Anonymous
09/04/2016 18:10
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.
You're not thinking picture. A TJ kid in the middle of his h.s. class will easily be in the top 10% of his class at V-Tech.
That's a truly stupid statement. I am guessing you didn't go to college or (at least) you didn't go to college in the US. Any advantage a TJ kid has is "gone" by the end of first semester. If you don't work, you can't keep up in college. It doesn't matter which HS you attended.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 17:57
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.
You're not thinking picture. A TJ kid in the middle of his h.s. class will easily be in the top 10% of his class at V-Tech.
I call it bull sh*t.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 17:54
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.
Interesting point.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 16:57
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.
You're not thinking picture. A TJ kid in the middle of his h.s. class will easily be in the top 10% of his class at V-Tech.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 16:16
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
It's a lot of work but colleges only admit a certain number of students per school, no matter how good the school, so if you end up in the bottom half of TJ you are worse off than shining at your average high school or going to a private where not everyone is a stem superstar.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 15:44
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Nailed it. Impossible to explain to outsiders because folks don't know what they don't know. On a smaller level it's the great public vs great private debate. Parents who've never experienced a great private will talk until they're blue in the face about what a waste of money it is. How many folks understand boarding schools? It's sub 1% of the population, even around privileged D.C. Things outside of your scope are outside of your scope.
I'm originally from Michigan - we had a magnet called International Academy which is #9 US News (TJHS is #5 US News). There's no prestige - it was a place for grubby swots who generally went to good colleges and became engineers and MDs. The elite all sent their kids to local day schools like Cranbrook or Detroit Country Day.
I disagree. Didn't "mail it". We've heard from successful adults who have said their BS experience had good and bad. And we heard from public school folks who rocked. So the generalization doesn't hold across the board. If the top schools you are speaking, Exeter alums withdrew funding because of repeated mishandling of sexual abuse/sexual harassment cases (plural). Groton has a cocaine ring run by the students in cahoots with a prof. St Paul just had a student rape another student. And so forth and so on, and so forth and so on.
Yes, one can feel they are in like company with people who have had the same experience, but to suggest that no one but the last two posters know and everyone else is clueless shows what insularity and cluelessness you last 2 posters harbor. All prep schools have their benefits, as do magnet schools, as do religious schools. But one is not better, and studies have shown that the value of the connections doesn't last more that 3 to 4 years. At that point, it is put up or shut up based on one's own performance.
You no doubt for a good education. No doubt. As did many people on this thread. But the fact that one has not heard of a school is no indication of whether they got a good education. Am I supposed to think the only ones with good educations came from schools of which I have heard? Ridiculous.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 15:27
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Explain please. Not enough info.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 07:11
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:I went to one of the BS mentioned here. I loved it, and it continues to feel like home to me when I visit. I was a FA kid, so not by any means the old money 1% club. We're at that level (at least wealth-wise) now, and it's probably not in small part as a result of skills I developed and people I met at that early age. Not really a comparison vis a vis TJ (since I'd never heard of it before moving here), but just my experience. I do think the point a PP raised above is very true and, while subtle, very important. BS kids at Harvard or Yale are on a different footing from public school kids. There were around 25 kids from my senior class that were also in my class at Yale, and I had a natural fluency them and with other kids from similar environs that ends up being important in all sorts of ways that you can't really appreciate from the outside (though I was probably more sensitive to them being an "outsider" on the inside).
Anyway, this thread is unfortunate. Class differences are (understandably) very frustrating to those on the outside looking in. But it sounds like we are talking about a very small, elite universe of highly capable kids (whether BS or TJ) who are all going to do just fine.
Nailed it. Impossible to explain to outsiders because folks don't know what they don't know. On a smaller level it's the great public vs great private debate. Parents who've never experienced a great private will talk until they're blue in the face about what a waste of money it is. How many folks understand boarding schools? It's sub 1% of the population, even around privileged D.C. Things outside of your scope are outside of your scope.
I'm originally from Michigan - we had a magnet called International Academy which is #9 US News (TJHS is #5 US News). There's no prestige - it was a place for grubby swots who generally went to good colleges and became engineers and MDs. The elite all sent their kids to local day schools like Cranbrook or Detroit Country Day.
Anonymous
09/04/2016 06:07
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
TJ is a special format of hell for the bottom half of the class
Anonymous
09/04/2016 05:53
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:You can buy yourself a boarding school education (they love the rich donors), but you cannot buy yourself a TJ education. Everyone knows that. Your son will be respected for coming out of TJ...people will respect the vast wealth his parents must have amassed to get him into that great BS
PP I have never met such a person... Do people like that really exist... at TJ? Does any employer or graduate school care if someone went to a magnet school? Does TJ have a strong alumni association that graduates participate in for life?
This will sound ridiculous, but in my experience, yes. I keep my TJ graduation on my LinkedIn page and it's contributed to at least one job offer. People are really impressed by it.
...but you never left the Virginia/DC area, right?
Putting your high school on LinkedIn is TOTALLY a thing now. Especially since LinkedIn has been around for 10 years, so kids who create their page while in college put it and never take it off. In my opinion it acts as a signal that you're "clubbable" or a "fit" - which is huge is finance/consulting.
Some finance/consulting jobs do want to know your SAT scores - I'm not kidding. For the right job, having that Andover or Exeter credential will be seen as a plus. To HR/boss in flyover country, no, probably not going to matter.
