Lessons from TJ
You have probably heard about how Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, known around here in northern Virginia as TJ, withheld information about National Merit Commended Student awards from students who had won them. Sixteen other schools in Fairfax and nearby counties have admitted that they did the same thing.
We’re not going to talk about politics. We’re going to focus on what lessons our kids should draw from this scandal.
Not everything is a big problem
I am not defending the school administrators here. I think they were wrong! Rather, I mean that not everything that causes a big stink actually has major negative consequences.
National Merit Commended Student awards only reflect high PSAT scores. Kids get them if they make it through the first National Merit cut but don’t advance further, to the stage that requires submission of a transcript and essay. The Commended Student award just says “this kid got high PSAT scores.”
Commentators have been upset that the affected students didn’t get a chance to mention the Commended Student status on their college applications. Those students, though, did have a chance to report their test scores. I hope they did! If their PSAT scores were high enough to make it through the first National Merit sieve, their SAT scores were almost certainly impressive too. The colleges they applied to saw those test scores, if the kids submitted them.
Here’s another view. Jon Reider, a former Stanford admissions officer, says, “Too many students are recognized through the National Merit program, either as commended students or finalists, for it to carry much weight at selective colleges.”
Again, I am not defending the school administrators here. They don’t get a pass because the damage they deliberately did to these kids was minor. If person A tries to punch person B in the nose but misses, person A is not excused.
I only mean that if my kid were in this boat, I would encourage her to consider this a splashy distraction, remember the salience of her high test scores, and focus on enjoying her senior year.
Sometimes, you have to be deferential to people less smart than you
Many smart teenagers adopt a smug and irritating attitude with grownups less smart than they. They seem to think: “once I’m out of this podunk small pond, the gleaming blade of meritocracy will (figuratively) shear away all these morons, and I will only have to interact with my equals or betters.”
Any adult who has spent time in the workforce or the DMV knows that the world doesn’t work this way. Not infrequently, we have to be deferential to people who don’t grasp the issue as quickly as we do, so we can get our work done, our driver’s licenses updated, our water heaters installed, etc. We also learn that courtesy to all people, for its own sake, is worthwhile.
As I read about this scandal at TJ, I couldn’t help but wonder (insert Sarah Jessica Parker gif) if a smart kid at TJ or another implicated school could have avoided this problem by cultivating a cooperative relationship with a school counselor, and if some of these smart kids didn’t want to cultivate such a relationship because of the phenomenon described at the beginning of this section.
Maybe we don’t like the idea that these TJ kids are smarter than the school administrators? Let’s tiptoe gingerly through a few bullet points.
National Merit Commended Students are in the top 3 or 4 percent of scorers on the PSAT. If we translate that percentile into SAT scores, they get about a 1450 or higher.
The two administrators at TJ who seem to be responsible for this decision went to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Citadel.
The middle 50 of SAT scores at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania is 930 to 1120.
The middle 50 of SAT scores at the Citadel is 1100 to 1250.
SAT scores reflect generalized intelligence moderately well.
Asian-Americans still face an uphill battle
In the Virginia counties where principals withheld National Merit information from students, about 75 percent of the award recipients are Asian-American. American schools should not have these prejudices, but some do.
You’re on your own
YOYO, the less-fun twin of YOLO. This is the main meta-lesson of this National Merit episode. As high schoolers move into the broader world, they must learn to rely on themselves. Many other people don’t care about you or care but are too busy to spend time on you. That isn’t because they’re evil; it’s because they have different priorities than you do. Other people are deliberately unhelpful.
This can be a bitter lesson for high school kids raised in safe, loving homes. They may have the subconscious assumption that other adults, like teachers and school administrators, will have the same commitment to their success that their parents do. Part of developing a mature understanding of the world is realizing that most people don’t care about us. If we want such people to help us, we have to grow and tend cooperative relationships or to find a way to align their self-interest and our own.
That’s enough get-off-my-lawn philosophizing for one post. If you want to attend an online seminar about college admissions or get one-on-one help, you can book here.
