Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After seeing mentioned here I looked at 2 of the TJ prep companies. Both Curie and TJ Test Prep are about $2k for 6-8 week class (with a self-paced option for about $700). Wow! To read here the prep companies did increase acceptance chances when was old admission standards, but the prep classes still helpful now?

For many kids, test prep very likely increases admissions chances to TJ.

Is the ROI favorable ? Not sure, and likely varies for each student or family.

$2K sounds very high unless you are getting a large one on one tutoring package, the classes seem to be between $900 to $1600.
I think what you see at Curie is an afterschool program combined with a test prep.
Under the old system, prepping for ther SHSAT was a bit like taking the prepping for the SAT.
Understanding the format and types of questions along with things like process of elimination and how the test was scored were going to help.
A motivated student can do it with test prep books but having someone hold your hand makes it easier to get through the material.

Under the new system test prep still helps but everything is subjective so it's less predictable and more random.
Every year for the past few years, there have been a few students getting in from our middle school that raised a few eyebrows and a few kids not getting in that left us a bit confused.

The current process is essay writing.
Writing is a lot like reading comprehension, it's hard to cram but there are definitely test strategies that you can learn to improve your performance.
Mostly, I would recommend taking sample essays and focus on timing, running out of time seems to be common.
The questions are not radically different from year to year, they all basically ask a fairly easy math question (show ALL your work) and they ask you to show your interest in math/science in various way.

If you've got money to burn, then paying someone to teach your kid how to become a better writer is not the worst way to spend your money but if you're only interested in the test then I would recommend doing a bunch of sample tests and then having a class or a tutor. Most of these test prep places will sell tutor time in $500 or $1000 increments. It's not rocket science so it doesn't really matter a whole lot who you get as long as they have been doing this for more than a couple of years.

YMMV

Anonymous wrote:After seeing mentioned here I looked at 2 of the TJ prep companies. Both Curie and TJ Test Prep are about $2k for 6-8 week class (with a self-paced option for about $700). Wow! To read here the prep companies did increase acceptance chances when was old admission standards, but the prep classes still helpful now?

For many kids, test prep very likely increases admissions chances to TJ.

Is the ROI favorable ? Not sure, and likely varies for each student or family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
When a huge portion of the admitted class comes from an expensive test prep company then you know something is wrong.

What 133 admits had in common was that they attend curie
What 355 of the admits had in common was that they were asian
The problem wasn't the preparation of the students that got in, the problem was the skin color of the students that got in.
If the students were less asian and more white/black/hispanic, they would not have changed the merit-based process.

It's pretty intellectually dishonest (bordering on racist) to call curie a test prep company.
They start from pre-school and continue to high school calculus.
They aren't doing this to get into TJ, they are doing this to maximize their education.

It wasn’t a “too many Asians” problem. It was a “not enough URMs, ED, EL, SN” problem.

If they just wanted to cut down on the # of Asian students they wouldn’t have expanded the class size. But they added the seats to ADD the less-represented groups.

Too many asians = too few of everyone else.
You are elevating race above merit and that is racist

No. It’s providing this public resource to a wider community. Not just the rich kids from feeder schools.

Exactly! Students from a few wealthy schools were hoarding these opportunities. The changes made this available to all FCPS students not just those who could afford the test.

Sure, if by a few wealthy schools you mean 12 out of 29 schools providing 70% of the students to TJ with several of those school having below average family incomes.
What you really mean is that you have no confidence that you can achieve your racial goals with any sort of merit based system so you replaced merit with a much more random process in the hopes of getting an incoming class that looks like a cross section of the applicant pool.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For many years, people have been appalled at how a public school magnet excluded so many groups in the community. The class of 2024 had less than 1% (0.6%) of the students from low-income families. Very little representation from URMs and MSs with many low-income families. TJ was mostly filled with kids from affluent "feeder" middle schools.

FCPS has changed the TJ admissions process multiple times over the years to address systemic inequalities.
https://www.fcag.org/tjadmissions.shtml

Expensive test prep has also been an ongoing issue that exacerbated the lack of representation from certain MSs and groups.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“Is it gonna once again advantage those kids whose parents can pay to sign them up for special prep camps to now be prepping for science testing as well?” [school board member] Megan McLaughlin asked when presented with the new plan.

