<p>"Like many districts these days, FCPS do not report rank, so we don’t know where a student falls in the class when we’re reading their application. Guidance staff report the GPA scale in use, the weighting of the different courses, and the highest and lowest GPA in the class that year. "</p>
<p>And as I am sure you aware, there is discussion at TJ of not reporting GPA at all, as they find it both misleading, and distorting student course selection.</p>
<p>"Like many districts these days, FCPS do not report rank, so we don’t know where a student falls in the class when we’re reading their application. Guidance staff report the GPA scale in use, the weighting of the different courses, and the highest and lowest GPA in the class that year. "</p>
<p>If they report the highest and lowest GPA for the entire class, then you certainly can estimate where the student falls within that class. </p>
<p>It would have been interesting if they TJ did away with the reporting of GPA completely, I wonder how schools would have dealt with it especially if the school did not report the high/low range of GPAs.</p>
<p>actually its alot about how the new weighting system impacts AP vs TJs tech offerings. If theres an AP test you get a bump, but for most TJs specialized tech offerings you don’t. which creates an incentive to take more APs and fewer tech courses. Which means some tech course won’t have sufficient enrollment to be offered in a time of tight budgets. Which would make TJ less like a tech school, and more like a generic school thats just hard to get into. </p>
<p>OTOH, if they really thought that GPA was a good way to view their students, I don’t think they would even have suggested doing that.</p>
<p>Brooklynborndad’s daughter most likely applied to UVA and got rejected…he would NOT spend this much time dwelling and reviving this thread on a hypothetical situation (if my daughter had applied then…). Sorry, but you can see right through it.</p>
<p>I can send her name to Dean J privately, and she can confirm my child did not apply. </p>
<p>I am a tad OCD, and this implicates some issues that are broader than UVA admissions. Though you may not be able to see that. </p>
<p>And of course its not hypothetical for the TJ kids who applied and were rejected. TJ is that way, we (parents and students) all pull for each other, its not all me, me, me.</p>
<p>1560/1600, 2300/2400, Nat’l Merit Finalist all show you’re a smart kid. 3.9 GPA does not fit with those numbers. If I were an admissions officer, I would look at that and see someone that slacked off. What were your EC’s? Did you do absolutely nothing besides go to class at 8 and come home at 3 and watch TV?</p>
<p>I got waitlisted, and I was pretty disappointed. My numbers were 1350 and 2060, but I had a 4.0 at arguably the toughest private school in the state. Plus, I spent over two hours a day in choir practices for my three different school choirs, two of which I’ve held leadership positions in for 2+ years. Not to mention mandatory sports practices/games for 2 hours everyday, all year long.</p>
<p>Yea, sure your stats indicate that you are “smart” enough to handle what UVa would throw at you. But when UVa has to choose between thousands of “qualified” candidates, numbers can easily become lost in the crowd.</p>
<p>wahoomb</p>
<p>and of course all the threads Ive posted asking for detailed advice about Lehigh vs RPI, and different aspects of life at RPI and Lehigh, and similar going back well before acceptances were released, with not a one about UVA before this, all thats cover for my daughter having applied to UVA.</p>
<p>My god, you are intelligent. What schools did you say admitted you?</p>
<p>I didn’t go to TJ, I’m sorry, I must be dumb and I, obviously, stole a spot from a TJ kid back when I got into UVA (from Robinson Secondary). I’m glad my commoner and less-than-spectacular ~Robinson~ education helped me outperform most of my peers at UVA and just f.y.i. I’ll be heading to Stanford for grad school in the fall. I can’t even imagine where I would be heading this fall if I had gone to TJ (Harvard, perhaps?), hahaha.</p>
<p>“3.9 GPA does not fit with those numbers. If I were an admissions officer, I would look at that and see someone that slacked off. What were your EC’s? Did you do absolutely nothing besides go to class at 8 and come home at 3 and watch TV?”</p>
<p>Most such kids at TJ have loads of ECs, and work very hard. Its a hard school.</p>
<p>Eight years ago my son applied to TJ, was rejected but got a lovely certficate saying he was in the “top 800”. He went to his base high school, received an IB diploma after 4 years of hard work and graduated last May from UVA. We of course couldn’t understand why our extremely bright, talented son was not accepted to TJ. I’m sure he would have been an equally outstanding student there as he was at his base school, but there is a cut off somewhere and he didn’t make it. Parents need to have a very clear understanding about what TJ can and cannot do for their students when they are considering their options for their 8th grader. TJ is not an automatic ticket to UVA or W&M. In the end she will probably never regret going to the school she eventually chooses just like my son never regretted not getting into TJ.</p>
