Anonymous
01/29/2026 20:43
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.
I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.
Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.
The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.
The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.
Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.
So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?
Almost none of the kids that actually got accepted had less than a 3.9 GPA. The rigor at TJ is no joke, their curriculum is different. Your child is very likely to encounter their first B at TJ. And Cs are not rare.
Anonymous
01/29/2026 18:18
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.
I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.
Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.
The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.
The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.
Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.
So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?
Current freshman mom here, my son came from a traditional “feeder”, all As, AAP/Algebra II honors in 8th and he seriously struggled the first grading period due to a lack of knowing how to study. He’s turned it around and has all As/A-s and one B+ (the retake isn’t until the next grading period, but that grade should go up to an A-).
A 3.5 GPA in 7th grade taking honors 7th grade math and 3 other honors courses (unless young scholars, then only 2 other honors courses are required) is fairly easy with the FCPS retake policy. A lot of students start struggling with Honors Algebra I in 8th grade. TJ admits based on 7th grade and 8th grade first quarter grades. An admitted student could end up with a C or D in Algebra I in 8th by the end of the year and TJ wouldn’t know or rescind their admittance. A 3.5 would be half As and half Bs in middle school, not super impressive.
If FCPS cared about TJ being a good fit for students they would at least require their GPA at the end of 8th grade to stay a 3.5 or better and require pass advanced for the math SOL. Even 3.5 is too low, they should really raise the GPA to 3.75 or higher.
Anonymous
01/29/2026 16:15
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.
I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.
Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.
The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.
The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.
Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.
So this is something I don’t quite understand. These kids applied with an over 3.5 GPA but can’t keep up at HS. Is the TJ curriculum more difficult than what the state mandates at other FCPS high schools? Or is it because they are graded on a curve?
Anonymous
01/29/2026 15:41
Subject: TJHSST Exam
If you really want to understand on how a good deed can be taken too far you need to listen to "I ate myself into a plural by Gabriel Iglesias"
Anonymous
01/29/2026 14:51
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.
I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.
Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.
The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.
The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.
Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.
+1
You're not doing anybody any favors by admitting unprepared kids. It hurts them and it hurts the kids that could have benefitted from attending TJ.
All it achieves is a top line diversity so that people can pretend that there isn't a racial performance GAP (or at least a smaller racial performance gap) in FCPS.
Anonymous
01/29/2026 14:48
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
My kid got all of it wrong
Same here. My DS is an excellent writer but got the math question wrong. He somehow forgot there were 60 minutes in an hour and did the calculation with percentages and ended up writing the answer as if there were 100 minutes in an hour.
Anonymous
01/29/2026 12:33
Subject: TJHSST Exam
100% agree with the previous post.
Anonymous
01/27/2026 14:34
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
About 60-70% of 500 students came from about 30-40% of 26 middle schools.
I'm here for the debate because everyone that supports this admissions process is more interested in virtue signalling than helping anyone.
Several middle schools frequently sent zero students. Those schools were now had 7-9 spots reserved and frequently had trouble filling those spots.
Any eligible student applying from these schools were virtually guaranteed admission.
This led to a high number of freshman failures to launch.
The old principal actively tried to keep kids from returning to their base school. The new principal just send them back if they cannot maintain a 3.0, which leads to a purge at the end of freshman year.
After the purge at the end of freshman year, a lot of those severely underrepresented middle schools go back to being severely underrepresented and the froshmores tend to come from the usual suspects.
The kids that were sent back were probably kids that never belonged there to begin with. Their high school career has been negatively impacted by going to Tj and if we had an entrance exam, we would have known that they were not qualified but perhaps some other kid at their school might be.
Bonitatibus just wouldn't give up on her fiction. She assumed that every failing kid at TJ could be successful with enough scaffolding and that simply isn't true. Most kids don't have the horsepower to get up that hill with all the scaffolding in the world. And some of them stuck it out at TJ for 4 years with a sub 3.0 GPA and are going to schools like NOVA and Radford. If they had stayed at their base school, they could have gone to VT or WM or UVA.
Anonymous
01/27/2026 14:18
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
That’s my kid. He got the simplest part incorrect, (simple variables) and another part, I don’t really remember but it was simple. The rest of it he got correct. Profile was; 3.92 or 3.94 GPA (A- in algebra HN for full year, and A- in Geo HN in first semester) No experience factors, and he went to Carson. SPS was probably really really good.
Does your kid go to TJ? Or is this from this year?
Attends TJ
Anonymous
01/27/2026 14:13
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
That’s my kid. He got the simplest part incorrect, (simple variables) and another part, I don’t really remember but it was simple. The rest of it he got correct. Profile was; 3.92 or 3.94 GPA (A- in algebra HN for full year, and A- in Geo HN in first semester) No experience factors, and he went to Carson. SPS was probably really really good.
Does your kid go to TJ? Or is this from this year?
Anonymous
01/27/2026 09:50
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
That’s my kid. He got the simplest part incorrect, (simple variables) and another part, I don’t really remember but it was simple. The rest of it he got correct. Profile was; 3.92 or 3.94 GPA (A- in algebra HN for full year, and A- in Geo HN in first semester) No experience factors, and he went to Carson. SPS was probably really really good.
Anonymous
01/27/2026 09:26
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
Yeah -- my kid did horribly on the PSE... Got a single variable equation wrong and we were sure he wouldn't get in... His profile was perfect otherwise. 4.0, SpED, great SPS prompts, and did a good job explaining the PSE - but got it 2/3rd wrong, running out of time for the last part of the PSE. He did get in from one of the most competitive middle schools, and is a fresher now with most As and some Bs.
Anonymous
01/26/2026 23:24
Subject: TJHSST Exam
^^^ meant to add: prior to the admissions changes, there were a few middle schools from whom not single student qualified for admission each year.
Anonymous
01/26/2026 23:22
Subject: TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Aren't GPA's just cutoffs and are not considered in final selection?
I haven’t seen anything to this effect in writing. There is SPS but also quotas per school.
It is not a quota, there are seats set aside for every MS. Some of the MS don’t have enough applicants to fill those seats nd the empty seats go into the general pool. Some schools will end up with far more then the 1.5% guarantee.
Correct.
TJ parent here (and I’m not here to debate).
The 1.5% set-aside for each middle school had the intended effect of TJ making offers to every MS in FCPS, while also reducing the total number of offers to the traditional 3 or 4 MS who, prior to the change, accounted for up to twice as many offers.
For example, Longfellow MS in McLean used to send approximately 80 students to TJ each year.
Due to the 1.5 cap, Longfellow offers have fallen to 30 to 40 each year.
Anonymous
01/26/2026 16:20
Subject: Re:TJHSST Exam
Anonymous wrote:TJ parents - Do you have a kid that got 2/3 of the math problem wrong?
That happened to my kid this year