missbunny, stuyguy was only saying that because he went to Stuyvessant. You know, with all the other morons.
Hey! I live in Andover, MA!
There’s a bit of a friendly rivalry between PA (what we in town call Philips Academy) and AHS (Andover High School, my school). It’s a very very nice school and they have the delightful tendency of hiring cafeteria workers who A) do not speak english and B) do not check for student IDs. Free food for the townies! 
Interestingly, one of my good friends’ dad is a minister at PA. Though my friend lives on PA grounds (in a girl’s dorm, no less), he hates the school and attends Andover High. I always thought his life would be a great basis for a sitcom.
Hey, when I went to Bronx Science Stuyvesant was in its old building–Chelsea somewhere, right?
To us BSers, Stuyvesant was stuffed with rich spoiled Manhattan poseurs who were too delicate or snobby to brave the subway to Brooklyn Tech or the edge of Riverdale, where we were.
But the behavoir of the students at Stuy on 9/11 was indeed admirable.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology remains the only public school in the U.S. which has a supercomputer available for student use.
They now have a Cray SV-1, which replaced their previous supercomputer which was won in a nationwide school competition sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 1987.
I’m amazed nobody mentioned Sidwell Friends. You know. The one Chelsea Clinton graduated from. If I were living in DC I would sell organs to get my kids into that school. Basically the connections you make there = made for life.
How about $39,288.75 per year for a private boarding school with an American high school program - in Europe.
If you want to get a quick idea of where the elite science students are coming from check out the Intel Science Search Awards.
Intel Science Search Semi-finalists
BTW, Stuyvesant High School in New York City (an elite public school) had 19 semi-finalists, the same number as the entire state of California.
I go to a public school in a run down building–but everyone has to take a test to enter, and you get kicked out if your grades go below a 2.5 for more than a semester.
Magnet High School in NJ is one. I used to go there, but they gave way too much work. I ended up transferring to a public high school.
If you google for “Magnet High School,” you’ll find that some of those elite schools you mentioned are part of the club. I believe JFK is one of them.
A side note: I get much better grades than my friends who go there.
Spartydog wrote:
“Stuyvesant High School in New York City (an elite public school) had 19 semi-finalists, the same number as the entire state of California.”
Hehehe.
Mehitabel wrote:
“To us BSers, Stuyvesant was stuffed with rich spoiled Manhattan poseurs who were too delicate or snobby to brave the subway to Brooklyn Tech or the edge of Riverdale, where we were.”
Well, to us Stuyvesantians, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech was stuffed with the kids who didn’t score high enough on the entrace test to make Stuyvesant! It’s true too. Our qualifying score was the highest of the three schools. Hehehe.
Personally speaking, I had to haul my barely-awake ass every day on the crowded B-train for an hour each way between Bensonhurst Brooklyn and East 15th Street in Manhattan. NEVER, EVER, EVER got a seat on the morning ride.
On top of it all, this was during the high water mark of the NYC fiscal crisis – so I rode the shitty, rusty and unreliable 75-year-old trains to my decrepit, tired 75-year-old high school building where kids were packed into overcrowded, undersupplied classrooms and labs. My classmates – most middle class kids from the outer boroughs too – did the same routine or worse. Rich and spoiled? I don’t think so, bub.
But despite all the hardships, I still miss being the person I was when I was 17.
[Smilies to everybody, even the BSers!]
Masco is comparable to Phillips Andover in reputation or quality? I’d have to disagree with that. Maybe it’s comparable with the Prep (St. John’s Preparatory School), but the private schools in the context of this discussion?
Well,I’m from the Baltimore,MD, area. We are not known for our excellent public schools. Inner city = demilitarized zone and even county schools are a bit untrustable. Hence, alot of old catholic and private schools are still around. Mount Saint Joseph and Cardinal Gibbons are two that was founded by Xavarian brothers. http://www.msjnet.edu/ Cardinal Gibbons is the campus where Babe Ruth went to school.
However, neither is extremely elite or uber expensive. Still, that doesn’t mean they aren’t great schools. I realize $6000 a year is alot, but they are good schools. Plus, 6000, isn’t much compared to Stone Ridge high school. It’s an all girl high school closer to Washington and it’s at least twice as much for tuition,probably more. Apparently big shots like Arnold Schwarzenegger hang out there because his wife is an alumni. Then there are so many others. Mount De Sales, Seton Keough, Notre Dam Prep, Calvert Hall, Spalding, Dematha (I think thats how it’s spelled), etc.
