Accepted to TJHSST? What to Do in the Next 30 Days

You got in. Take a second to actually let it land. This is a big deal, and not everyone who deserved a yes got one.

I'm Neil. I went to TJ, and I've spent years helping families get in and, more importantly, helping admitted students land well once they arrive. The next 30 days matter less than people tell you, and more than they let on. Most of the "must do this now" checklists floating around are either wrong, out of date, or optimized to sell you something. Here's what I'd actually tell a nephew in your position.

Keep Your Ego in Check

The single most helpful thing you can do right now has nothing to do with placement tests or summer checklists. It's this: keep your ego in check.

Yes, you got into the #1 high school in the country. No, that does not make you the smartest person in the world, or even in your freshman class. The students who land well at TJ all share a specific quality: they hold onto that distinction. They stay curious, they ask a lot of questions, and they actually listen when someone gives them advice they weren't expecting.

At TJ especially, a lot of the best advice you'll get is going to feel unconventional. Sometimes uncomfortable. It might push you onto a track you never would have considered. That's fine. Listen anyway.

A concrete example. You're probably going to hear, from older students or teachers, that the Spanish and French departments at TJ aren't the strongest, and that you should take German instead. If you took Spanish or French in middle school and planned to keep going, that's unwelcome advice. It's annoying. It means reconsidering something you thought was decided. The students who can hear it, ask the follow-up questions, actually weigh the switch on the merits rather than on sunk cost, and then make the call that serves them for four years, end up with better schedules and better experiences at TJ. The ones who dig in because "I already committed to French in middle school" usually regret it by junior year.

This pattern will repeat a dozen times over four years. Someone will tell you to try a weird elective. Someone will suggest dropping a club you thought was your thing. Someone will push you toward a teacher or research lab you've never heard of. Some of that advice will be wrong. Some of it will be gold. You don't get to know which in advance. What you do control is whether you actually listen.

Four years from now, the students getting the best opportunities (research placements, internships, top college offers) are not the smartest, highest-ego ones. They're the smart, low-ego, high-adaptability ones. That's the TJ pattern. Start practicing it now.

Confirm Your Spot (Logistics)

Accept the offer through the FCPS portal by the deadline in your letter. Complete whatever enrollment paperwork the school asks for. Watch your email for follow-ups from TJ and FCPS over the next several weeks. They'll send you details on registration, placement opportunities, summer requirements, and orientation as they become available.

One unglamorous thing worth doing: after you submit, double-check that your acceptance actually went through. Every year some families assume they clicked the right button and discover in July that they missed a step. If you're not 100% sure, call the office and confirm. Takes ten minutes and removes a real failure mode.

About Placement Tests

TJ offers placement opportunities over the summer in certain subjects. The details, which courses you can skip into, when the windows open, what the test looks like, change from year to year. I'm not going to write specifics here because yours may be different from what was true three years ago, and the last thing you want is to plan around outdated info.

Read what TJ actually sends you. If you have questions about a specific placement option, email the school or ask at orientation. Do not rely on what an older sibling or a friend did two cycles back.

What doesn't change year to year is the rule for taking one: only test into a higher level if you'd be genuinely comfortable there, not if you'd just barely scrape in. Every year a handful of freshmen skip a level because they technically could, then spend their first quarter drowning. TJ's pace is already aggressive at the standard placement. Getting ahead sounds good until you're getting your first C because you're missing foundational material.

If you're honestly unsure whether you're ready, pick the conservative option. You can usually move up later if the year is easy. Dropping down mid-semester is miserable.

Summer PE

TJ students have the option to take 9th Grade PE over the summer instead of during the school year. Taking it in summer frees up a period in your schedule, which students often use later for electives, research, or just breathing room during heavy semesters.

It's not required, and plenty of students skip it and are fine. But if you're academically inclined and anticipate wanting that extra period in 10th-12th, summer PE is one of the easier wins on this list. Most of the TJ students I know took it and were glad they did.

