Hunter College HS is elite, but not part of the public school system. Instead, it’s has quasi-private status of sorts as it’s run under the auspices of Hunter College and CUNY.
There is a separate exam all students, including Manhattan students need to take. However, eligibility to take the HCHS exam is conditioned on scoring high on the city-wide exams earlier in elementary school(somewhere above 97 percentile when I was in 5-6 grade). Also, the application exam can only be undertaken in 6th grade for entry into 7th grade. If a student missed the chance by not scoring high enough on the citywide’s to be eligible or as in my and many other cases…the school admins didn’t provide notification of eligibility and put in the paperwork necessary to register for the exam on time, there was no second chance*.
However, up to half the incoming 7th grade seats used to be reserved for graduates of Hunter College’s selective elementary school which places outer borough residents at a disadvantage as one needs to be a Manhattan resident to be eligible to apply and attend Hunter College’s elementary school.
It is also different from the original 3 SHSs as its academics is centered much more on the humanities and social sciences, not math and science. That’s not to say one can’t get an excellent STEM education at HCHS or by the same token, get an excellent humanities/social science education in the original 3 STEM centered SHSs. However, the prevailing campus cultures are different and some students who need to be around a critical mass of those with similar academic interests may strongly prefer one to the other. This factor was a reason why some HS classmates opted to leave HCHS and take the SHS exam to attend our HS.
As for HCHS being predominantly female, part of it follows similar trends with enrollment in LACs and Arts & Science centered universities considering its academic emphasis is on the humanities/social sciences.
That and HCHS used to be an all-female academic elite high school. Older alums and alum publications from Stuy recounted how HCHS students before the 1960s would take part in dances/social events with Stuy back when it was still an all-boys HS(until 1969). Incidentally,latter has been severely curtailed compared to the time I was applying in the early '90s. the fact Stuy was once all-boys meant a lot of the best SHS applicants passed it up in preference to BxScience as it went co-ed in the mid-1940s. It was only after Stuy went co-ed for a few years did it eventually became considered the #1 choice for most of best applicants.
One has 2 chances for SHS entry if one was turned down to one's preferred choice or worse, shut out. 8th grade for 9th grade entry and 9th grade for 10th grade entry. However, it seems they severely curtailed the latter compared to when I applied.
I find it sad that in these discussions we never hear how to increase black and hispanic enrollment . It seems that the hottest topic is if your child gets rejected what is the best way to get them into a private boarding school.
The best way to increase black and hispanic enrollment is to give them the best preparation for taking the examination. That means having good schools at the elementary and middle school level. Also, having parental and teacher involvement to encourage those kids to set high goals for themselves.
Between 20 and 25% of the class was reserved for Hunter Elementary kids, not “up to half.” The elementary school used to admit 48 students per year; 24 male, 24 female. Usually, 225 students were admitted to 7th grade, including at most 48 from the elementary school. Usually, at least a couple of the kids who had begun the elementary school had left by 7th grade, so most years fewer than 48 places were taken up by kids from the elementary school. (The elementary school now takes 50 kids a year.)
@novadad99 How would you propose having good elementary and middle schools for all. Do you think NYC should start a busing program? Also having a single test be the sole factor has been shown to be an extremely flawed metric. This has been discussed ad nauseum in regards to the SAT test. A large contingent of people believe the SAT test should be eliminated in total in regards to college admission. It appears that Chicago has figured out a system that works for their selective high schools. Why cant NYC do the same? The DOE has referred to the situation in NYC as modern day segregation. I think of it more as a form of Apartheid on display in The center of the Universe
So what did they do in Chicago?
In our county magnet school used to offer free after school admission test prep to URMs. They also used recommendations and interviews during admission process so it was a somewhat holistic process. But they did not practice affirmative action and could not find enough qualified URMs to admit. It is too late to start preparation in 8th grade if base skills are missing.
There are many excellent public high schools in NYC that do not consider test scores, or consider test scores along with many other factors, like grades, portfolios, and interviews. They are not specialized high schools so I guess they’re not as glamorous. But they are still quite good, and depending on the student, might even be better fits than the specialized high schools.
