saying this it is not intended as a value judgement.

My son went to TJ. It was a long trek for him and on top of this the rigorous academic requirements at TJ had him working some long hours especially in his junior year.

He went on to medical school and is currently doing his residency at one of the most prestigious programs in the country and will be done soon.

He says that TJ was the best thing that happened to him. He literally breezed through his undergrad. He said it was a lot  easier than TJ from an academic standpoint in terms of the pressure .... and he completed his undergrad in three years!

Given where he is today, ask him whether he has any regrets about the long commute and the academic demands that TJ made on him and he would give an unqualified response that TJ was a huge help to him in getting where he is today. Could he have done it in a different academic environment? More than likely he could have. But that does not take anything away from the role TJ played in getting him to where he is today.

None of the above is meant as a brag ..... after all, I am posting anonymously. It is merely intended as a perspective on how some parents and their children view the downsides (commuting, new friends, academic pressures) of going to TJ.[/quote]

Thank you for your post. But for every experience like this, there is another for someone who commuted just as long and worked just as hard, but ended up in the bottom half of their TJ class. For that kid, was being in the bottom half (or, gasp, quarter) of their TJ class worth it? Could they have graduated at the top of their base school, had a more well-rounded high school experience, and perhaps gotten into a more prestigious college than their less-than-average TJ rank earned them?

I am not surprised that your son found undergrad less challenging (and perhaps less competitive) than TJ. I don't doubt for a minute that TJ provides the most rigorous academic program in the county. But I think FCPS does a pretty good job of preparing kids for college, and the kid who opts to remain at his base school could just as easily end up at the same place as your son, with perhaps a more difficult transition to undergrad, but with a better non-academic high-school experience.

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