What TJ Is Actually Like Freshman Year

A few honest things you should hear before August.

Your first quiz will humble you. Almost every TJ freshman takes a quiz in the first few weeks and gets a score that shocks them. A 70 from a kid who was a straight-100 kid in middle school. This is normal. The curves usually help. What hurts people is not the grade itself, it's the identity spiral that follows: "maybe I don't belong here." You do. Don't let one quiz do that to you.

Everyone around you is smart, and that takes adjustment. In middle school, you were probably the smart one in most rooms. At TJ, you're one of many. Some students take that as a demotion and start comparing themselves into the ground. Others take it as a feature: they finally get to learn from peers who push them. Pick the second frame early. It matters.

The workload comes in waves. Some weeks feel fine. Others are brutal. It's not linear. The kids who burn out are usually the ones who stayed at full throttle all year instead of finding a sustainable baseline and pushing up only during the hard weeks.

Sleep matters more than you think it does. The all-nighter culture at TJ is real, and it's bad. Students who sleep regularly do better, feel better, and retain more. If you take one piece of advice from this post, let it be this one: guard your sleep, and don't treat it as the first thing to cut when workload spikes. Cut something else.

8th period is a gift. Use it. Don't pick one club in August and lock in. Try five things in the first semester, drop what doesn't stick, double down on what does. The students who end up leading something senior year usually sampled widely freshman year before settling.

Grades matter, but not on day one. If you're thinking about college, yes, your GPA matters. But your first priority is learning how to study at TJ's pace, and that will take several weeks. Don't panic if week one grades are bumpy. Panic only if you're still hitting the same walls in December without adjusting.

What NOT to Stress About

A partial list of things that are not your problem right now:

• Which senior research lab you'll end up in. You'll choose junior year.
• Whether you'll get into MIT. You're 14.
• Memorizing the full club list. You'll learn the ones that matter by osmosis.
• Finding your "thing." Many of TJ's most interesting alumni didn't find theirs until 10th or 11th grade. Exploration is productive.
• What summer programs other admitted students are getting into. Instagram is a lie.
• Optimizing your four-year plan this weekend. It'll change three times. That's normal.

Parents reading this: this applies to you too. The instinct to optimize your kid's freshman year for a four-year plan is strong, and the kids whose parents plan hardest are usually the ones who burn out earliest. Support the transition, ask questions, but resist the urge to pre-script.

What to Actually Do This Summer

Beyond the logistical boxes and placement decisions, here's what I'd actually recommend.

Read. Not assigned reading. Pick whatever you'd read for fun and read a lot of it. The single most underrated skill at TJ is being able to read quickly and think clearly about what you read. This pays off in English, history, science labs, college essays, everywhere.

Write. Keep a journal. Write short essays about things you're actually curious about. Try to explain one idea clearly per week. Students who can produce a crisp sentence have an edge everywhere it matters.

Go deep on one thing. If you're into programming, build a project harder than anything you've done. If you love math, work through problems from an Olympiad archive. If you're into biology, read a real pop-sci book and follow the citations. Depth compounds. Breadth this summer just exhausts you.

Hang out with your middle school friends. A lot of them won't be at TJ, and those friendships get harder to maintain once school starts. Invest now.

Rest. Actually rest. Not "productive rest" where you're still half-working. Take real time off. TJ is a four-year marathon. Start it from a recovered baseline, not from burnout.

Final Thought

TJ is not a finish line, and it's not the start of a four-year sprint either. The students I've seen thrive were the ones who stayed curious, paced themselves, and kept a sense of humor on hard days.

You got in. That means the selection committee saw something real. The question now stops being "can I get in" and starts being "what do I want to do with this." You have four years to figure that out.

Welcome to TJ. Congrats, really.

Neil Kothari, Co-Founder, EduAvenues®, TJHSST Alumnus and Fmr. Board of Directors