Admissions director Jeremy Shughart doesn’t think so. The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

"McLaughlin, like other board members, still worries about Washington’s booming test-prep industry. Modeled on Korean “cram” schools, classes meet after school, on weekends, and throughout the summer. “They’ve become professionals at that process of getting into TJ,” says Josh Silverman, a private tutor in the area."


Paying to have access to previous test questions on an NDA-protected test provides an unfair advantage to wealthy kids in admissions for this public school program.

When a huge portion of the admitted class comes from an expensive test prep company then you know something is wrong.

BINGO!

If you're talking about curie, then curie isn't test prep.
Noone does test prep for a high school entrance exam in K-6 and then keep doing it in 9-12.
They do offer a $300 test prep course to current students but there is nothing magical about their test prep that differentiates them from other test prep courses.
What differentiates curie students is the YEARS of extra study.
Curie may have a higher pass rate than the general population but it does not approach 100%. It is a lot closer to 25%.
The overwhelming majority of what makes curie students more qualified is the years and years of studying before they have a single test prep class.

You are effectively wondering why studying leads to better academic results.

I'd agree that studying a purchased copy of the test leads to an unfair outcome.

Gee, that seems newsworthy.
Do you have any links to news reports of this test buying or are you just assuming that the only way someone can do better than your kid is by cheating?

Yes, a half-dozen links to various stories that covered this were posted here just a few weeks ago. It would be best if you looked it up. There was a Facebook group and dozens of first-hand accounts that corroborate this.

And of course you're lying.
There were zero links to news stories.
Noone studied a purchased copy of the test.
At this point I am wondering if you are a false flag trying to make the your side of the argument seem both dishonest and stupid.

A petty (but true) complaint could be that quant q relied on noone knowing the types of questions or format of the test to be effective.
These were both things you could find in a $20 test prep book available on amazon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
When a huge portion of the admitted class comes from an expensive test prep company then you know something is wrong.

What 133 admits had in common was that they attend curie
What 355 of the admits had in common was that they were asian
The problem wasn't the preparation of the students that got in, the problem was the skin color of the students that got in.
If the students were less asian and more white/black/hispanic, they would not have changed the merit-based process.

It's pretty intellectually dishonest (bordering on racist) to call curie a test prep company.
They start from pre-school and continue to high school calculus.
They aren't doing this to get into TJ, they are doing this to maximize their education.

It wasn’t a “too many Asians” problem. It was a “not enough URMs, ED, EL, SN” problem.

If they just wanted to cut down on the # of Asian students they wouldn’t have expanded the class size. But they added the seats to ADD the less-represented groups.

Too many asians = too few of everyone else.
You are elevating race above merit and that is racist

No. It’s providing this public resource to a wider community. Not just the rich kids from feeder schools.

All the email and text traffic between the FCPS board members made it clear that this was predominantly about race.
That was thte wider community you are talking about.

#fakenews

Sounds like something Trump would say.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
When a huge portion of the admitted class comes from an expensive test prep company then you know something is wrong.

What 133 admits had in common was that they attend curie
What 355 of the admits had in common was that they were asian
The problem wasn't the preparation of the students that got in, the problem was the skin color of the students that got in.
If the students were less asian and more white/black/hispanic, they would not have changed the merit-based process.

It's pretty intellectually dishonest (bordering on racist) to call curie a test prep company.
They start from pre-school and continue to high school calculus.
They aren't doing this to get into TJ, they are doing this to maximize their education.

It wasn’t a “too many Asians” problem. It was a “not enough URMs, ED, EL, SN” problem.

If they just wanted to cut down on the # of Asian students they wouldn’t have expanded the class size. But they added the seats to ADD the less-represented groups.

Too many asians = too few of everyone else.
You are elevating race above merit and that is racist

No. It’s providing this public resource to a wider community. Not just the rich kids from feeder schools.

TJ isn't a public resource for the wider community.
TJ a targetted resource for the smartest kids.
Just like varsity teams are a targetted resource for the most athletic kids.

If you are not whip smart, then you shouldn't go to TJ.
Right now Tj is accepting a lot of kids that are not particularly smart in an effort to achieve racial diversity.