It is not hard work ethic that gets you through life. It is a combination of born SES, family support, hard work ethic, and luck.
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I know nothing about this particular school, but there is a growing cram school culture developing in my community. A kid can be very, very smart, but he isn’t born with innate knowledge of say, quantum physics. The elementary schools don’t teach college courses, even at the private schools. So if a 3rd grader is ready for true college or graduate school level material, unless he’s one of those extremely rare self-taught geniuses, it’s because someone schlepped him to tutoring or Saturday/summer classes for years. Among the high school cohort that gained admission to elite colleges, my children were the only ones who had not spent their summers taking classes and test prep courses.
S1 looked forward to summer because it meant he had lots of time to pursue his own interests. He went to a math program one summer that totally changed his world and brought him out of his shell. He wanted to go there so he’d have more tools to do the kind of CS he wanted. The directors were terrific about getting the kids into other things besides math (they went to Tanglewood for concerts, did lots of hiking, and learned contra dancing). He worked on his research project the summer after junior year, but it was theoretical computer science so didn’t have to take place in a lab. He did most of the reading and thinking about it while sitting under the tree in the front yard with our dog curled up beside him.
S2 really needed down time in the summers while he was in the IB program. He volunteered at a local archaeology camp where he got to dig in the dirt and have water balloon fights with the kids. He also learned CPR there (which came in handy later). He invented recipes and cooked a lot for us at home, too. Also spent lots of time with his GF.
We knew kids who did cram school and test prep. They were not the kids that my kids hung out with. My kids just weren’t driven in that way.
A set of identical twins applied to the TJ class of 2011. One attended and the other did not. The one student worked extremely hard at TJ, and just recently graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton. The other had a more relaxing experience at her local high school, and just recently graduated with a degree in microbiology from … Princeton. It is a truism that there are many paths to success, but anecdotes such as this one make it abundantly clear.
There have been enormous changes in the demographics at TJ over the past 10 years. For instance, the number of white students in the entering class has gone from 54% to 24%. There have been some changes in the admissions process over that time, but there have been changes in application rates as well, with the number of applicants in 2014 being the lowest in five years. Perhaps more students are realizing that the local high school is just as good an option for them.
It may be true that most TJ kids want to attend (and our student would do it again), but one must look at the context in which the decision is made. Every student in the GT program in Fairfax County starts hearing about this mythical TJ while still in elementary school. Teachers hold up acceptance to TJ as the pinnacle of achievement. Parents offer rewards to kids if they get in. (When a friend of our student was 12, she was promised a new car as soon as she got her license. Of course a kid who hears that will want to go to TJ.) It is not surprising that students internalize these messages.
In a school with so many strong students, it becomes difficult to distinguish oneself, which may be part of the story with the hoax. Among our student’s classmates who applied to one particular college, seven had 2400 SATs. Naturally, not all got in. Facing such an environment, snowplow parents will clear the path for their students. One classmate’s parents apparently made a substantial donation to a scientist’s lab. The classmate then spent a summer working at the lab and ended up with his name on a patent. We will never know whether the parents would have done the same thing if he had been attending the local high school, where the student would presumably already have distinguished himself. .
Dr. Glazer, the principal of TJ, wrote a letter responding to the media reports about “Sara”. I thought some of you might like to see it.
Does anyone know what this student is doing next year – where they plan to attend college? Just curious after all of the coverage.
@Guineagirl96, thanks for posting that.
I find the letter odd, in part because it focuses on “advocacy” but I can’t make the mental leap to figure out what the writer means by “the importance of addressing ethical conflicts using student advocacy guidelines.” How does that relate to a lie that a student told that got out of control? And what does the writer mean by “Advocacy is very difficult, and takes time, for teenagers because they do not want to disappoint their teachers and parents”?
Frankly I also think it is interesting that the letter names the student, even using a nickname. I would think that a person affiliated with the school would take great pains to not name names even if it were obvious from the context.
If the letter really is from the TJ principal, it looks like he might want to hire a different crisis communications specialist next time around. I must be missing something really obvious because the letter doesn’t do much but confuse things by bringing “advocacy” and “ethical conflicts” into the situation.
Just my $.02.
^ Interesting how one might object to the school making references to the students when the identity has been shared though multiple sources, including the parents themselves. Was this story not “all over” Korea? Again, the way to avoid such releases is simple: do not speak to the media and keep everything confidential.
As far as the letter, it is a GOOD letter and one that is meant to set the record straight as well as pointing in the direction of a number of nefarious influences on the life and mission of a school and its students.
Some students thrive in this environment and some are not able to handle the pressure. Add cultural and parental pressures then the expectations become too much. I think doing international interviews was not needed. Even if a child had gotten great acceptance offers I still believe in keeping a low profile just to be considerate of others who have applied and may have gotten rejected. (not posting on facebook and calling media, and making it the main point of every conversation.) I think in an environment where all the students are top notch, some students are looking for an opportunity to shine and be in the limelight at all costs. Sometimes it could be that the child wants very much to make their parents proud for all the sacrifices they have made and doesn’t wish to disappoint them. I think this case was unfortunate and done under some pressure.