Anonymous
09/03/2016 21:49
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:You can buy yourself a boarding school education (they love the rich donors), but you cannot buy yourself a TJ education. Everyone knows that. Your son will be respected for coming out of TJ...people will respect the vast wealth his parents must have amassed to get him into that great BS
PP I have never met such a person... Do people like that really exist... at TJ? Does any employer or graduate school care if someone went to a magnet school? Does TJ have a strong alumni association that graduates participate in for life?
This will sound ridiculous, but in my experience, yes. I keep my TJ graduation on my LinkedIn page and it's contributed to at least one job offer. People are really impressed by it.
...but you never left the Virginia/DC area, right?
Anonymous
09/03/2016 20:12
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ Class of 2016 has students going to Harvard (6), MIT (13), Williams (1), Caltech (3), Harvey Mudd (1), Stanford (7), Berkeley (12), Chicago (13), Michigan (11), Brown (3), USAF (1), USCG (1), Carnegie Mellon (23), Penn (7), Yale (7), Dartmouth (4), Georgia Tech (6), Duke (8), Columbia (9), Cornell (8), Princeton (6), Olin (2), Wellesley (1), Swarthmore (3), Georgetown (5), Vanderbilt (3), Washington U. (2), Purdue (8), Rose-Hulman (2), Rennslauer (6), Rochester Tech (4). That is about 40% of the class of something like 457.
Another 1/3 go to UVA (81), W&M (32), or VA Tech (35).
Others go to places like NYU, UCLA, IU, Notre Dame, Colby, Bowdoin, VCU (6), JMU (3), George Mason (11), U of Colorado, Reed, Oregon State, Miami, USC, schools abroad, Richmond, Case Western, Penn State, GW, Syracuse, Rutgers.
A sizable number of TJ students end up at VA state universities. My kid can accomplish this from a regular/good/run-of-the-mill VA public high school. What's all the fuss?
...where they're the top of their class. HUGE gap between the top 5% at a state school and the bottom 75%.
Anonymous
09/03/2016 17:35
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
if you send your kid to a BS you are pretty clearly saying to them "raising you is not as important to me as you having the kind of career and network *i* think is important.
if that's what your family values--as opposed to actual family values--then own it.
if that's what your family values--as opposed to actual family values--then own it.
Anonymous
09/02/2016 10:16
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Teenagers should be at home for developmental reasons unless the family situation is dysfunctional. They need guidance. Support and a chance to separate in a more natural way than BS. I wNt to BS because of divorce. The social interactions with parents for most kids were not normal
+1.
If you think a teenager can substitute strangers for parents, they cannot. It is often an option when a parent cannot cope. I went to BS and few kids were well adjusted. If you havent googled 'Boardin school' and the word, drugs, scandal, sex, alcohol, you are missing out. I dont have time here to detail every shortcoming, but it is a compromise.
So what would you get in return? [CAUTION: HARSH REALITY APPROACHING] You get the opportunity to work hard, at a public university level to drown out things missing. Yes, you could also find a day school that would treat your child slavishly too (SFS). But why? Is it not enough to do it in college?
TJ is the better choice for another reason. Many boarding schools have not caught up with math and science. (I remember skipping levels on BS math). They are still focused on arts, drama, lit, etc, but have never heard of some of the math and science competitions. It's a holdover from when they were finishing schools for kids who had a silver spoon. Well, if there's no silver spoon in your family, you better opt for TJ.
Lastly, the kids coming from many top schools are winners not because the schools achieved that. They're winners because the school succeeded in culling out any child who could not be trusted to be essentially self- taught but unbalanced (Not unstable, but unbalanced). Same is true of top day schools.
So the benefit of a BS education is to trade your teen years for your college years. But life is not all about scholastic or material success. The book "Modern Madness: The Emotional Fallout of Success" was based right on Washington DC lawyers. It seems the more successful DCers become, the more their personal lives fall apart. HELLO! ANYBODY LISTENING?
This, opt for whatever is the most emotionally healthy choice for your family. Good luck.
Great post, thank you very much!
Anonymous
09/02/2016 09:49
Subject: Top Tier Boarding school vs. TJ
Anonymous wrote:Teenagers should be at home for developmental reasons unless the family situation is dysfunctional. They need guidance. Support and a chance to separate in a more natural way than BS. I wNt to BS because of divorce. The social interactions with parents for most kids were not normal
+1.
If you think a teenager can substitute strangers for parents, they cannot. It is often an option when a parent cannot cope. I went to BS and few kids were well adjusted. If you havent googled 'Boardin school' and the word, drugs, scandal, sex, alcohol, you are missing out. I dont have time here to detail every shortcoming, but it is a compromise.
So what would you get in return? [CAUTION: HARSH REALITY APPROACHING] You get the opportunity to work hard, at a public university level to drown out things missing. Yes, you could also find a day school that would treat your child slavishly too (SFS). But why? Is it not enough to do it in college?
TJ is the better choice for another reason. Many boarding schools have not caught up with math and science. (I remember skipping levels on BS math). They are still focused on arts, drama, lit, etc, but have never heard of some of the math and science competitions. It's a holdover from when they were finishing schools for kids who had a silver spoon. Well, if there's no silver spoon in your family, you better opt for TJ.
Lastly, the kids coming from many top schools are winners not because the schools achieved that. They're winners because the school succeeded in culling out any child who could not be trusted to be essentially self- taught but unbalanced (Not unstable, but unbalanced). Same is true of top day schools.
So the benefit of a BS education is to trade your teen years for your college years. But life is not all about scholastic or material success. The book "Modern Madness: The Emotional Fallout of Success" was based right on Washington DC lawyers. It seems the more successful DCers become, the more their personal lives fall apart. HELLO! ANYBODY LISTENING?
This, opt for whatever is the most emotionally healthy choice for your family. Good luck.