Excellent article!
Very wise:
Love it! Thanks for posting.
“It took me a long time to react to that grade the way I was supposed to, but it was the nudge I needed to let go of the very unhealthy way I had planned my life — a life that, ultimately, could never have been as interesting or storied or ridiculous and great as the one I have now.”
This goes up on a wall.
Fairfax County. Why am I not surprised?
Great story!
I’d like to know what second rate school she went to and when she transferred. She did end up at a brand name school.
“when we were sending out our college applications, my classmates and I were at an automatic disadvantage, with GPAs that were reflected lower than our peers in any other district in the country.” Not true. Other school systems had that same grading scale (and some of those school systems didn’t weight honors courses like her school system).
Somehow I’m not impressed by this bitter and vulgar statement.
Fairfax County changed the grade scale in 2009. She needs to get over it.
@FallGirl That said, Fairfax is ridiculously, unhealthily competitive. For students there and in Loudoun, McLean, and Alexandria, it’s even more stressful if you’re not a TJ student. The logic there is that “I didn’t get into a high school, I’ll never get into college.” So, I agreed with the author on that. Fairfax is the VA IRL version of College Confidential.
Love this article. Bookmarked and I’m sending it to some of my classmates. ;))
^ That is based on the family dynamics. We lived in Fairfax and went with the flow.
Ha! I live in Fairfax County. Best laugh I’ve had all week. So true…
But Loudoun? Psh. Bush league.
Eh.
The general theme of working hard and using a set back to motivate you is great but don’t fault Fairfax County or FCPS for your lackluster performance if you’re taking credit for your successes. The author is old enough and experienced enough - she needs to get over it.
FCPS has, what, 26,30 high schools? Not all are Langley, or McLean and there is only one TJ. There’s Annandale, Stuart, Edison which are good but pretty ordinary high schools. Competition is where you see it.
I know something about this from having raised 2 kids in NoVA , one who is a TJ grad. Not sure why it is “more stressful” if you’re not a TJ grad.
Still think she needs to get over it.
Actually, its Win-Win. The female (intended psych major?) didn’t get into to first choice instate public due to grades so she attended another (“lesser”) college and transferred in to the state flagship. Exactly how it is supposed to happen.
Since the author mentions problem sets, I’m guessing its C+ in math. Was this Alg II? Was this he last math class, while her colleagues went on to PreCalc and Calc? The author claims a “phenomenal GPA” but what was the rigor? How many APs? Of those, how many were so-called AP Lites?
btw: what the author has totally ignored is the curve. While the cutoff for a B at 84 may appear harsh at first glance, it is not if say, 60% of the kids in the class are cleaning that bar. In other words, how difficult are the tests?
Yeah, I get that this statistical math is confusing for high schoolers, if they haven’t taken AP Stats. Heck, its confusing for college kids and parents who claim that their school does not curve Frosh STEM courses, since its a normative scale like Fairfax used to be. (hint: the college faculty adjust the rigor of the tests throughout the semester so that they get a nice curve by the end of the semester. No STEM prof will allow a mass of kids to pull down a 90+%. Will never happen.)
P.S. William & Mary apparently thinks is has a gender problem: they only accept 23% of female applicants vs. 42% of male.
@NavalTradition Loudoun has AOS. And my friend group in middle school was nerdcore competitive. And yeah, I’ll cling to it forever… But, with Broad Run and Stone Bridge, you’re probably right… hmmm…
Having one TJ grad, I’m not sure that I get why it’s more stressful if you’re not in TJ. I actually think the converse is true. The pressure on TJ kids is tremendous, considering they have 50-60 kids go to Ivies, +10 to MIT, and then there is Stanford, Duke, etc. These kids feel like William and Mary is a safety. Remember the girl who falsely claimed she had been admitted to all the Ivies and that she was so special that Stanford and Harvard were going to design a program just for her that would allow her to enroll in both? Yeah, that was a TJ kid.
The area of Fairfax county is a pressure cooker not just TJ. Daughters four years at an IB school were more stressful than college. W&M and UVA being the most competitive instate schools are the most competitive to get admitted to as an instate student. Almost every instate student applies to those schools and there are a lot of top notch students at those base schools who don’t want to pay to go to a private school.
Simply the demand is more than the capacity of these schools and the bar to gain admission keeps getting higher and higher as an increasing number of students apply. Fortunately Virginia is a state where there are a number of good schools where a student can get a quality education at an affordable price. The author is hung up on W&M and honestly needs to get past it. Getting a C in high school is not the end of the world. There are many paths to reach a goal.
DD is now a sophomore in college and doesn’t think about high school because it is over and done with. Time to move forward.