Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

For those obsessed with T20 rankings, Purdue, Penn State, Maryland, and Michigan are all top 20 for engineering, with Purdue and Michigan considered among the best engineering schools in the country, even when compared to the Ivies, CMU, and JHU. It's likely that some STEM kids from TJ consider Purdue their equivalent of Harvard, especially when factoring in OOS costs.

What I find interesting is the absence of VT from this list. Students from my kid's NOVA public school often apply to Purdue and Penn State as alternatives to VT for engineering, as these schools are actually easier admits for NOVA kids applying OOS than VT is for in-state applicants. Purdue and Penn State were certainly my kid's backup options if rejected from VT.

LOLOL engineering “rankings” are crap

I agree - rankings are crap. But I can only assume that TJ students and their parents don't share that view. Take Purdue, for example. It's generally considered a top engineering school and currently ranks eighth for undergraduate and fifth for graduate engineering programs in the U.S. As one of the previous posters mentioned, it has had the highest number of Instagram admit posts for two years, with 19 admits in one year alone.

So either TJ kids just love the flat cornfields of rural Indiana and the cultural hub that is West Lafayette, or they're attending Purdue because of its top engineering and other STEM rankings. I think the latter is true.

I think Purdue is very affordable OOS. That probably has something to do with it.

Nah, it's all about the ranking.

Does anyone know why so few choose (or are accepted to?) GA Tech Engineering or CS? Is it mainly/partially because they don't usually give aid to OOS students and/or they started to limit CS majors?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

For those obsessed with T20 rankings, Purdue, Penn State, Maryland, and Michigan are all top 20 for engineering, with Purdue and Michigan considered among the best engineering schools in the country, even when compared to the Ivies, CMU, and JHU. It's likely that some STEM kids from TJ consider Purdue their equivalent of Harvard, especially when factoring in OOS costs.

What I find interesting is the absence of VT from this list. Students from my kid's NOVA public school often apply to Purdue and Penn State as alternatives to VT for engineering, as these schools are actually easier admits for NOVA kids applying OOS than VT is for in-state applicants. Purdue and Penn State were certainly my kid's backup options if rejected from VT.

We are TJ parents. Purdue and michigan and GT are not considered top for engineering or CS for the TOP students at TJ. They want Mit,Stanford ivies with true engineering (Penn, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and yes Harvard too), or UCB or JHU: multiple apply to these schools every year. Duke for engineering is just under that group, same with Northwestern. Other than ED, the top students pick ivy or MIT engineering over Duke and NW. UCB EECS is picked over ivies though. Harvard not as applied to as much as the other ivies for Engineering, but definitely gets top stem applicants especially Premed and CS. Top TJ students often have MIT and at least 3-4 ivies and stanford on the list. Penn has a couple of small-cohort engineering dual degree programs (jerome fisher and vagelos) and lately these are highly desired.
If you are not a TJ parent it is hard to understand the goals of the top kids. The ones interested in engineering often have dreams of starting a tech company or pursuing research from day 1 on campus: MIT Stanford and ivies particularly Penn and Harvard are ideal places for this.

TJ is no different than a half dozen bay area public high schools. We all know the goals and aspirations to the parents which is top engineering combined with a 'prestige school'.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

For those obsessed with T20 rankings, Purdue, Penn State, Maryland, and Michigan are all top 20 for engineering, with Purdue and Michigan considered among the best engineering schools in the country, even when compared to the Ivies, CMU, and JHU. It's likely that some STEM kids from TJ consider Purdue their equivalent of Harvard, especially when factoring in OOS costs.

What I find interesting is the absence of VT from this list. Students from my kid's NOVA public school often apply to Purdue and Penn State as alternatives to VT for engineering, as these schools are actually easier admits for NOVA kids applying OOS than VT is for in-state applicants. Purdue and Penn State were certainly my kid's backup options if rejected from VT.

LOLOL engineering “rankings” are crap

I agree - rankings are crap. But I can only assume that TJ students and their parents don't share that view. Take Purdue, for example. It's generally considered a top engineering school and currently ranks eighth for undergraduate and fifth for graduate engineering programs in the U.S. As one of the previous posters mentioned, it has had the highest number of Instagram admit posts for two years, with 19 admits in one year alone.

So either TJ kids just love the flat cornfields of rural Indiana and the cultural hub that is West Lafayette, or they're attending Purdue because of its top engineering and other STEM rankings. I think the latter is true.

I think Purdue is very affordable OOS. That probably has something to do with it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

For those obsessed with T20 rankings, Purdue, Penn State, Maryland, and Michigan are all top 20 for engineering, with Purdue and Michigan considered among the best engineering schools in the country, even when compared to the Ivies, CMU, and JHU. It's likely that some STEM kids from TJ consider Purdue their equivalent of Harvard, especially when factoring in OOS costs.

