Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Our base school Colgan High in PW County is much better for Art than what we saw at TJ. Aspiring to attend TJ for art is like saying lets go to Six flags for viewing animals instead of the Zoo.

Wait Colgan high school for fine arts? Sure, I can see how they would have a better art program than the school for science and technology..

https://colganhs.pwcs.edu/index

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are in the top 25 percent of their middle school. So it's not like they wouldn't be in the top 25 percent likely at their base high school. Others can surpass them but it's not like they somehow just dropped down to the 50th percentile of their base high school very often just because of grades.

Are you serious? Do you know how many kids in FCPS don’t apply or do apply to TJ and are rejected who were in the top 25% of their 8th grade class? You cannot base how a kid will do at 17/18 on how they did at 13/14.

You actually kind of can. There is significant correlation between academic performance at 14 and academic performance at 18. Sure there are exceptions but generally speaking there is a real correlation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Our base school Colgan High in PW County is much better for Art than what we saw at TJ. Aspiring to attend TJ for art is like saying lets go to Six flags for viewing animals instead of the Zoo.

Anonymous wrote:DD was accepted and we decided not to go. TJ grade is bad and not good for college applicatoin

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Our base school Colgan High in PW County is much better for Art than what we saw at TJ. Aspiring to attend TJ for art is like saying lets go to Six flags for viewing animals instead of the Zoo.

No one goes "for the art". But showcasing the arts the students there do is a good way to help illustrate the kids aren't getting an "All STEM all the time, no normal HS stuff" experience. Whether it's visual or performing arts, there's a lot of kids that engage in a form of creative outlet at the school - it's just not WHY they went.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Our base school Colgan High in PW County is much better for Art than what we saw at TJ. Aspiring to attend TJ for art is like saying lets go to Six flags for viewing animals instead of the Zoo.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Our base school Colgan High in PW County is much better for Art than what we saw at TJ. Aspiring to attend TJ for art is like saying lets go to Six flags for viewing animals instead of the Zoo.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

We were at the open house this week and we saw the art exhibits and were pretty impressed. My wife is an artist, her whole family is into art and she thought the art on display was impressively good for high school students. I don't know how that translates into getting into schools like RISD but any of those kids on display have a good shot at it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS got accepted - Trying to decide if he should choose TJ or base school. He has been a straight A student up until now, but the general feedback we have from friends is to not go ahead with TJ. How common / uncommon are straight As in TJ. What kind of grades are we looking at for a top 20% student at TJ?

NP here. We are in the same boat- don’t know if our kid is going to be happy there. Straight As at base school. Lots of ECs. Generally a great kid.

If you watched the livestream/zoom, the perspective I am getting is that your kid needs to love science or math or art. (The art thing was interesting!) It’s not about getting straight As or going to college at this stage: it’s about making sure the kids find their passions and opportunities. There were a lot of questions about whether or not TJ will help their kids get into college. And I’m sure a lot of that was a response to threads here on DCUM.

What that tells me is that regardless of what you read here, the most important part will be going to meet with teachers, talk to counselors, and talk with your child. That this forum is not reflective of what actually is going on in the school.

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear about Ibest and the 8th period more in detail. It makes sense and I think it will help my kids realize that they understand the struggles of incoming freshmen.

We fell for this Art pitch, and now DC as a junior is sitting on Cs in every math class starting with Math1 and science classes. only classes with A are the art classes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are in the top 25 percent of their middle school. So it's not like they wouldn't be in the top 25 percent likely at their base high school. Others can surpass them but it's not like they somehow just dropped down to the 50th percentile of their base high school very often just because of grades.

Are you serious? Do you know how many kids in FCPS don’t apply or do apply to TJ and are rejected who were in the top 25% of their 8th grade class? You cannot base how a kid will do at 17/18 on how they did at 13/14.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If every other NOVA school is an “easy A,” then the college admissions offices will know that, and will place almost no weight on a GPA they recognize as meaningless. This is especially true for the VA schools, since they track our HS’s closely.

Accordingly, they will also know and appreciate TJ’s rigor / accelerated student body, and take that into account, even if there are a few Bs on a transcript.

If your child plans to attend some school on the west coast who has never heard of TJ and couldn’t even find FFX county on a map, then they might assume GPA’s from all schools should be weighted the exact same way.

Problem is not TJ rigor. Problem is colleges in VA and nearby do compare one TJ applicant to another TJ applicant. Out of 550 TJ class, the top 150 students have mostly As, and the bottom 150 students have atleast a half a dozen Cs and another dozen Bs. Most of these questions are coming out of concern what if their student is not in that top 150.

Yes this is the concern, especially since even the top student from our middle school would be compared to a student from Franklin or Kilmer or Carson or others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are in the top 25 percent of their middle school. So it's not like they wouldn't be in the top 25 percent likely at their base high school. Others can surpass them but it's not like they somehow just dropped down to the 50th percentile of their base high school very often just because of grades.

Are you serious? Do you know how many kids in FCPS don’t apply or do apply to TJ and are rejected who were in the top 25% of their 8th grade class? You cannot base how a kid will do at 17/18 on how they did at 13/14.

I don't know. The kids I saw smashing it at Mathcounts in 7th and 8th grade continued to be the top kids at TJ then at Harvard/MIT.

Interestingly, all the TJ news releases from the principal and supervisor rely on these advanced math and science student achievements, the same students that admissions limits in number under diversity quotas.

The Asian kids work, work, work all the time. Most are not fun to be around but they will go to MIT.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These kids are in the top 25 percent of their middle school. So it's not like they wouldn't be in the top 25 percent likely at their base high school. Others can surpass them but it's not like they somehow just dropped down to the 50th percentile of their base high school very often just because of grades.

Are you serious? Do you know how many kids in FCPS don’t apply or do apply to TJ and are rejected who were in the top 25% of their 8th grade class? You cannot base how a kid will do at 17/18 on how they did at 13/14.

I don't know. The kids I saw smashing it at Mathcounts in 7th and 8th grade continued to be the top kids at TJ then at Harvard/MIT.

Interestingly, all the TJ news releases from the principal and supervisor rely on these advanced math and science student achievements, the same students that admissions limits in number under diversity quotas.

The Asian kids work, work, work all the time. Most are not fun to be around but they will go to MIT.