<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>Hope everyone is having a good winter.</p>
<p>We live in Northern Virginia, in the DC metro area. My son goes to Fairfax County (FCPS) middle school. I am interested in finding out if there are any chances for students going to FCPS high schools, other than Thomas Jefferson (TJ), to get into Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Thanks and Regards</p>
<p>Plenty of chances. Not in FFX but a bordering county and D’s HS had at least 10 into Ivys. Northern Virginia schools are very good and colleges know this - however you do have to stand on top of the heap or just stand out to have a good shot - not just GPA or test scores but ECs and be an individual. Heck, at D’s HS there were 60 students with over a 4.0 out of a class of 350 - and this is not an easy school where grades were just handed out.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information, shillyshally.</p>
<p>Could you please let me know what ECs would help to get in?</p>
<p>Just looking for some guidance.</p>
<p>Best regards</p>
<p>Why is your goal “Ivies”? What about those particular 8 colleges do you think would be a better fit for your child? They are merely 8 of the top schools in the country, but not the only ones. I think you need to step back and think about what does your child want and what would be the best fit / place for your child, instead of trying to steer your child towards EC’s that you think will get him into a particular school. It feels like you’re trying to shoehorn a kid into Ivies for the name as opposed to exploring what schools might be right for your child.</p>
<p>As to “the EC’s that will help to get in” - take this from a parent with two kids just accepted into a top 5 LAC and a top 20 uni – the EC’s that got them in were the EC’s that they had genuine organic interest and passion for, not ones that were selected to impress admissions committees.</p>
<p>The best ECs are the ones the kids love. Period. For some, that’s research. For others, it’s digging in the dirt. For yet others, it’s cooking. </p>
<p>Let them pursue their interests, wherever they lead. Colleges aren’t looking for packaged applicants – they want genuine people with real interests. </p>
<p>I know the pressure in FCPS is intense (I live on the other side of the river). Let your kids blossom.</p>
<p>D1 (HS class of 2010) attended a non-TJ FCPS HS. Students from her class are now at Brown, Columbia, Cornell (4), Princeton (2), and Penn, as well as many other top schools. I firmly believe that D1 got at least as good an education at her HS as D2 is getting at TJ. For what it’s worth, D1 applied to 10 colleges and was accepted at all 10. She was passionate about her ECs, and I am sure that came through in interviews.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I live in NoVA and our local HS’s DO send students to Ivies as well as other top ranked colleges. </p></li>
<li><p>TJ is NOT an automatic ticket to an Ivy or to any college for that matter.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>NoVA has such good high schools that your child can get a good education without going to TJ.</p>
<p>Sounds as if you and or your child is interested in TJ. If it is your child’s choice, I wish him/her luck in the admissions process. If your child is not interested, please don’t push it.</p>
<p>I would also note that neither of my kids’ major ECs involved their schools in any way or involved the popularity contests of voting. Both were activities that were off the beaten path (volunteer / paid for one, volunteer for the other). What they were able to convey in their apps was not only their passion for these things, but what their participation said about them as people. In the case of my D, she talked about personal lessons learned as a result of doing this; in the case of my S, he talked about how he approached this activity as sort of a metaphor for what he expected his college experience to be like. </p>
<p>In fact, my D’s acceptance letter (the boilerplate one) said “And in our incoming class, we have an xx, yy, zz, aa, bb, and cc” and one of those was my daughter.</p>
<p>They didn’t even discover these interests until late junior year / early senior year. But it all fell together. It really did. Please don’t try to orchestrate just-the-right-set of EC’s.</p>
<p>I can only comment that we attended a cocktail party this weekend in which we heard the parents of a whole bunch of upper middle class kids who had dutifully learned Chinese, Swahili and Arabic, founded charities to help in the poor in Africa, played lacrosse, etc. had all been deferred at Yale and Stanford and my kids, with “lesser” EC’s, had gotten into top schools. It really re-confirmed that they look for authenticity and passion, and not just-the-right-set-of-carefully-chosen things.</p>
<p>You have kids in FCPS and you have never read the whining letters in the W. Post about how Child X slaved away at TJ for years and only got into UVA, while Child Y and Child Z who attended Non-TJ instead got into fill-in-famous-name-here-U? </p>
<p>Suggested reasons for this phenomenon include (among others) that students who would be valedictorian at Non-TJ aren’t if they are at TJ (because well, all of the students there have the potential to be valedictorians so the competition is much harder) and that fill-in-famous-name-here-Us limit the number of students that they accept from any HS. </p>
<p>TJ can be a great school for the right kid. Don’t choose it just because you think it will get you/your kid into a particular college/university. Choose it because it is the best choice for the student.</p>
<p>^^^yup. Similar results here!</p>
<p>The OP has a student in middle school. It is incredibly difficult to “predict” what a 12, 13 or 14 year old will be like at 16, 17 or 18. Just make sure you have a happy, healthy well adjusted student taking classes that are challenging and interesting to the student. If you get to pick a high school, pick one where the student will socially thrive as well as academically thrive. Let them develop their interests and come back in a few years and I’m sure there will be many parents that can offer good advice about colleges.</p>
<p>Just because your child is at TJ, it is not a guarantee for an Ivy league acceptance. I would say it is even tougher as they are competing with their class mates for the same spots. Having a non-TJ child and a TJ child, it will be interesting to see what happens when college application time rolls around and yes, he would be very happy to get into UVA as he is not even looking toward the IVY.</p>
