Reply to TJ - admissions: GPA and essays vulnerable to prep and affluence

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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]Simple and honest question:  Why do so many of you think that GPA and essays are *less* vulnerable to prep and effects of affluence than test scores?  Affluent kids with motivated parents likely have been in enrichment classes for quite awhile and are likely ahead.  If the kid struggles at all, the affluent parents are likely to get a tutor and shore up any deficiencies the kid might have.  If all else fails, the affluent parents are much more likely to badger the teacher and administration until their kid's grade turns into an A.  It honestly doesn't seem hard for any parent with the money and motivation to make sure any average kid could get straight As in middle school.

Likewise, it's pretty easy to talk about love for STEM and such when the kid has been attending enrichment and camps for many years.  Again, it would also be easy to get prep and tutoring to write a highly polished essay.

With tests like PSAT, while prep helps to some degree, there is a pretty strong limit.  Kids who are naturally 99th percentile will likely earn very high scores with no or minimal prep.  Kids who are pretty average but privileged will see score increases, but they're still unlikely to earn super high scores.  It seems easier for affluent parents to ensure that their kids have straight As and can write strong essays than it would be to ensure that their kid would earn a very high PSAT score.

So what am I missing, here?  [/quote]

This appears not to be an issue since the entering classes are economically more diverse than any before the change.[/quote]

There is an explicit preference for FARM students.  Why do we also have to remove merit to achieve the economic diversity?[/quote] Because the fair, objective selection process that other top magnets (Stuy, etc) use to get both highly qualified students who are also economically diverse (an objective test for which prep resources are widely and freely available) is off the table for TJ due to racial reasons.[/quote]
The preference is so important and why is the number of farm students so low?[/quote]
The FARM rate was lower than it needed to be under the old system because the old system included a holistic component.
The kids who tested into the pool had a much higher FARM rate than 2% but very few poor kids made it through the holistic part of the admissions process.[/quote]

You missed the point.  If the FARMS preference gives such a significant bump, why are the number of FARMS students still so low?[/quote]

I like hard data.  FCPS school profiles show that 13.6% of the TJ kids are economically disadvantaged.  Looking at 8th grade SOL scores from last year:
of those who passed the Algebra II SOL, 185 were not economically disadvantaged and 14 were, meaning only 7.04% of the highest math level kids are FARMS.  For 8th grade Geometry, there were 1500 non FARMS and 122 FARMS, so only 7.52% of these kids were FARMS.  In this case, I didn't even look at pass advanced, but the numbers are even worse for economically disadvantaged kids.

If you look at Algebra I (and keep in mind that this includes kids who didn't take honors and thus weren't eligible in the first place), and in this case consider only those who got pass advanced on the test (considering that a kid who is not even pass advanced in the lowest math level allowed is likely not really TJ material), there were 1256 non FARMS and 202 FARMS, meaning only 13.85% of the kids at this level were FARMS.

If anything, FARMS kids look pretty overrepresented at TJ compared to their math level and demonstrated mastery of the material.    [/quote]

The county's FARMs rate is closer to 40%, and at 13% of TJ, they would be underrepresented. [/quote]

So, you didn't read or understand any of the data.  For TJ admissions, if you're trying to determine whether the FARMS bump is significant, you really can only look at the rate of acceptance for the kids who applied.  The large portion of FARMS kids who were not interested in attending or who did not meet the minimum standards for applying are relevant for other discussions, but not this specific one about the effect of the FARMS preference in TJ admissions.

The SOL data shows that there are not many FARMS kids at the level where they'd even be eligible to apply for TJ or be at all reasonable admits.  When only 7.5% of the FARMS kids are even in Geometry, but 13.6% of the TJ kids are FARMS, that means they're boosting a lot of FARMS kids into the program, whether through the FARMS experience factor or the 1.5% seat allocation.  
[/quote]

The SOL data doesn't say that at all, but it doesn't matter. In fact, FARMS students at TJ are far lower than FCPS average so they are under represented at TJ. We should be giving it more weight until it reaches the county average.[/quote]

Why?

Are you under the impression that academic talent is evenly distributed across income?[/quote]

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