<p>UVA, huh. Well then maybe the TJ kids who don’t go there (for whatever reason) aren’t missing much. I am sorry to be so blunt, but you are not making UVA look good with your approach to human interaction. </p>
<p>I assume that whatever program you are going to at Stanford asks you to do simple research before making an easily testable assertion, especially when its accusing someone of lying.</p>
<p>“TJ is not an automatic ticket to UVA or W&M.”</p>
<p>Its not an automatic ticket to anywhere. Who said it was?</p>
<p>The question is, does it actually make it more difficult to get in to certain universities, and how should that impact decisions made by TJ seniors.</p>
<p>"I didn’t go to TJ, I’m sorry, I must be dumb and I, obviously, stole a spot from a TJ kid back when I got into UVA "</p>
<p>I can only judge you by how you post here. You are not impressing. Many who do not go to TJ are obvioulsy not dumb. But many of them are polite, do not ■■■■■, and do not make elementary mistakes in something as serious as accusing someone of lying. Or maybe you do not consider that serious.</p>
<p>BTW, you do know that a straw man is a logical fallacy, don’t you?</p>
<p>“What were your EC’s? Did you do absolutely nothing besides go to class at 8 and come home at 3 and watch TV?”</p>
<p>Hmmm…I would say most of the TJ students do not go to class at 8 and come home at 3 since school does not end until 3:50. The school day is LONG and even LONGER when they have to commute. My child gets up at 5:30 AM and doesn’t get home until 5:15 PM and if there are EC stuff happening then it is even LATER. </p>
<p>I have always believed that schools with thousands of applications to look at have a criteria to weed out the the ones that are an automatic no. It stands to reason that they use GPA, class rank and SAT/ACT scores for the initial weeding. Logically there is not enough hours in the day for admissions to read each and every one of these applications. Whatever is left are the maybe and yes applications and then I am sure they take in consideration all the “rest” of the stuff thus the “holistic” view.</p>
<p>All of this discussion is interesting and just reinforces my belief that attending TJ is not an advantage for getting into college. We knew it when he decided to attend but the ability to take courses not offered at our base school and the ability to do research was a great selling point. He might not be accepted at UVA but I am sure the experience of TJ will help him excel wherever he ends up :)</p>
<p>Oh god I’m done posting, sorry I don’t spend all day at my desk job digging up you old threads looking fo evidence to prove that your obsession to prove your point (which we still can’t figure out what it is) is legitimate bitterness. Get over whatever beef you have with UVA, I’m sure your daughter isn’t nearly as butt-hurt as you are.</p>
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<p>ha ha don’t even bother with Wahoomb. He is a notorious blowhard on these boards. He thinks he is IT. He never misses an opportunity to brag about how smart he is and going to Stanford and nobody cares.</p>
<p>The pluses and minuses of going to TJHSST have been hashed and rehashed in this thread, so I won’t continue that. I will add, though, that I doubt very many kids from anywhere – instate, out of state, or international – are accepted to UVa with a 3.7 weighted GPA, unless they are in at least the top 10% of the class, and probably higher. An interesting point of reference for those who insist some TJ students are treated unfairly by virtue of going to a top high school would be whether students in the bottom quartile of other similarly esteemed schools, e.g., Andover, Exeter, etc., have recently been accepted to UVa. If by some chance they have been, then the TJ folks might have a legitimate gripe. Otherwise, those in the bottom quartile at TJ, absent some really distinguishing factor, probably ought to look to schools other than UVa and WM.</p>
<p>I’m still trying to figure out how going to the one of the best if not the best school in America is ever a negative. Can anyone argue that going there improves ones chances of getting into a great school?</p>
<p>68% is no love? How can anyone say that?</p>
<p>^^^Even a TJ label isn’t going to pave the way into a top flight university if they have relatively unremarkable achievements…( 3.7 weighted GPA, moderately high SAT (1480), and plain vanilla EC’s).</p>
<p>The 68% that were accepted into UVa obviously rose to the challenge that TJ presents to every student who enrolls there.</p>
<p>Brooklyndad, I really don’t grasp your issue with UVa admissions.</p>
<p>You and your daughter chose TJ, knowing that it is among the toughest in the Commonwealth, and knowing that if she did not achieve on a par with her peers there, she would be at an admissions disadvantage to them. She then elected not to apply to UVa on the assumption that she would be denied admission and that her time and efforts would be better spent applying elsewhere. I think you need to own these choices that you made rather than perpetuating the myth (in my opinion) that TJ applicants are generally disadvantaged by UVa admissions compared to their peers at other schools.</p>
<p>Best of luck and success to you daughter wherever she matriculates.</p>