The Best High Schools for a Chosen Few
While spending the weekend in New York visiting family, I happened to grab a copy of the Sunday New York Post. This week’s cover spotlighted the best high schools in New York City – and just how hard it is to get into each of them. Whether you hail from a big city like New York or reside in the most rural of towns, you’ll appreciate the struggles students go through to score a seat in one of the top high schools. Keep in mind this is high schools, not colleges.
Getting into the top three New York City high schools:
- Townsend Harris High School: This #1 ranked high school accepts just 270 from a pool of 5,000 applicants every year. A gifted few are selected based on merit, but once they’re in the sky’s the limit. After all, every class is either AP, honors or college level.
- Stuyvesant High School: Ranked at #2, this high school gets 27,000 applicants every year. 27,000! That’s for just 800 openings. A quarter of the kids who graduate from Stuyvesant go on to the Ivy League, so I guess it’s no wonder why it’s so popular. The only way in is to test very well in the SHSAT.
- NYC Lab School For Collaborative Studies: At #3, the NYC Lab School is a smaller school with a focus on projects and dynamic teaching rather than traditional curriculum. That doesn’t make it easier. Last year’s students hosted a Model UN conference and Shakespeare play! Admission is merit based.
That’s just three of the top schools in the New York Post’s special edition. The students who get into any of these top schools have to work hard to do so. To be selected students must:
- Test well in performance and standardized tests
- Get great grades on their middle school report cards
- Never miss school or be late
- Demonstrate successful essays and projects
- Show community service and civic responsibility
- Prove that they’re self-starters
- Have a record of ongoing activities
- Ask the admissions officers LOTS of questions
While I’m excited to hear about the students who work hard and succeed at getting into these top schools (they are almost guaranteed a path to success), I can’t help but wonder what happens to all the thousands of others who don’t.
What do you think? Should all students have an opportunity to get into schools like these? Would you want to see your student in a school like this or is your school doing a good job? Let us know.