Personally, I think reputation is so hard to argue over. I mean… in the U.S. college is the big thing. We measure a high schools success in how their graduates get into colleges (or if they do). Going to Mount Saint Joe or Andover might be nice, but when it all comes down to it, it’s the guy with the MIT degree in physics that is really the big shot.
Right down the street, sort of, is Troy High in Fullerton, California. It has been converted from a normal public school to one demanding elevated test scores from the entering 9th graders.
In America private schools are set up primarily for three reasons:
First, rich snobby parents who think that their little brat is “too good” to go to the local public school, even though the people live in an exclusive suburb and the Public school’s education is about as good. Just snobby bastards. (Pay 15,000 dollars so that my pre-pubescent Brittany Spears/Eminem Clariol hair spray addled brain can attend the eighth grade? I would’nt love her that much.) I love the name “Hockaday”. Really it should be called Hock three monthes of your income Day School".
Second, religion. Mainly either Catholic or Fundamentalist schools. I have Catholic cousins whose father sent them to catholic school. Same is true of my neighbor across the street who sent his two kids to Catholic school instead of my alma mater (please don’t joke about me, my school was very good, an excellent theatre department, which has produced a cast member of SNL).
Third, Racism. This is why I went to public school for the first eight years of school. The school was owned by a sadistic bitch (who was Catholic). Her last name was Frady and I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. This school was a just a business and had no connections to a church. The bitch just took advantage of bussing and integration of the 1970’s to make a lot of bucks.
Many schools are still operating, I would say primarily in the southern USA because of racism. The schools in Mississippi are still segregated, but now, the white parents pay for it now.
(correction to above)
I meant my daughter, not me. I am not a hetrosexual Michael Jackson.
Don’t forget Dalton.
At any rate, you’ve been educated well enough to close all your parentheses. So feel good about yourself!
Day schools for girls:
The Agnes Irwin School, Rosemount, Pennsylvania
The Bryn Mawr School, Baltimore, Maryland
The Chapin School, New York, New York
Mary Institute, St. Louis, Missouri
The Winsor School, Boston, Massachusetts
Day schools for boys:
Collegiate School, New York, New York
The Gilman School, Baltimore, Maryland
Marquette University High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
St. Louis Country Day School, St. Louis, Missouri
St. Mark’s School of Texas, Dallas, Texas
Coed day schools:
Charlotte Country Day School, Charlotte, North Carolina
The Dalton School, New York, New York
The Episcopal Academy, Merion, Pennsylvania
Hawken School, Gates Mills, Ohio
The Latin School of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
The Lovett SchoolAtlanta, Georgia
Girls’ boarding schools:
Dana Hall School, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Foxcroft School, Middleburg, Virginia
The Hockaday School, Dallas, Texas
The Maderia School, Greenway, Virginia
Miss Porter’s School, Farmington, Connecticut
Boys’ boarding schools:
St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy, Delafield, Wisconsin
The McCallie School, Chattanooga, Tennessee
St. Stanislaus College, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Woodberry Forest School, Woodberry Forest, Virginia
Coed boarding schools:
The Cate School, Carpinteria, California
Choaet Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Conecticut
Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts
Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia
Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts
The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Connecticut
The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire
Middlesex School, Concord, Massachusetts
St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire[URL=http://www.ststan.com]
(Continuing my petty, indulgent, borderline-embarassing rant about how tough I had it going to Stuyvesant HS in the '70s…)
And we had NO LOCKERS! Can you believe that? Let me repeat it: NO LOCKERS!
One of the best HSs in the world with kids commuting all over the friggin map by subway, bus and ferry – NO ONE came by car – for sometimes up to 2 hrs. each way, and we had to lug every damn text book on our backs doing it! From home to school and from class to class. I would go to other schools and see these metal boxes lining the walls and my eyes with tear over in envy.
A few years after I graduated the Parents Association got very active in the school. One of the first things they did was raise money to buy lockers. Years later they abandoned the old building entirely and moved into a brand new one (the one not far from the WTC). The new one, of course, had lockers. And ESCALATORS too! What, no more sprinting from gym class in the basement to Biology on the fifth floor via metal-caged stairways that would make Attica look like a health spa? Geezus, kids today have it too damn easy.
I went to a pretty good high school in colorado, education wise. Littleton High School. People in colorado can go to a school different than their local one, and many people outside of Littleton went to Littleton high.
My freshman year we had a new program with vastly different graduation standards than any other school in the stat.
But a new school board was elected on a “Back to basics” platform and they took away our program and we went back to, get D’s and graduate (as the principal described normal graduation programs).
Then by my junior year our school joined the International Baccalaureate program, but people have to start as freshman in that program so I was never in it myself.