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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses. 
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Then TJ needs to write better math screening exams to differentiate between kids who understand the advanced math and those who don't.  It would be much more productive to make the TJ tests more difficult to prep than it would be to complain that people are prepping.  [/quote]

Yes, I've been ranting about this for a while now. The TJ test should have a lot higher ceiling so that admissions can properly differentiate between the kids who are really good in math and the rest. When lots and lots of applicants get perfect or close to it on the admissions test, the admissions committee cannot differentiate them at all in terms of math ability. A high ceiling test is also much much less prepable, no matter how much money people will give the prep schools. Case in point, no prep school will claim they can get a kid to get perfect or close to perfect on a reputable contest such as the AMC 10, AMC 12, etc. A TJ math entrance exam should strive to be closer to these and not do the opposite.

This is actually a problem in the AAP tests as well. The Cogat is laughably easy and does not differentiate kids at all when they apply for AAP. It is so easy that they have to significantly adjust the percentiles for age. (My 2nd grade kid got 1 or 2 questions wrong total in the math portion but got around 133 or 137; (can't exactly recall) because of his age. Not sure how that tells the AAP committee anything about their math ability).[/quote]

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