Harvard was Harvard long before there were rankings of any sort. Didn't need a magazine that was on the verge of folding before they started doing lists to tell ME that.

And again, given the brainpower and resources concentrated at TJ, I'm not that awed by the fact that a group of students there built a satellite. It's a great thing sure, but I'm more impressed by students who do amazing things at schools where they're not constantly being told their the best and the brightest and sponsored by half of corporate America.

As for the last sentence. Punctuation is bad, but I think most people got the point: Kid at underrated school got into Harvard on his own merits and probably without parents being apoplectic about sending him to the school with the highest average SAT scores.

Harvard is Harvard only because very capable and bright kids want to attend the school. These bright kids want to attend Harvard partly/entirely due to the reputation/rankings. Without all the capable and bright students, Harvard will not be Harvard.

Also, TJ is not the only high school with concentrated brainpower and resources. Comparable schools would be Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Montgomery Blair Science Magnet, IMSA, Bergen County, Hunter, Lowell etc. etc. I don't see any of them building a satellite and launching it into orbit. If it is such a given, almost all of them should have done the same or a similar thing.

Finally, you don't think TJ kids get into colleges on their own merit? In fact, many people think it's better not to attend TJ in order to get into one of the top colleges since they think attending a base school offers a better chance & less competition. Most TJ kids choose TJ because of the challenging environment TJ offers knowing full well that it will be much tougher to make it into the top 10% or top 20% etc. In fact, many TJ kids turn DOWN acceptances from Harvard, MIT, Princeton and other top colleges to attend UVA, VTech, CMU or W&M. It's not that parents are sending kids to a school with the highest SAT scores, rather it is that the students at TJ happen to score high on the SAT scores. I hope you can see the difference.

Anonymous wrote:

My kids go to FCPS schools and are in the IB program. I never said I didn't care about the reputations or qualities of schools. But again, I think it's pretty difficult to go wrong in FCPS. And as a journalist who has worked at some of the publications that do these rankings, I realize their myriad flaws and don't really buy into them for making high school decisions. Numbers can tell you all sorts of things, but what they won't tell you about is individual achievement. I know a senior from an FCPS school posters here would scoff at who got into Harvard, early decision, on October 31.

The last sentence is little unclear. Maybe the PP's DCPS teacher can tear it to pieces too.

If you think individual achievement is great and noteworthy, the design/building of a space satellite by individual high school students is also an achievement and should be commended and not dismissed as "not surprising." Isn't that a double standard? Also, isn't Harvard one of the colleges ranked high by US News? Why mention a college that is consistently ranked high by various ranking systems if people don't care about rankings and they are useless.

I agree that various ranking methodologies employed are flawed and that was one of the point. The HS rankings are flawed because they are primarily based on number of AP classes taken by each student regardless of the scores and they disregard post-AP courses entirely.

Harvard was Harvard long before there were rankings of any sort. Didn't need a magazine that was on the verge of folding before they started doing lists to tell ME that.

And again, given the brainpower and resources concentrated at TJ, I'm not that awed by the fact that a group of students there built a satellite. It's a great thing sure, but I'm more impressed by students who do amazing things at schools where they're not constantly being told their the best and the brightest and sponsored by half of corporate America.

As for the last sentence. Punctuation is bad, but I think most people got the point: Kid at underrated school got into Harvard on his own merits and probably without parents being apoplectic about sending him to the school with the highest average SAT scores.

My kids go to FCPS schools and are in the IB program. I never said I didn't care about the reputations or qualities of schools. But again, I think it's pretty difficult to go wrong in FCPS. And as a journalist who has worked at some of the publications that do these rankings, I realize their myriad flaws and don't really buy into them for making high school decisions. Numbers can tell you all sorts of things, but what they won't tell you about is individual achievement. I know a senior from an FCPS school posters here would scoff at who got into Harvard, early decision, on October 31.

The last sentence is little unclear. Maybe the PP's DCPS teacher can tear it to pieces too.

