Talk:Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science

Untitled
Someone working at TAMS frequently edits this page to make it more biased towards them.

The TAMS page looks like they paid someone to give them a better image.

Someone should mention that McConnell Hall is also a site of drug use and deviant sexual activity.

Somebody should discuss privileges like curfew extensions and travel weekends.

There are quite a few 'failed' TAMSters who never manage to leave Denton. Think it would be NPOV to mention that the strain of adjustment to the social and academic environment is too much for some students, or that many traditional students tend to shun the TAMS students? Don't want parents using Wiki for info to think it's a perfect wonderland before they send their kids off. Tallasse 15:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This is probably a good idea, though those kids are definitely in the minority. Still, I remember that several of the people working at the 7-11 near campus were former TAMSters.

Clubs and Organizations
Perhaps we should only have official clubs and organizations listed under that section? And then include a link to the TAMS Club site if they wish to see the rest of the clubs. There could be a great deal of clutter if we listed all the clubs. Dustice 19:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Alumni
Please add Alumni per the standards found at Notability (people)/WP:BIO.
 * While Desh Mohan is a really cool guy - he does not yet qualify as "notable" (Sorry Desh) – Dustice 19:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * David Williams, class of 1998, is notable. – kentyman (talk) 19:56, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Clean Up
Along with trying to find citations and cleaning up bias, I'm proposing to change the structure to


 * Academics
 * Student Life
 * Rules and Regulations
 * Notable Alumni

"McConnell Hall" would be a subcategory under Student Life and the common rooms would be placed under that. Visitation, Disciplinary Rules, and Pranks would be merged under Rules and Regulations.

macrats
This section needs work and neutrality...

Misinformation
This article fails to cite its sources in most aspects, much of it should be deleted as it is a matter of opinion. -James Eldred

Also much of the technical aspects of admin and academics is a bit weak and needs to be expanded.

Students
Do the student at tams have a forum or something a way to communicate?


 * There are a couple alumni communities, but I dunno if there's any forum for current students. You might look around at TAMSAlumni.org. - Tallasse 01:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Because of politics between rival alumni groups, there is no single established alumni community that has been widely accepted by TAMS alums. - 6 July 2006

Physics isn't hard at UNT, it is dead easy due to the curving of the grades. The only people who do poorly in physics are the students that don't do the homework, and instead use the spreadsheet (which is cheating) to get all the answers without doing any of the work.


 * I disagree. I took Physics as a TAMS student quite recently, and it was tough for 90% of us. It's a challenging subject to begin with, and on top of that, the UNT physics professors aren't the greatest. There was a lot that we had to teach ourselves to make up for that. Most people used the spreadsheet to get the answers and later figure out how the answers were derived, so they could work a similar problem on an exam. People who did this were usually fine. Keep in mind that easily 70% of TAMS students use the spreadsheet every year - this is not a cause for poor performance in physics. Students who don't understand the material (and don't want to put in the effort to learn) use the spreadsheet and do nothing else. But as a former TAMS student, I promise that you couldn't find more than 10% of students every year who would call the course "dead easy," unless something has drastically changed in the past few years since I graduated.


 * Part of the problem came from which physics class students were required to take. At least through the class of 1999, students were required to take engineering, calculus-based physics. The problem I had with that had to do less with my ability to study and more with the fact that I was taking calculus at the same time.  The high school I came from didn't offer it until senior year, so I was one of the lucky ones that took Pre-Cal their first year at TAMS.  If the administration allowed us to take a regular physics class, I'm sure it would have gone a lot smoother.  From what I understand, from the 2000 graduation class and on, students were given the option of which physics class to take.  That may explain how someone could consider it "dead easy" nowadays, while the rest of us remember the horror. (July 7, 2006)


 * Close, but not quite. The graduation class of 2000 still took Engineering Physics, my class just seemed to have a lot of physics-minded people in it (as opposed to biology or chemistry).  The option to take either Calculus-based or Algebra-based began no earlier than the Class of 2001 (M. Madison, Class of 2000, January 16, 2007)


 * I took medical physics in Fall of 2002 and I wouldn't call that easy at all (also, there was no spreadsheet for this class). Some people just don't click with physics, just as some didn't click well with bio while others thought it was easy. It just depended on your interest, I would have thought your time in such close quarters with other Tamsters for two years would have taught you that. --Kugamazog 12:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Whitewash
Whoever Tawker is, you're playing semantics by repeatedly reverting the edits. Students aren't "asked" to leave. They are told, and required to come collect their belongings a week before the spring semester kicks back up (if they fail out in fall). "Asked" implies some sort of voluntary acceptance by the people being kicked out.--Kugamazog 02:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

