Do you know how to choose your extracurricular activities and accomplishments and align them with the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology mission and beliefs?
Learn how to write a powerful Student Information Sheet (SIS) and a personal statement. This is a guidance that would equip your students become better writers. We will ask students questions to help them reflect on their achievements and activities. We teach using the authentic writing workshop process. This will prepare your students beyond the TJ test; it will enhance their writing skills and boost their academic and research performances – skills necessary to stay at TJ. Getting into TJ is one thing, staying there is another battle.
The TJ admissions process is somewhat similar to college application. Your child will go through the same process when they apply for summer internships, scholarships, and college applications. The strategies that your student will learn from this will definitely go beyond the TJ admissions. We recommend a minimum of 4 sessions.
Some of the things you will learn/do:
- Analyze the TJ SIS general scoring criteria
- Analyze some SIS drafts of our past successful TJ semifinalists
- How to highlight your strengths, and use your limitations as strengths
- How to create a “niche” and highlight your uniqueness as an individual
- Distinguish differences between the “laundry list” and the details of your extracurricular activities
- How to make decisions on which activities to highlight
- Ideas, organization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency flow of your personal statement
- How to answer short essay questions similar to college admission essays
- Strategies on writing quality essays in 30 minutes
Please bring a charged laptop, a notebook and list of activities/resume. Other than STEM activities, semifinalists need to have good writing skills. They need to learn which activities to highlight in the SIS.
Based on our past experiences, successful TJ applicants start their writing workshop as early as the 7th grade!
If your child enrolled at Young Scholars Circle late and you are not confident of your child’s writing skills, then it would make sense to take writing workshop classes at least twice a week until the week of the TJ Final Round.
If your child has been with us since 7th grade and/or has been taking writing workshop classes since Summer or Fall, then it would make sense to maintain the once a week schedule.
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