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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1) Is Spanish as hard at TJ as others on this board have said?

2) How is the Russian program?

3) Looking at Freshman year, is there anything students should do to prepare for Research Stats or TJ Math 3?  biology?

4) How is the college advising?

5) Can you speak to the cheating culture claims?[/quote]

OP here:

1) For background, I took Spanish 2 freshman year and Spanish 3 Online last summer. All languages at TJ except Latin are taught in immersion, where the teacher speaks primarily in the language taught. Spanish, French, and Latin are the more difficult languages at TJ, while Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and German are not stereotypically as rigorous. This is not to diminish the quality of instruction, as all of the teachers are very qualified and great at what they do, but grade-wise less kids get As and the workload is higher for the former three. The level of difficulty of Spanish at TJ will depend on your freshman year teacher, but then going into Spanish 3 at TJ those students that had the "harder" Spanish 2 teacher will be highly more prepared. I had the harder teacher but she did want to help you learn and if she sees that you're putting in effort she'll be more forgiving. There are more Spanish students at TJ than in any other language. I believe that the reasons that people say Spanish is difficult at TJ are 1) because it is very demanding in comparison to middle school Spanish and freshman that enter Spanish 3 are normally underprepared and some end up taking Spanish 2 again (and tend to do very well) and 2) in simple comparison to the other languages where there is less homework and difficult assessments. Spanish at TJ is seen as a class that takes outside studying to do well in--not a "break" or "easy-A" class. Usually, people don't really want to put so much effort into Spanish at TJ because it's not really something they're interested in spending so much study time on, which also probably adds to why some say it's difficult rather than rewarding. At the beginning of Spanish 2 there is a "Spanish Boot-camp" which is basically a massive review of Spanish 1 content to aid those from less rigorous middle school backgrounds. The program is very good though and if you take advantage of the instruction you'll get very good at Spanish very fast. It's just seen as another academic class with assessments and homework like Biology or CS, except it's not STEM.

2) Russian is seen as an easy A class at TJ. I have many friends in Russian and the program is very chill with a really nice teacher. There's also a Russian Honor Society that does a dance for Inite every year. Sometimes the teacher picks students who can skip Russian 2 and go from Russian 1 to Russian 3, then AP the next year. My friends enjoy the class a lot, there's only 25-ish of them in 2022 so they're pretty good friend. Since middle schools don't really offer Russian, most freshman take Russian 1 then continue three/four years at TJ.

3) I don't know how necessary it is to prep intensely for freshman year unless the student isn't really doing anything else. The year before TJ abolished summer assignments was before my freshman year, and we had a Stats summer packet to complete for an easy first-week-test once we entered school, but since there's no summer assignments anymore--TJ isn't expecting freshman to come in with much prior knowledge. The same goes for Biology--TJ uses an AP Biology textbook for freshman biology, but they don't completely expect or build off of prior knowledge since everyone had different middle school backgrounds. You could probably look on Khan Academy or maybe Bozeman biology videos (we love this guy) on YouTube for some biology content to start looking at. TJ Math 3 uses the textbook Prentice Hall Algebra 2. There's an algebra diagnostic all freshman take twice during the first semester, the second time for a grade, so I'd maybe make sure I was really solid on Algebra 1 Honors fundamentals? I don't remember what textbooks Stats uses, but it's the first half of the AP stats curriculum. Here's a good study guide from one of my upperclassmen friends that I used to review last year: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k3osPmUe6VNMnnjFyFJxN8qbFDYni_jTkpny_93WKz0/edit?usp=sharing

4) I'm only a sophomore so I don't have much experience with the college advising at TJ, but there is a really great College and Career Center at TJ that is super welcoming and routinely offers one-on-one meetings with kids and information about scholarships, jobs, internships, and the like. There's also many, many college visits open to the student body in the fall and winter, and some other career options like when the FBI recruiters came to give a talk. The student-and-teacher led Writing Center holds workshops about how to write college essays and seniors are always able to ask teachers for guidance on their essays. Around this time of junior year all of the juniors fill out a "Junior packet" about their strengths, extracurriculars, and goals that helps their counselors write a good recommendation for them. There is a lot of emphasis placed on college at TJ and a lot of support for students at that time.

5) I believe that the majority of the student body fairly receives the grades they deserve. However, allegations of cheating and breaking the honor code at TJ are taken very seriously by administration and students get very very mad at their peers if it is discovered that someone unfairly received something better than they deserved--especially concerning college acceptances and national level STEM tests (accusations/reveals which become prevalent around this time of year). I think a few years ago there was a large cheating ring in one of the sophomore classes? That hasn't happened since on such a large scope. There are some really insane individual instances of cheating at TJ which are quickly discovered and punished--just this last year, a junior was caught using a camera pen to sell the physics midterm to other juniors. This caused the physics curve to be removed for many juniors, negatively affecting the class and many uninvolved people on a wide scope. I don't know how often this happens but it's very annoying that some cheaters give the entire school a bad rep. Again, cheating is taken very seriously at TJ and it's definitely not normalized. TJ kids are really willing to help each other out (study guides, tutoring, etc) but not to the point of getting in administrative trouble. And if someone is rewarded unfairly and people are aware of it, they will be called out.
[/quote]

Do most of the kids in TJ take 3 years of world language or 4 years? It seems some of the elite colleges require 4 years of WL. Since TJ kids aspire to get into top colleges, do they go for 4 years of WL?  Also if you took Spanish 3 in summer, you will not be able to take 4th year of Spanish. Right? Thanks.[/quote]

OP here:

You're right -- I am not eligible to take AP Spanish at TJ. Most Spanish students do not continue to AP as it takes up an elective spot that could go to other classes. There are normally two blocks of AP Spanish Lang per year (about 40 kids from grades 10-12). In the other languages where there are only one or two blocks of Level 1, 2, 3 classes, more of the kids continue on to AP, but it generally comes down to the student's decision and course planning. Or, if they know that one of the colleges they may be looking at recommends 4 years and they decide that they like the language enough to take another year. It's true that some colleges do recommend 4 years of language, but I don't think a majority of TJ students (that don't speak one of these languages at home) do more than 3. I'm not sure if any college *requires* 4 years of a language.[/quote]

Thank you. I understand colleges don't "require" 4 years of WL but when they say "recommend", some people think they actually mean "required'. I wanted to see what TJ kids think about WL as far as colleges are concerned.
[/quote]

Not OP but my S took "only" 3 years of Japanese and it didn't seem to negatively affect his reach college admissions.[/quote]

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