If you think individual achievement is great and noteworthy, the design/building of a space satellite by individual high school students is also an achievement and should be commended and not dismissed as "not surprising." Isn't that a double standard? Also, isn't Harvard one of the colleges ranked high by US News? Why mention a college that is consistently ranked high by various ranking systems if people don't care about rankings and they are useless.

I agree that various ranking methodologies employed are flawed and that was one of the point. The HS rankings are flawed because they are primarily based on number of AP classes taken by each student regardless of the scores and they disregard post-AP courses entirely.

Congratulations to that student PP. no matter what school you are at, no student gets into Harvard without working hard. Good for them!

Anonymous wrote:if you really don't care about the rankings or the reputation of the schools, you should send your kids to DCPS as long as your kids take their challenging AP classes at the DCPS school and be challenged.

Let us know how that works out.

My kids go to FCPS schools and are in the IB program. I never said I didn't care about the reputations or qualities of schools. But again, I think it's pretty difficult to go wrong in FCPS. And as a journalist who has worked at some of the publications that do these rankings, I realize their myriad flaws and don't really buy into them for making high school decisions. Numbers can tell you all sorts of things, but what they won't tell you about is individual achievement. I know a senior from an FCPS school posters here would scoff at who got into Harvard, early decision, on October 31.

Anonymous wrote:if you really don't care about the rankings or the reputation of the schools, you should send your kids to DCPS as long as your kids take their challenging AP classes at the DCPS school and be challenged.

Let us know how that works out.

Maybe you need to take a lesson in constructing a sentence. My kid's DCPS teacher would tear that run-on gibberish to pieces.

if you really don't care about the rankings or the reputation of the schools, you should send your kids to DCPS as long as your kids take their challenging AP classes at the DCPS school and be challenged.

Let us know how that works out.

Again, who cares about the rankings? The better question is are your kids being challenged in high school? That can happen at TJ, schools in Texas or most other high schools in the area.

Anonymous wrote:
This shows that TJ is the best high school in the country not a school where students take bunch of easy AP classes like those schools ranked highly by USNW.

Those schools do not even offer Post-AP classes like Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Computing, Quantitative Physics, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Complex Analysis etc.

Considering the resources available to TJ being here in the seat of the defense industry how is this in any way surprising? Nice that the kids have the opportunity if they're interested, but a lot of great educating going on all over the country. If you're sitting around worrying about high school rankings, you're missing the point.

There are defense/space industries located in Texas where the other highly ranked high schools are located and there is a well established space/technology community in California as well not to mention other areas. DC area is not the only area with defense/science community (In fact, other areas may have more advanced/developed aerospace industries than the DC area) and it is not given and certainly not expected that high school students located near a scientific community will design and build a satellite to be launched into space. It is an accomplishment that should not be diminished.

The PP probably was referring to the Texas high schools which are ranked higher than TJ by USN&W primarily based on the number of AP courses taken by each student regardless of the passage rate or the exam scores.

Anonymous wrote:This shows that TJ is the best high school in the country not a school where students take bunch of easy AP classes like those schools ranked highly by USNW.

Those schools do not even offer Post-AP classes like Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Computing, Quantitative Physics, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Complex Analysis etc.

Considering the resources available to TJ being here in the seat of the defense industry how is this in any way surprising? Nice that the kids have the opportunity if they're interested, but a lot of great educating going on all over the country. If you're sitting around worrying about high school rankings, you're missing the point.

This shows that TJ is the best high school in the country not a school where students take bunch of easy AP classes like those schools ranked highly by USNW.

Those schools do not even offer Post-AP classes like Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Computing, Quantitative Physics, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Complex Analysis etc.

Wow! How cool!

That is great! Good job TJ.

Awesome

First satellite built by high school students called TJ3Sat will be launched November 19 by NASA.

http://www.wtop.com/41/3493932/Fairfax-County-school-to-launch-student-built-satellite-to-space