http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-...
It certainly was pretty competitive and serious, but really it was what you made of it. I heard alumni rants about it going downhill after I left, so maybe that's something that happened by 2010 or it's just a consequence of what people say after they leave. There have been some critical newspaper articles about TJ in the last few years.
I think it's more than just alumni griping. I loved my experience there, but TJ was a very different place in 2002 than it was in 1998. In 1998, the school had the original principal, Geoff Jones. There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about him that the Chinese government donated a bunch of money for a Chinese language lab, and he just spent the money on other projects. He did an incredible job of keeping FCPS out of our hair. His replacement sucked (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05...). She was that typical kind of educator that used the word "special" a lot. My brother (2004-2008), indicated that he seemed to think there was a lot more competition and less collegiality than when I was there.
On the other hand I think to a degree the asians are taking a lot of the heat for other problems with the school. The period of changing demographics just happens to be correlated with the period during which FCPS exerted more influence over the school.
http://www.tjhsst.edu/studentlife/publications/tjtoday/wordp...
I'm questioning if I would even get in at this point (my work ethic always beat out my test scores). I'm wondering if this rigidity to "scores" is helping things -- I probably would have to agree with the author's assessment of a "robotic student" molding themselves to what the TJ admissions office wants.
As for your larger point, I disagree. I think the rush to deemphasize standardized test scores is racism more than it is embracing a broader view of merit. When I went to TJ (late 1990's) it was about 1/3 Asian/Indian (well-assimilated) and 2/3 white. Culturally it was a good mix--nerdy and hard working but not overly serious or competitive. Sometime in the early 2000's, they made admissions race blind. As a result the school is now 2/3 asian, 1/4 non-latino white, and 4% black or latino. 1% are low-income. My brother went six years behind me and he definitely disliked the cultural change: it became much more serious, much less laid-back, much more competitive and cut-throat. The alumni rant constantly about how the place has gone downhill, even though by the objective measures it is doing better than ever.
I personally think the change was a bad thing. I'd rather go to school with the guy who got a 2,200 on his SAT without much studying than the guy who got a 2,400 after prepping for years. But it's total cultural elitism on my part. To asians from immigrant families that line of thinking doesn't even make sense. If admissions measures certain things, why wouldn't you do everything you can to maximize your score on those measures?
My perception is that elite colleges have started to emphasize soft factors not so much because they want more cultural diversity, but because they don't want their schools to be taken over by asian recent immigrants and the culture that creates. Why else are the measures that sufficed for so long suddenly inadequate now? Why do we let in a champion unicycle rider over a hard-working kid with an SAT score 100 points higher? It's not like elite colleges get a large number of disadvantaged minorities in the process--their numbers are still tiny. No, what the new measures do is keep out asian immigrants whose parents don't emphasize "soft" pass-times, who don't have the economic security to pursue unorthodox ambitions, who usually don't have the cultural integration to be active in the community, etc.