Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This looks quite impressive to me. I went to a prep school in New England, and I remember that in my class only a small number of kids got into Harvard/Yale/Princeton...I knew more kids who graduated from TJ at my Ivy than my prep school. Everybody went to college, most to private colleges, but the fact is that admissions officers at the best schools want a diverse class and accept a very small percentage of applicants. When you apply, you are being compared to other kids from your school. This is the thing people who come to the U.S. from other countries seem to traditionally understand least about U.S. college admissions and perhaps partially the reason for the current demographics at TJ: if you have a brilliant, hardworking child, if you want to put lots of eggs into the "college admissions" basket your best bet would be to move to the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at. If they have a rough time there and manage to overcome various challenges to succeed, all the better.

Even if there's a TJ quota at, say, UVA, the well-qualified but turned-down TJ applicant to UVA will surely land at another excellent school.

The notion that you move to "the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at" in order to arbitrage admissions is more of a theoretical construct than a time-proven pathway to success. Sure, there is the occasional child prodigy who attends a poor school and ends up accepted by every Ivy, MIT and Stanford. The typical bright kid, however, will be influenced by his or her peer group, and ultimately fares better attending a school with a larger cohort of high-achieving kids. It's not just Asian immigrants with high aspirations who make decisions on that basis; it's how the vast majority of upper middle-class families behave as well.

What the #@$@ are you talking about. There are tons of FCPS students in other high schools like Oakton, Chantlilly, Mclean, Madison and Langley going to UVA, Virgina Tech, College of Willaim and Mary, and other in state colleges.. TJ is not the only path to these instate schools..

Coming to prestigous out of state schools, not many TJ students choose them, because of costs, so, unless you are a child prodigy in TJ, you wont attend those schools anyway, and eventually everyone ends in state colleges.

Anonymous wrote:38 to a welder's school like VPI is not that impressive, is it?

Anonymous wrote:38 to a welder's school like VPI is not that impressive, is it?

Anonymous wrote:38 to a welder's school like VPI is not that impressive, is it?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This looks quite impressive to me. I went to a prep school in New England, and I remember that in my class only a small number of kids got into Harvard/Yale/Princeton...I knew more kids who graduated from TJ at my Ivy than my prep school. Everybody went to college, most to private colleges, but the fact is that admissions officers at the best schools want a diverse class and accept a very small percentage of applicants. When you apply, you are being compared to other kids from your school. This is the thing people who come to the U.S. from other countries seem to traditionally understand least about U.S. college admissions and perhaps partially the reason for the current demographics at TJ: if you have a brilliant, hardworking child, if you want to put lots of eggs into the "college admissions" basket your best bet would be to move to the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at. If they have a rough time there and manage to overcome various challenges to succeed, all the better.

Even if there's a TJ quota at, say, UVA, the well-qualified but turned-down TJ applicant to UVA will surely land at another excellent school.

The notion that you move to "the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at" in order to arbitrage admissions is more of a theoretical construct than a time-proven pathway to success. Sure, there is the occasional child prodigy who attends a poor school and ends up accepted by every Ivy, MIT and Stanford. The typical bright kid, however, will be influenced by his or her peer group, and ultimately fares better attending a school with a larger cohort of high-achieving kids. It's not just Asian immigrants with high aspirations who make decisions on that basis; it's how the vast majority of upper middle-class families behave as well.

What the #@$@ are you talking about. There are tons of FCPS students in other high schools like Oakton, Chantlilly, Mclean, Madison and Langley going to UVA, Virgina Tech, College of Willaim and Mary, and other in state colleges.. TJ is not the only path to these instate schools..

Coming to prestigous out of state schools, not many TJ students choose them, because of costs, so, unless you are a child prodigy in TJ, you wont attend those schools anyway, and eventually everyone ends in state colleges.

Anonymous wrote:PP 17:50, I don't think you quite grasp the advantages you had. I went to a horrible public high school in a bad school district. Out of a class of 800, maybe 6 of us went to selective colleges. I was very bright and hardworking, yet I was at a disadvantage in college because most of the students there had multiple AP credits from the best public school systems and/or came from excellent prep schools.

Anonymous wrote:I agree that TJ is not the best place to go to get into a great college - it's because a kid wants a specific STEM experience in high school. My DS (TJ student) and I are certain that his college acceptances will be roughly the same whether at his base school or at TJ. He went because he wanted that environment. Getting into a highly selective college is like winning the lottery - no matter where you go to high school - it is just not that likely to happen and sets kids up for failure if it is a stated goal. Yet, there are hundreds of life-changing colleges that have reasonable acceptance rates. My DS will limey be headed to one of those, like I went to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This looks quite impressive to me. I went to a prep school in New England, and I remember that in my class only a small number of kids got into Harvard/Yale/Princeton...I knew more kids who graduated from TJ at my Ivy than my prep school. Everybody went to college, most to private colleges, but the fact is that admissions officers at the best schools want a diverse class and accept a very small percentage of applicants. When you apply, you are being compared to other kids from your school. This is the thing people who come to the U.S. from other countries seem to traditionally understand least about U.S. college admissions and perhaps partially the reason for the current demographics at TJ: if you have a brilliant, hardworking child, if you want to put lots of eggs into the "college admissions" basket your best bet would be to move to the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at. If they have a rough time there and manage to overcome various challenges to succeed, all the better.

Even if there's a TJ quota at, say, UVA, the well-qualified but turned-down TJ applicant to UVA will surely land at another excellent school.

The notion that you move to "the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at" in order to arbitrage admissions is more of a theoretical construct than a time-proven pathway to success. Sure, there is the occasional child prodigy who attends a poor school and ends up accepted by every Ivy, MIT and Stanford. The typical bright kid, however, will be influenced by his or her peer group, and ultimately fares better attending a school with a larger cohort of high-achieving kids. It's not just Asian immigrants with high aspirations who make decisions on that basis; it's how the vast majority of upper middle-class families behave as well.

Anonymous wrote:This looks quite impressive to me. I went to a prep school in New England, and I remember that in my class only a small number of kids got into Harvard/Yale/Princeton...I knew more kids who graduated from TJ at my Ivy than my prep school. Everybody went to college, most to private colleges, but the fact is that admissions officers at the best schools want a diverse class and accept a very small percentage of applicants. When you apply, you are being compared to other kids from your school. This is the thing people who come to the U.S. from other countries seem to traditionally understand least about U.S. college admissions and perhaps partially the reason for the current demographics at TJ: if you have a brilliant, hardworking child, if you want to put lots of eggs into the "college admissions" basket your best bet would be to move to the lowest performing, poorest school district you can trust your child to succeed at. If they have a rough time there and manage to overcome various challenges to succeed, all the better.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks to me like about 20% of TJ students go to schools outside the top 25 national universities or top 25 liberal arts schools every year. Last year about 8% went to Ivies, which was a significant drop from the Class of 2014, about 13% of which went on to Ivies.

TJ students are increasingly less interested in Ivy schools except maybe Princeton and Cornell (schools with decent STEM programs) and more interested in Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Michigan, CMU... TJ is a STEM magnet school after all.