Why is this so complicated? They should post the state cutoff numbers on this thing called the Internet as soon as they have them.

Can we ask for the list now?

Anonymous wrote:Very interesting, thanks. 1257 for the 10th graders admitted under the new process is better than I would have expected. Obviously, it's way lower than the previous year, but the current process seems so random that I would have expected the scores to be even lower.

PP here.

I am a huge critic of the new process but mostly because the racist intent behind the change.

The admissions process is not exactly random. It is designed to get a demographic cross section of the applicant pool but it doesn't entirely remove merit.
The essays are in fact difficult to complete within the allotted time but picking STEM students based on writing and verbal ability is a bit like choosing a basketball team based on batting averages.
You'll still end up with athletes but maybe not even the best baseball players and maybe not the best filter for picking a basketball team.
If you took the PSAT scores from just the honors students at places like woodson, mclean and langley, I would bet you end up with a PSAT score pretty close to the TJ score.

I do like the economic diversity (and the racial diversity that comes with it).
It always rubbed me the wrong way that TJ mostly admitted kids that could afford private school.
But reducing merit as a filter in order to avoid selecting too many asians seemed pretty racist to me.

If they reintroduced testing and kept the 1.5% quota I think you would see better results.

Very interesting, thanks. 1257 for the 10th graders admitted under the new process is better than I would have expected. Obviously, it's way lower than the previous year, but the current process seems so random that I would have expected the scores to be even lower.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a big kerfuffle a few years back because they didn't notify commended students. The whole TJ admissions drama was involved because TJs PSAT scores dropped like 120 points and someone said that they didn't want the kids who didn't get commendations to stand out. I think they notified the semifinalists.

I think you have the timeline mixed up. The first class admitted without the test are now seniors, so we'll see what the damage is in terms of number of National Merit semi-finalists and commended students in a few weeks. (It will probably be pretty bad.)

Here are the

In the admissions test era, a super-majority of TJHSST students got either NMSF or Commended, so there's some speculation that they were withholding announcements of Commended to soften the blow for kids who didn't get anything.