Anonymous wrote:Physician here-I would highly encourage your sons/daughters not to pursue medicine as a career if they want any kind of certain career future and to avoid a staggering amount of debt. With the onset of Obamacare and the ACA medicine has no future and no positive outlook-esp for specialty medicine. Hate to be the grim reaper, but these are obviously talented students that can do anything they like!

Anonymous wrote:Physician here-I would highly encourage your sons/daughters not to pursue medicine as a career if they want any kind of certain career future and to avoid a staggering amount of debt. With the onset of Obamacare and the ACA medicine has no future and no positive outlook-esp for specialty medicine. Hate to be the grim reaper, but these are obviously talented students that can do anything they like!

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Anonymous wrote:If China and India are so wonderful.....why are all their residents dying to come live here (a country founded and sustained mostly by lots of old rich white men?). A thought to ponder.

No need to ponder. It's simple. The top schools (high schools, colleges, grad schools) are easier to get into and easier to graduate in the top 10% compared to top schools in India and China and the top U.S. Universities are are more well known through out the world and have better equipments/facilities etc. No big mystery.

And then...move back to China and India with your amazing degrees b/c its so great to live there, right?

Anonymous wrote:And then...move back to China and India with your amazing degrees b/c its so great to live there, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If China and India are so wonderful.....why are all their residents dying to come live here (a country founded and sustained mostly by lots of old rich white men?). A thought to ponder.

No need to ponder. It's simple. The top schools (high schools, colleges, grad schools) are easier to get into and easier to graduate in the top 10% compared to top schools in India and China and the top U.S. Universities are are more well known through out the world and have better equipments/facilities etc. No big mystery.

Base school grads do not easily end up at the same place since they do not have 300+ acceptances to UVA and 200+ acceptances to W&M each year (in fact, those schools are safeties for almost all TJ grads), they do not have 25% of the graduating class heading off to Ivy league schools + MIT and Stanford etc.

Hmm -- maybe not all students view "Ivy league schools + MIT and Stanford etc." as the right match for them?

(Just a point to ponder.)
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Anonymous wrote:Base school grads do not easily end up at the same place since they do not have 300+ acceptances to UVA and 200+ acceptances to W&M each year (in fact, those schools are safeties for almost all TJ grads), they do not have 25% of the graduating class heading off to Ivy league schools + MIT and Stanford etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It really is a mindset and in saying this it is not intended as a value judgement.

My son went to TJ. It was a long trek for him and on top of this the rigorous academic requirements at TJ had him working some long hours especially in his junior year.

He went on to medical school and is currently doing his residency at one of the most prestigious programs in the country and will be done soon.

He says that TJ was the best thing that happened to him. He literally breezed through his undergrad. He said it was a lot easier than TJ from an academic standpoint in terms of the pressure .... and he completed his undergrad in three years!

Given where he is today, ask him whether he has any regrets about the long commute and the academic demands that TJ made on him and he would give an unqualified response that TJ was a huge help to him in getting where he is today. Could he have done it in a different academic environment? More than likely he could have. But that does not take anything away from the role TJ played in getting him to where he is today.

None of the above is meant as a brag ..... after all, I am posting anonymously. It is merely intended as a perspective on how some parents and their children view the downsides (commuting, new friends, academic pressures) of going to TJ.

Thank you for your post. But for every experience like this, there is another for someone who commuted just as long and worked just as hard, but ended up in the bottom half of their TJ class. For that kid, was being in the bottom half (or, gasp, quarter) of their TJ class worth it? Could they have graduated at the top of their base school, had a more well-rounded high school experience, and perhaps gotten into a more prestigious college than their less-than-average TJ rank earned them?

I am not surprised that your son found undergrad less challenging (and perhaps less competitive) than TJ. I don't doubt for a minute that TJ provides the most rigorous academic program in the county. But I think FCPS does a pretty good job of preparing kids for college, and the kid who opts to remain at his base school could just as easily end up at the same place as your son, with perhaps a more difficult transition to undergrad, but with a better non-academic high-school experience.

Why do you assume base schools offer better non-academic high school experience? Do you mean more sex, more partying, more drinking, more drugs, more bullying, more discrimination, more mean girls etc.? if so, yes they do provide more of those.

Base school grads do not easily end up at the same place since they do not have 300+ acceptances to UVA and 200+ acceptances to W&M each year (in fact, those schools are safeties for almost all TJ grads), they do not have 25% of the graduating class heading off to Ivy league schools + MIT and Stanford etc.