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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]FYI, ACPS published it's class of 2016 "decision day" list of colleges and universities. Link below. 331 students headed to college. Since you mentioned UVA - 31 from the class of 2016 are headed there. TC students are also headed to Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Emory, UC Berkley. Lots going to other Virginia schools too (e.g., 50 to Va Tech, 16 to Radford).

http://www.acpsk12.org/news/?p=2666 [/quote]

This year's college list isn't really bad, but it's not anywhere near as good as any recent year's list.  No Harvard, no Yale, no UPenn, no Chicago, no MIT, not one single service academy (right near the Pentagon -- NONE?  No West Point or Annapolis or Colo Springs or New London or King's Point -- not even one kid?), no Duke, etc etc.  Only one each for Cornell, Stanford, Emory, and so forth.  Colleges that picked up one or two TC seniors every year seem to have moved to zero.  This is a very, truly bad result for TC this year.  Not a confidence-builder for any parent that looks carefully at the list and compares it to the list for any recent year.  One reason might be the SAT performance -- 2d lowest scores in the last decade.  The school board had better be ready to deliver an explanation to the parents and voters, because performance has really plummeted, in just one year.

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It's a nice list but when you do just a little math:

"A total of 331 students from T.C. Williams are college-bound in the fall"

The total senior class as of April 2016 is 707.   So @46% of the entire senior class are headed to college in the fall.

Of that 331 students, 142 students are headed to NOVA - that's @ 42% of the students heading to college

That leaves 189 students heading to other schools.

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[b]The reason so many kids go on to NOVA from TC is because it is incredibly inexpensive,[/b] they can live at home so have no room and board and they can keep or get jobs.  For many at TC, this is the only realistic way of going to college and still supporting their families.  And - it is very smart.  NOVA has amazing agreements with schools throughout VA and even outside of VA which allow credits to count as such schools as VA Tech, UVA and many other great schools.  So students can pay a quarter of what they would pay at those school for their first two years of school and then finish at the more expensive schools.  TC actively encourages students to go this route who might otherwise not go to college.  It just makes sense and should not be viewed in a negative light when compared to private schools - private school students generally don't have those kinds of financial and family responsibilities.[/quote]

So a little more math first - @20% of the senior class will head to a 4 yr college/university in the fall

As to why so many kids are encourage to go to NOVA, expense is probably one reason but another is lower expectations. There has been more research and more written on this topic in recent years and how discouraging minority students (which would make up the majority number of students in the senior class) to accept lower ranking schools or community college because of expense instead of reaching for other schools and seeking financial assistance (which would require more help from the school likely) actually hurts students and doesn't provide them enough of a leg up educationally.

Couple that with the fact that community colleges just have abysmal completion rates and students who often are in need of remedial help or are just not that academically inclined and the environment just isn't going to be conducive to a educational experience that is going to keep a marginally engaged kid returning to class each semester.  Again, there has been research and writing on this in recent years.

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