I remember DD senior year. I had other parents call me repeatedly (those I hadn’t spoken to in ages) to find out where she had applied and where she had gotten accepted. One parent had called me at least 10 times during the year asking me what is her dream school. They wouldn’t believe me when I said she is keeping her options open. We made it a point not to make a public announcement of DD applications. DD did tell her close friends since most of them were applying to the same schools and they were just trying to encourage one another. When she finalized where she was attending we told whoever asked in May. This year many of our friends kids applied to college. I didn’t badger any of our friends regarding where their kids were applying. I figured I would find out in May anyway and congratulate them then. Every child has different goals so there is no use comparing kids. Being in the public eye just adds to the pressure.
Relatives tried to get their kid into Thomas Jefferson a while back, without success. Kid graduated from another NOVA high school with honors and ended up being accepted to one of the military academies and a top STEM university. I don’t believe that TJ would have been the best fit for this kid.
Do these kids who go to TJ and Stuy and so forth really do any better in college than their peers, though?
At least students from both schools did not fare equally well at Princeton in the Fred Hargadon days! It would be different with the new TJ!
TJ being a STEM magnet provides more opportunities for those looking to pursue STEM careers. Those opportunities are not available at the base schools. Too bad that they haven’t built a TJ 2 so that more students could have access to these types of programs. I would say the expectations for a TJ graduate to gain college admission would be harder because they are compared with the best students in their class and what the school offers. With everyone being top notch it is harder to shine. And since the school offers more opportunities it is expected students take advantage of them. I think high schools should be redesigned to provide different tracks with each its own graduation reqts. For example an engineering track, business track, humanities track, or prehealth track. I know in some countries students pick a track as early as 9th grade so if you choose the science track you are preparing to study prehealth or engineering early on. Or the other option is have different high schools with these tracks and allow students to apply to the high school track of their choice. This might help eliminate the discovery phase that many college freshman experience. Just an idea.
@xiggi, I don’t recall Dean Hargadon’s take on TJ or Stuyvesant - was he “meh” on them?
Hargadon favored excellent students who also happened to be good athletes. He did increase the URM percentages but did not hold a number of schools in his heart. Artists and certain groups of academically high performing students did not get many of his infamous letters of admissions.
As an example, David Wilkinson, the late physics professor an earshot from the Nobel Prize, demanded to know why the admission office no longer asked him to visit Stuyvesant, New York’s best public high school, and sing Princeton’s praises to its physics club.
Simply stated, Hargadon would have looked more positively on TJ a decade ago than he would on today’s classes – if his history with Stuyvesant gave any indication. Obviously, the days of Fred have gone, and there is evidence that his successors believe some changes were warranted. To what degree this has happened has remained in the eye of the beholder, including plaintiffs in lawsuits.
Schools like TJ and Stuyvesant are great, and I’m still a bit bitter at the fact that my parents decided not to settle down in New York City or the DC suburbs. But at the end of the day, they’re limited in who they can accept, while there are very smart and accomplished high schoolers all over the country. I went to a college that had a significant number of students who went to these magnet schools, and for the most party they just blended into the rest of the student body. Some did very well academically, but so did many others who just went to normal schools.
And to be frank, I think sometimes people exaggerate what goes on in these magnet schools. TJ and Stuyvesant (along with Montgomery Blair and Exeter) do not dominate USAMO the same way MIT, Harvard, and CMU dominate the Putnam, for example.
The 2014 number one individual Putnam Fellow is an Exeter grad.
@Pizzagirl, difficult to say whether magnet grads do better in college, though I know some very impressive ones. I certainly don’t think that they give much of a boost in college admissions (other than to maybe the state flagship because the HS and flagship have some relationship; that’s certainly true with NCSSM & UNC, certainly was true with IMSA & UIUC, and may still be true with regards to Stuy & Cornell).
However, at least at the one I went to, I thought it was comparable to a top LAC, and that I got one of the best liberal arts educations possible (and my home HS offered exactly 1 year each of physics, bio, and chem, no CS or stats classes, and limited foreign language instruction).
Numerous classmates of mine were inspired by the teachers, staff, and opportunities to careers/majors/possibilities that they had never considered before (this may not be so true for the kids from affluent suburbs but definitely was true for the kids from the boonies and inner city).
In short, just as you shouldn’t decide which college to go to solely on the basis of ROI, you shouldn’t decide on whether to attend a magnet solely on the basis of college results. Regardless of anything else, you’re going to be with some pretty amazing people in a pretty special environment and likely will be presented with opportunities and an education that you would not find in your home school (again, this is less true if your home district is affluent and more true if your home distrinct is poor). And your network will be pretty high-powered.
That said, cultures may be different across different magnets (just as they are different at different elite colleges). We didn’t say that kids had to maintain a 3.0 GPA, and so, at least when I was there, we had kids go off in all directions. There were those who fit the UChicago stereotype, a smaller number who fit the Princeton stereotype, but also a pretty large group that I’d say fit the CWRU stereotype and some who went the full-blown artsy-LAC direction (and those who’d fit in best at a B10 state school as well as a bunch of pre-meds).
This is a very odd story that could possibly happen to me
I have no idea. I do know that when my child graduated from TJ he was well prepared for any college. The education there was first rate and not just in STEM.