According to the policies stated in the TAMS manual, a forced expulsion and the offer to leave are different. The term "asked" is used in order to protect the student's record, as a forced expulsion counts as a disciplinary action, and an offer of resignation allows the student to leave with credit from their tenure as well as usually an offer to finish their education in other areas of study at UNT. A good deal ot students who "fail out" of TAMS either get their GED and continue their education immediately or finish their studies at their previous high school. Be careful of subjectivity in this article, any words used must come from a certified source. The source here would be the TAMS manual and the use of the word "ask." If you feel another term is correct, please cite your source and prove it. --NateDSaint 21:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Nate, you should note the differences between primary and secondary sources. --Cheeser1 (talk) 08:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Cheeser, sorry about the massive delay, other things have taken my attention. I'm not sure what you meant by this, but I'll take it that you meant UNT publications appear subjective due to being primary. It's my understanding that objective analysis of an institution comes from secondary or tertiary sources (preferably secondary) but that relation to the policy of the institution MUST come from primary sources. Please correct me if this isn't making any sense. --NateDSaint (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

As of the class of 09, you are required to take the engineering calculus-based physics. And it blows.The phoenix612 (talk) 21:27, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Class of 06 here. Always had to take Engineering calc based physics. Don't cry, UNT curves like mad in their science & math departments, and the physics class is kind of a joke if people are still doing the Physux Excel Cheat Sheet project. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timmeh.Chan (talk • contribs) 05:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Scholarships and awards
Where do these numbers come from? It sounds like there were made up for a powerpoint presentation to impress the parents of potential applicants. I couldn't find these numbers on the TAMS website or anywhere else.

Most verifiable information regarding TAMS is produced by TAMS administration, and is therfore not verifiable. For example, students are told that while they are not guaranteed admission to the University of Texas at Austin, all who apply are accepted. This is blatantly false, as at least 10 were rejected out of the Class of '06. I assume this is to dupe foolish UT hopefuls into attending TAMS. 129.120.8.196 23:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, the way that it works is that TAMS is an honors program, and is supposed to be covered by the honors system that was developed in the state of Texas, that is, anyone in the top 10% of your class gets automatic admission to a state school, and is automatically considered for a regents scholarship. As TAMS is an honors program, it's like being in the top 10%. Some reasons they may not have gotten in were:
 * They applied too late. UT, A&M, and Texas Tech have draconian admissions policies about when and where you can send in your application. If you're too late (and even too early) you get rejected out of hand.
 * They didn't check the right box or indicate that they were members of an honors program so it wasn't sent to the right department, and were rejected based on their GPA or rank which are different in TAMS than they would be in a regular high school. (as well as standardized scores)
 * They were rejected based on extrascholastic reasons (I say extrascholastic implying that their recommendations did not go through, or they called a reference and got information about a student who had disciplinary restrictions on their permanent record). This can be true in the case of alcohol, drugs, or other severe policy violations.
 * The student never recieved an acceptance letter due to a mix-up with the mail system (UNT's mail system is infamous for misplacing items to the wrong hall if the student does not have a post office box).

I would say that the verifiable information regarding figures that are given are taken from exit polls and from student records that are used as promotional tools on campus. For the most part I think they're only verifiable within the department, but they are published in official UNT material, and therefore wikipedia worthy. It is also worthy to note that they may not be 100% accurate, however.

Hope this helps. --NateDSaint 17:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Not true. TAMS doesn't report as top 10 percent, and so UT Austin does not automatically accept applicants. TAMU has "academic admit" but UT had no such option. This is mostly a failure on TAMS' part, as they don't properly communicate the rigors of the program to potential schools. 173.74.157.177 (talk) 07:45, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Assessment as of March 2007
Hello all, and thank you for contributing to this school site. I'm part of the WikiProject_Schools/Assessment team, and, as requested, I'm reviewing this page. I'm currently giving it a grade of Start on the Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment Scale and an importance of Low on this importance scale.

My reasoning is as follows: This article has lots of biased information and even a bit of unchecked vandalism. Needs referrences and quite a bit of other work. Adam McCormick 06:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I will be substantially cleaning the article at some point soon. It needs alot of work, but hopefully I won't have to cut too much of it outright. --Cheeser1 (talk) 08:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

TAMS - Total Airport Management System
Renzulli chemistry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.9.136.225 (talk) 12:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Academy League?
I've heard a lot about some national league of schools similar to TAMS (residential higher-level high schools) which TAMS is officially a part of but lost touch with a while back. Does anyone know what this school league was or have any other information about it? kthxbai Occamsrazorwit (talk) 06:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

File:TAMS logo.jpg Deleted
The TAMS logo should be reuploaded as fair use of non-free media, like with the UNT logo page.