And the sad fact is, as someone else said above, they tend to have very few black and Hispanic kids too. Here’s the data for Townsend Harris, generally regarded as the best high school which doesn’t use an exam for admissions decisions (from insideschools.org):
@shravas I am not sure the point you are trying to make? Are you trying to say if you cant do well on a standardized test then you shouldn’t be allowed to go SHSs but that’s okay because there are other good high schools (as long as you are rich enough to live in District 2- I notice District 2 doesn’t extend uptown very far!!!)
I think Hanna understands but she has worked for the court system I believe
Maybe I didn’t explain what I meant clearly. Townsend Harris isn’t considered a specialized high school. It doesn’t use the specialized high school admissions exam. It does not administer a separate admissions test. It uses the regular “City wides” as ONE consideration in the admissions process. It does use a highly competitive admissions process, which is extremely close to the one the critics of the specialized high school admissions test want to replace it with.
@florida26 Districts do not matter for high school. Some high schools might have a preference for students in their borough, but for instance, anyone who lives in New York City can attend Townsend Harris (and it’s even in Queens!). And along with test scores, they consider grades and attendance.
“Are you trying to say if you cant do well on a standardized test then you shouldn’t be allowed to go SHSs but that’s okay because there are other good high schools”
That’s how it usually works for high school and college.
Note that if you want to get into one of the 8 specialized high schools, you must take a special test. Entrance into these schools, including the 3 most prestigious, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, is determined SOLELY by your score on the exam.
There are roughly 400 high schools which do not use these tests for admissions purposes. Instead they use other criteria. Some of these schools are very, very difficult to be admitted into. Students can apply to up to 12 high schools which they rank in order of preference. They are then notified as to whether they have been admitted to any of the schools on their list and, if so, which one. Some schools don’t fill their spaces.
In addition, students may apply to LaGuardia High School of Art &Music, which uses different admissions criteria.
It is possible to get into a specialized high school AND LaGuardia AND one of the others. If so, you obviously make a choice. This opens a few spaces. Some families choose parochial or independent schools. This too opens up spaces.
The poor souls who didn’t get into any specialized high schools (perhaps because they didn’t opt to take the test) and did not get into any schools they ranked go on to a round 2, checking out the places which still have spaces. Sometimes there are actually some very good schools that have spaces.
@Jonri Townsend high uses standardized tests, grades and attendance. That is NOT what the critics want.
I will give you a couple of quotes from one of the plaintiffs for your edification
"school grades could be one beneficial component of admissions decisions for selective high
school programs, like the Specialized High Schools. Achieving and maintaining a strong GPA
requires not only academic prowess but also measures motivation, personal discipline, and
perseverance.
But grades should not be the only factor used in addition to test scores,
as experience at other top-ranked selective high schools and colleges establishes. Other factors
could include teacher recommendations, proven leadership skills, a commitment to community
service, and other aspects of applicants’ own backgrounds and experiences as well as the
demographic profile of students’ middle schools and neighborhoods—all of which can help asses their achievements and capabilities in the context of the opportunities they have received
before entering high school
20 For example, some states, including Texas and Maryland, expressly require use of
multiple measures (including both quantitative and qualitative criteria) as opposed to exclusive
reliance on standardized tests in their identification of students to participate in gifted and
talented programs. See, e.g., Div. of Advanced Acad. Servs., Tex. Educ. Agency, Texas State
Plan for the Education of Gifted/Talented Students 4 (2000), available at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/gted/GTStaPlaEng.pdf; Md. State Dep’t of Educ., Criteria for
Excellence: Gifted and Talented Education Program Guidelines 1.5 (2007), available at http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/NR/rdonlyres/04AFAD1F-8EC8-4EFE-B183-
16C2B0C4F84B/13371/MDGTProgramGuidelines "
@novadad99 You may want to review the above. It is called holistic admissions
In Chicago specialized high schools, Asians are over represented as,well, at more than double their percentage in the system. But since that is still a small percentage, is not as noticeable. Not as big a difference as in NYC. Sounds like the test there is pretty critical as well.
@florida26 Holistic admissions have not been the panacea you think. The Fairfax County (VA) school system has tried that with admissions to the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology (TJHSST). Since the change to the admission process to TJHSST (which used to be only based on the test) to one including an additional student writing section, middle school grades, teacher recommendations, the result is even fewer black and hispanic students being admitted, and a greater number of Asian American students in the incoming freshmen classes. The only option left to the schools now is to impose quotas as all the other solutions haven’t returned the desired results.