<p>happymomof1, Interesting comment about the Washington Post. It looks like you are in Maryland. My guess is that for every 1 “whining” post from TJ parents about their kid “only” getting into UVa, there are 10 more from parents from many Virginia schools complaining that their kid was great and couldn’t get into UVa,(or William and Mary or Virginia Tech). Virginia schools are hard to beat for Virginia citizens and very desirable to many Virginia families. My older son (who would have been competitive at many other schools), was quite happy at UVa(as it sounds like MTnest’s would be happy there as well). It is very misleading to imply that all high stats kids in Virginia are focused on going to an Ivy (although I do understand that on CC many parents and kids seem quite focused on that goal).</p>
<p>OP - The important thing is that your kid picks ECs he/she enjoys. If an Ivy acceptance comes along someday and it is the right fit… great. But as you read more of these threads, you’ll see that there are lots of fine colleges, often a better fit for student than Ivy. Plus Ivies acceptance is a “lottery” for all, even those with stunning stats and ECs. </p>
<p>I asked about Robotics club at one top engineering college, since so many of the applicants seemed to do it. The college reps said, “he should do what he loves”. </p>
<p>In the activity he loved that conflicted with Robotics, son ended up getting a state award (a surprising but happy turn of events). Also he spent gobs of time with music EC instead of doing a “leadership” role to fill a gap… and music has enriched his life more than I can describe in words. The unweighted music classes dinged he GPA, but he had some impressive college acceptances anyway.</p>
<p>One of S’s classmates from Mount Vernon is now at Harvard, despite coming from the lowest-rated high school in FCPS.</p>
<p>OP, here are the Ivy League acceptances for the TJ class of 2010. The first number is the number admitted, and the second is the number who applied: </p>
<p>Brown 19/91
Columbia 12/59
Cornell 43/142
Dartmouth 15/67
Harvard 3/89
Penn 20/92
Princeton 24/159
Yale 15/84</p>
<p>Many of the admits were accepted at multiple schools. For instance, 25 of the 43 Cornell admits went elsewhere. Out of a class of over 400 students, 69 matriculated at an Ivy. </p>
<p>For UVa, the numbers are 233/324, which means the acceptance rate was just under 72%. (The year before it was under 70%.) 92 of the admits actually enrolled.</p>
<p>Guys, you’re just feeding into this by focusing on the Ivies in the first place, as though of the top schools in this country, they are the only ones who matter. Might not the OP benefit from a bit more consciousness-raising that “top schools” are a broader set?</p>
<p>My daughter graduated from TJ in June, is currently on a gap year, will start at RPI this fall.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Our general impression is that going to TJ is NOT, all other things being equal, a benefit to getting into an ivy or the other top 20 universities. Maybe not much of a harm, but not a benefit.</p></li>
<li><p>It almost certainly IS a harm in getting into UVA. But then again so is going to an FCPS base school. Better to move to rural VA to maximize your odds for UVA. TJ may be more of a harm than FCPS base schools (other than a handful)</p></li>
<li><p>TJ MAY be a benefit for those next tier privates - from rank 30 or so on down (sorry to use “rankings” but its a convenient short hand) which dont get many TJ applicants. but even then, still need to get decent grades, fill out the apps, etc. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>TJ CAN offer a very good education. It is of course quite possible to also get a great education at base schools. How much more TJ can offer your kid academically depends on their interests - how much they want the unique courses at TJ.</p>
<p>But whats most special about TJ is its social environment. As an example kids all eat lunch at the same time. They can do that, because they can eat all over the school and grounds, not just in the cafeteria. And they can do that, IIUC, unlike the rest of FCPS, because TJ kids, are, well, TJ kids and there is a trust and a community that is special. </p>
<p>For the kind of smart, nerdy, quirky kid who is an ugly duckling at even some of the better FCPS schools, at TJ she can realize she is a swan. She can avoid some of the kinds of social things that are harmful to a kid like that.</p>
<p>But note well, there are some very bright kids who dislike the TJ social environment, and prefer a base school.</p>
<p>In this, as in so muc else, the key is to know the kid.</p>
<p>But as for TJ in order to game college admissions, all I can say is that the colleges where it is most like to help, are precisely those colleges that the more competitive TJ families are not very interested in.</p>
<p>“Guys, you’re just feeding into this by focusing on the Ivies in the first place, as though of the top schools in this country, they are the only ones who matter. Might not the OP benefit from a bit more consciousness-raising that “top schools” are a broader set?”</p>
<p>In terms of the TJ decision, the advice would be absolutely the same. If they asked “how will TJ help my kid get into Caltech, Chicago, JHU, Vandy, CMU” and didnt mention an Ivy, the answer would still be “your odds are probably not much helped or hurt by picking TJ over woodson, Langley, etc unless your kid is going to latch onto some unique offerings at TJ and make that the core of their app, somehow” </p>
<p>If OPs kid DOES go to TJ they will find there that even the most Ivy obsessed families are quite aware of the non-Ivy top schools.</p>
<p>"For UVa, the numbers are 233/324, which means the acceptance rate was just under 72%</p>
<p>And I continue to insist, for what its worth, that many of those 28% who were rejected, would have been admitted had they gone to base school and (thus) had higher GPA’s and class rank. The adcon from UVA who posts here never outright denied that, just said they dont discuss “What ifs” and pointed to how many DO get in. It ends up being a discussion of what someone in the bottom quartile at TJ would bring to a place like UVA. Its not a discussion of really broad interest, I am afraid. :)</p>