[Roberton3]

It doesn't feel like it was that crazy when I was there (class of 2000). 

I was there a decade earlier, when the school was brand-new, and things were very different then.  The school was an unknown because it was new, so students who went there were really taking a risk.  That made it a very different place than it became once it got a reputation as "the #1 high school in the country."  In some ways it got better, and in some ways worse, but it was very different. 

And even beyond that high school, the whole approach to college applications was very different.  I applied to five colleges, which was pretty typical back then.  That would seem like a tiny number to today's high school students, even if they're not in a ridiculously competitive high school.

Back to TJ, though, I think the changes there over the last decade or so (well after either you or I graduated) have been unambiguously bad.  The principal has pushed to make the school focus even more on science and math, to the detriment of everything else.  There's less focus on having students who can write and communicate well.  There's less focus on having a healthy male/female balance or any racial diversity.  And there's been a push to cut back on practice time for sports, which has really hurt the school's athletic teams.  Overall, the school and its students are much less well-balanced than they were a decade ago, which is bad in many ways, one of which is that it worsens the hyper-competitive aspects.  The school seems to be trying to be a high-school version of CalTech, when it used to be (and I think it should be) much more like a high school version of Stanford.

[Roberton3]

It doesn't feel like it was that crazy when I was there (class of 2000). 

I was there a decade earlier, when the school was brand-new, and things were very different then.  The school was an unknown because it was new, so students who went there were really taking a risk.  That made it a very different place than it became once it got a reputation as "the #1 high school in the country."  In some ways it got better, and in some ways worse, but it was very different. 

And even beyond that high school, the whole approach to college applications was very different.  I applied to five colleges, which was pretty typical back then.  That would seem like a tiny number to today's high school students, even if they're not in a ridiculously competitive high school.

Back to TJ, though, I think the changes there over the last decade or so (well after either you or I graduated) have been unambiguously bad.  The principal has pushed to make the school focus even more on science and math, to the detriment of everything else.  There's less focus on having students who can write and communicate well.  There's less focus on having a healthy male/female balance or any racial diversity.  And there's been a push to cut back on practice time for sports, which has really hurt the school's athletic teams.  Overall, the school and its students are much less well-balanced than they were a decade ago, which is bad in many ways, one of which is that it worsens the hyper-competitive aspects.  The school seems to be trying to be a high-school version of CalTech, when it used to be (and I think it should be) much more like a high school version of Stanford.