What I find interesting is the absence of VT from this list. Students from my kid's NOVA public school often apply to Purdue and Penn State as alternatives to VT for engineering, as these schools are actually easier admits for NOVA kids applying OOS than VT is for in-state applicants. Purdue and Penn State were certainly my kid's backup options if rejected from VT.

LOLOL engineering “rankings” are crap

I agree - rankings are crap. But I can only assume that TJ students and their parents don't share that view. Take Purdue, for example. It's generally considered a top engineering school and currently ranks eighth for undergraduate and fifth for graduate engineering programs in the U.S. As one of the previous posters mentioned, it has had the highest number of Instagram admit posts for two years, with 19 admits in one year alone.

So either TJ kids just love the flat cornfields of rural Indiana and the cultural hub that is West Lafayette, or they're attending Purdue because of its top engineering and other STEM rankings. I think the latter is true.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

For those obsessed with T20 rankings, Purdue, Penn State, Maryland, and Michigan are all top 20 for engineering, with Purdue and Michigan considered among the best engineering schools in the country, even when compared to the Ivies, CMU, and JHU. It's likely that some STEM kids from TJ consider Purdue their equivalent of Harvard, especially when factoring in OOS costs.

What I find interesting is the absence of VT from this list. Students from my kid's NOVA public school often apply to Purdue and Penn State as alternatives to VT for engineering, as these schools are actually easier admits for NOVA kids applying OOS than VT is for in-state applicants. Purdue and Penn State were certainly my kid's backup options if rejected from VT.

LOLOL engineering “rankings” are crap

Anonymous wrote:There are 501 seniors, so the Instagram account — with only 140 posts so far — is going to be a mostly incomplete dataset. But the top destinations (so far) from the (very incomplete) Instagram account:
Purdue - 12
UVA - 8
William & Mary - 7
Penn State - 7
U Maryland - 6
U Michigan - 5

Agreed with the poster above — don't expect a HYPSM / T20 university if your kid goes to TJ.

Not impressive. Maybe TJ isn't worth the hype.

Anonymous wrote:There are not as many strong TJ students in 2025 as in 2024. But college admissions officers don't care about merit as much as they did before. You can see that female SJWs are rewarded but Asian male engineers are not.

At just about every single school, engineering is the hardest major to get into. Regardless of who’s doing the applying, any engineer worth their salt should be able to do the math to show that rejection is the default outcome for all applicants. If that’s news to you, you’ve got some catching up to do.

There are not as many strong TJ students in 2025 as in 2024. But college admissions officers don't care about merit as much as they did before. You can see that female SJWs are rewarded but Asian male engineers are not.

TJ class of 2025: 7 admits to Harvard and all 7 will be attending.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top CS TJ students are looking for CMU.

As hard and as insane as this sounds, CMU is a backup even for CS for the top kids. CMU has been pretty generous in this regard.

Im sorry but what does that mean?

The top TJ students are having an easier time getting admission to CMU.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top CS TJ students are looking for CMU.

As hard and as insane as this sounds, CMU is a backup even for CS for the top kids. CMU has been pretty generous in this regard.

Im sorry but what does that mean?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The senior edition has destinations of about 70% of graduates.

The other 30% keep it private.

If your goal is HYPSM, then please have your child stay at his or her base school; it will be easier from there.

But if your child loves STEM and truly wants to attend, then TJ is the right choice.

Hypsm is probably a bit easier from TJ but still very very hard

UVA is harder from TJ

Anonymous wrote:Top CS TJ students are looking for CMU.

As hard and as insane as this sounds, CMU is a backup even for CS for the top kids. CMU has been pretty generous in this regard.

Anonymous wrote:If you are not a TJ parent it is hard to understand the goals of the top kids.

Of course it's not hard to understand the goals of the top kids. They're the same goals as hundreds of thousands of top students all across the country. And TJ students do well, but nobody should go to TJ with the expectation that they'll end up at the schools you laid out.

From the 2023 class's senior issue (which someone upthread noted covers about 70% of the class), maybe 10% of the class goes to one of MIT (3), Stanford (1), Penn (5), Princeton (4), Columbia (1), Cornell (7), Harvard (5), UCB (3), JHU (4), CMU (9). That's a total of 42. Whereas 56 went to either Maryland (29), Purdue (17), or Michigan (10). A random TJ student is 33% more likely to end up at one of those three than the Ivy+ / T20 schools. And just looking at the top in-states — UVA (44), W&M (24), or VT (23) (total: 91) — the odds are >2x that a student will end up at a Virginia public than the schools above. Odds are better for Chicago (14) or Georgetown (8), but even adding those two together is still fewer students than to any one of the in-state flagships.

None of that is intended to take away from TJ, or the students who go there. Every one of those schools above is solid, and every student can do great things there. The point really is for parents to adjust their expectations, and to understand that there are a number of great paths after TJ.