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

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie.  Curie has these up in their Facebook page.  FCPS has the list.  It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come. 
[/quote]

I don't think the students at TJ who attended Curie necessarily knew that they were being fed material they shouldn't have seen. These behaviors are institutionally endorsed. If you're 12-13 years old and adults are telling you that doing the Curie class is a successful way to work hard and possibly get into TJ, why would you suspect they are giving you material they shouldn't know about? Why should it be a child's job to know the adults are wrong? And why should they be punished, even if they realize it after the fact?

Even if Curie cheated, and some direct evidence comes out, I would not expect anyone will do anything against those kids, nor should they. The KIDS are not the cheaters here -- at worst, Curie got an illegal copy of the Quant and the parents knew. More likely, Curie got some questions by asking the kids, and the parents just know that Curie 'gets kids in'.

If Curie got some test questions by asking students, that's unethical but not illegal. If people have a problem with the business model, then we should remove standardized testing from the TJ admissions process because it's an untrustworthy metric. We provide a carrot for companies like Curie -- TJ admissions will come your way! Every test is teachable. Why blame these kids?

The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students [i]do[/i] need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Kids who were able to do what Curie does with just their own self-study take a lot less time to learn new material when they get to TJ. These are kids who are actively involved in a lot of activities that help them learn whatever is these schools are teaching -- and sometimes quite a lot more.

If TJ goes to a lottery or a distribution based on regions, the school itself needs to address how it will teach the material to students who [i]don't[/i] have years of preparatory work, and/or take classes on the side.
[/quote]

This is one of the most well-thought-out posts on this topic. Pretty much agree with everything you said here.

And, importantly, if success at TJ requires a parallel class on the side to keep up with the accelerated math, that's a MAJOR problem and needs to be addressed.[/quote]

I totally agree. You can't really blame students. I am not sure if we can really blame parents either. It is bad if you intentionally cheat or screw over someone. But, if you take advantage of the resources available to improve yourself, then it may be a fair game. My family comes from math background with academic focus and we spend a good amount of time teaching math to my kids and naturally they were exposed to math from early age and do relatively well in school. One one of my good friends is an english teacher who coaches debate teams and her husband is an engineer. Theirs kids do a lot better in language arts and their is english is definitely superior to my kids. There are parents who send kids to Kumon, Mathnasium, 1 on 1 tutoring and other enrichment.  You can purchase books/material or take prep classes for any standardized test (from cogat to lsat), but not every parent can afford it. This may apply to other areas such as music, sports, though to lesser extent.

So, the question, is this really fair to other kids and parents who do have means or resources to do it? The answer depends on who you ask. Should every parent stop teaching their kids and/or send to any after school activities (academic or no-academic), just so that it will be fair to other kids with out means? You can even take it to next level and say advanced countries may have unfair advantage over poor countries where education takes back seat compared to day to day survival. I remember one of my really smart school friend had to drop out of high school and take a job to support the family and you see so many of these cases.

As an opposite argument, is it really fair to my my kids if I refuse to teach them or provide other enrichment even though I have means to do it? I can't even say I will not buy them their first car because my parents couldn't do it for me. The bottom line is, you can't really stop enrichment. It is job of teachers, school system or government to recognize and promote the natural talent and no parental support. Also, no matter how much prepping you do, you can't really force kids to learn something unless they are genuinely interested in it - at least I couldn't. The max you do is to channel their interests in a certain direction if one area of interest is taking away too much time with out any obvious improvement - but this is a big may be and some times you need to let kids figure out on their own.

The irony here is, some of the parents who complain TJ admissions are unfair are the same ones who pushed their kids into AAP either by providing them cogat/nnat practice, buy books, try to get them into the pool with ton of support material/recommendation letters, spend money on WISC, appeals etc. How many non-academic focus parents can do this? This forum is supposed to provide information to parents with genuine questions of kids education, but most of the discussion here is just rant, complaints and bragging.

[/quote]

I mean, my point was ostensibly that the admissions process needs to change to combat this behavior and make it irrelevant to the selection process. I don't blame the families who use the advantages that they have - I'm saying those advantages need to become irrelevant.

And yes, students who have parents that are specifically invested in getting into TJ have a huge advantage over students whose parents are highly academically motivated but are NOT specifically invested in TJ from an early age. That's a problem that needs to be solved.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics