TJ admissions has been changed to eliminate merit criteria and admit based on skin color. It shouldn't be surprising if students are receiving C grades and find it challenging to secure admission to top-tier schools.

I looked at this for the published matriculation data of graduating classes back in 2019 and then again in 2022.

TJ had about
- 8% HYPSM
- 6% next tier of privates (ranked 6-14)
- 20% public Top-4 (UVA, Mich, Cal, UCLA)
- 1% top SLACs/international
- 16% next tier of privates (15-25)
- 16% next tier of publics (6-15)
- 16% next tier of publics (16-25)
- 4% next tier of privates (26-55)
- 4% next tier of publics (26-50)
- 5% other VA publics or local schools
- 4% everything else

Compare to Mclean which was
- 1% HYPSM
- 2% next tier of privates (ranked 6-14)
- 11% public Top-4 (UVA, Mich, Cal, UCLA)
- 2% top SLACs/international
- 4% next tier of privates (15-25)
- 8% next tier of publics (6-15)
- 7% next tier of publics (16-25)
- 7% next tier of privates (26-55)
- 8% next tier of publics (26-50)
- 28% other VA publics or local schools
- 22% everything else

McLean has a larger percentage of graduating kids who were not listed and/or not attending college, so even though ~3% of those listed went to a top 14 private, that probably reflects closer to top ~2% of class... and also doesn't factor in hooks, which I suspect play a bigger role in aggregate for admitted McLean students than for admitted TJ students.

But hooks aside, if you drew the line at say top-15 publics and top 25 privates, at TJ you've got the top 2/3 of the class getting in, whereas at McLean it's the top 1/4. Definitely TJ isn't getting shunned historically. Hopefully they'll print matriculation again end-of-year for class of 2024 and we can see if the data has actually moved significantly in terms of where kids are matriculating to from our HS's... otherwise it's just anecdotes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

My kid wasn’t interested in TJ, so no skin in the game. But, I guess why not? I understand wanting a diversity of student experiences as it relates to the bottom 95% of schools. But, if they had to apply to go to the best school in the state and are doing well there, why shouldn’t the best schools want to pick them up? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Because applicants are judged against their peers in high school. Why do so many people ignore this??? The average SAT at TJ is over 1500. A TJ student with a 1530 is seen as ordinary and maybe even a slacker. But a few mile away where the average SAT score is 1080 that student with a 1530 will been seen as special.

It really is that simple. TJ is a great school but if you are going hoping for a lottery ticket admission to CalTech MIT etc then your book smarts need to be augmented with some street smarts.

This is why C students end up in charge of everything. They sit back and put effort into things that actually pay off

If they have Cs they aren’t putting effort into anything. They will be off to the community college.

Well, C students with family money and influence.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

My kid wasn’t interested in TJ, so no skin in the game. But, I guess why not? I understand wanting a diversity of student experiences as it relates to the bottom 95% of schools. But, if they had to apply to go to the best school in the state and are doing well there, why shouldn’t the best schools want to pick them up? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Because applicants are judged against their peers in high school. Why do so many people ignore this??? The average SAT at TJ is over 1500. A TJ student with a 1530 is seen as ordinary and maybe even a slacker. But a few mile away where the average SAT score is 1080 that student with a 1530 will been seen as special.

It really is that simple. TJ is a great school but if you are going hoping for a lottery ticket admission to CalTech MIT etc then your book smarts need to be augmented with some street smarts.

This is why C students end up in charge of everything. They sit back and put effort into things that actually pay off

Obviously, that’s how it works. No one is ignoring that. Did you read the PP you responded to? It just does not make sense to do it that way.

For some students, it really would be better to stay at their base HS than go to TJ. Depends on the student and on the base HS. Contrived example: top 10% student who stayed at base HS likely has better college admissions chances than the same student if he or she were the median student at TJ.

This is exactly why so many on this site advise sending your children to NVCC just to get into UVA.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

My kid wasn’t interested in TJ, so no skin in the game. But, I guess why not? I understand wanting a diversity of student experiences as it relates to the bottom 95% of schools. But, if they had to apply to go to the best school in the state and are doing well there, why shouldn’t the best schools want to pick them up? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Because applicants are judged against their peers in high school. Why do so many people ignore this??? The average SAT at TJ is over 1500. A TJ student with a 1530 is seen as ordinary and maybe even a slacker. But a few mile away where the average SAT score is 1080 that student with a 1530 will been seen as special.

It really is that simple. TJ is a great school but if you are going hoping for a lottery ticket admission to CalTech MIT etc then your book smarts need to be augmented with some street smarts.

This is why C students end up in charge of everything. They sit back and put effort into things that actually pay off

If they have Cs they aren’t putting effort into anything. They will be off to the community college.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

My kid wasn’t interested in TJ, so no skin in the game. But, I guess why not? I understand wanting a diversity of student experiences as it relates to the bottom 95% of schools. But, if they had to apply to go to the best school in the state and are doing well there, why shouldn’t the best schools want to pick them up? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Because applicants are judged against their peers in high school. Why do so many people ignore this??? The average SAT at TJ is over 1500. A TJ student with a 1530 is seen as ordinary and maybe even a slacker. But a few mile away where the average SAT score is 1080 that student with a 1530 will been seen as special.

It really is that simple. TJ is a great school but if you are going hoping for a lottery ticket admission to CalTech MIT etc then your book smarts need to be augmented with some street smarts.

This is why C students end up in charge of everything. They sit back and put effort into things that actually pay off

I'm sure TJ will still have nice college admissions compared to most public high schools. If anything, with the admissions changes they'll have more minority students that top schools will be looking upon favorably to add diversity.

But clearly a lot of people there think they should waltz into T10 schools based on where they stood as 8th graders when they applied to TJ years earlier, and that's not how the world works.

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

My kid wasn’t interested in TJ, so no skin in the game. But, I guess why not? I understand wanting a diversity of student experiences as it relates to the bottom 95% of schools. But, if they had to apply to go to the best school in the state and are doing well there, why shouldn’t the best schools want to pick them up? That doesn’t make sense to me.

Anonymous wrote:I know that is hyperbole.... but still. The "deferred" list seems extra long

Not if student is in top 10% of the class at TJ

Anonymous wrote:They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

T10 is all out of state, not in state

OP why are you asking?

They can only accept so many kids from TJ. That’s why it’s not a good idea to go if you want to stay in state anyway.

I know that is hyperbole.... but still. The "deferred" list seems extra long