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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]From the long excerpt:
[i]“ She loved racial diversity and the prospect of a “flat world,” but when these things threatened her son’s academic position, that love seemed to sour.”[/i]

If 18 out of 21 kids in the class are one group then it’s not very diverse.

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Overly qualified students are rejected every year. This happens because there are more qualified students than there are spots in these programs. [/quote]

Overly qualified students were not rejected every year.  If a kid had a 4.0, was taking Honors Pre-Calc in 8th, and had some national level STEM achievement, that kid was getting accepted in the past.  Now, it's a huge crapshoot since there's no mechanism whatsoever for identifying the top kids at the higher SES schools.  It's not about Carson kids vs. Whitman kids.  It's about the 4.0 Carson kid receiving tons of tutoring to keep that 4.0 in Algebra I with no STEM ECs or achievements vs. the 4.0 Carson kid in Pre-Calc with national level STEM achievements.  Both look the same on paper, even though the first kid is completely average for the high SES cohort.  [/quote]

+1 This is what bugging me most about the new process. There is no way to identify the talent when the only two things considered are unweighted GPA and a massive importance to the essays. That leaves SPS as the only place where kids can 'brag' about their achievements, where any kid can absolutely say anything or exaggerate even tiniest achievements while knowing there will be absolutely no validation at all. Introverted kids are generally shy about bragging and they might even underrepresent their real achievements. Moreover, essays do not really test STEM and grading is very subjecting depending on who is reading them.

There is a whole another angle that few others tried to point out earlier, but got overlooked. TJ used to be hard to get in and hard to keep up school and kids who got in were considered much smarter than average - I used to hear (from kids) that only about top 5% of AAP kids generally get into TJ. Now the MS kids no longer consider TJ is hard to get in and even implying its like a lottery as there is absolutely no correlation among who got in vs who didn't. It is true that they are some smarter kids got in, but there are actual AAP kids who couldn't even get into algebra I in 7th grade, have zero stem electives or activities, not all As/A-s also got into TJ. Where as, many straight A students with tons of STEM didn't get the admission. So far TJ has the impression that it is hard to keep up even after you get in, but that might likely change and the school may even be forced to lower their standards to cater to new set of students to prevent them from failing or dropping out.

You might want to call the TJ environment as toxic, which might very well be the case, but it was actually an environment that rewarded the hard work on top of the intelligence. Kids/Parents always understood that only one of the factors (intelligence or hard work) don't usually cut it. The new process wanted to completely eliminate the hard work from the equation, but the side effect likely eliminated the intelligence as well. Imagine the companies like google (or any other hard to get in companies) or agencies like CIA changed or lowered their standards for more inclusivity when acceptance is no longer considered exclusive, but random with some min qualification, how would your perception change? Everyone, both who are pro and against the new process, wants more diversity, but did TJ fix the problem the right way?

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