"competitive" public high school

<p>I could go to an IB school Sophmore year.</p>

<p>"NJ private schools are not really better than public schools...The point is that public schools have a lot of money going into them, and students are advantaged accordingly."</p>

<p>let me guess... you go to public school, right? To say that basically every public school near where you live is equal to or better than Lawrenceville is just completely wrong. If that's so, why would anyone in their right mind spend $20+k to send their kid to private school? I know why mine do, and I live in a wealthy central/northern NJ suburb that apparently has "outstanding" public schools.</p>

<p>The best high schools...I forgot where I saw this...in NJ:</p>

<ol>
<li>Monmouth County High Tech</li>
<li>BCA</li>
<li>Union Cty Magnet High</li>
</ol>

<p>how exactly are these "best" high schools determined? and those are just counting public schools right?</p>

<p>is there even a Monmouth County High Tech school? i'm not finding one</p>

<p>I think it's more known as High Technology, at least if that's the school we competed against in the BRITE competition, though I also believe that McNair was the highest ranked NJ school in Newsweek's Top 100 public schools [not positive if any NJ school ranked higher, but they definitely were in the top 100 of the nation, so..]</p>

<p>Ah, found it. Hmm yeah 2 of the public schools have higher SAT averages than mine. 1372 for Monmouth Tech and 1354 for Bergen Tech, those are pretty impressive</p>

<p>unwritten02 - can you not hijack this thread into a public v. private school debate? There's another thread for that.</p>

<p>I'm just saying, to make statements such as "just about every public school here...is as good as or better than any private school here - including Hun, Lawrenceville, Nottingham, Peddie, and Princeton Day..." is completely wrong</p>

<p>You do realize that you skipped over the part where I said "in Mercer County", right?</p>

<p>Same thing. The school with the highest avg SAT score in Mercer County is WW-P South, with 1244. That's a good score for a public school but my school's avg is 1340 and my school is not near the same tier as Lawrenceville so I'd assume Lawrenceville's avg is much higher than 1244. </p>

<p>But SAT scores aren't everything, so besides that: look at the college matriculation data from Lawrenceville and then tell me nearly all public schools in Mercer county are as good as or better than it</p>

<p>man oh man, unwritten, you and your passionate, annoying, misplaced support of private schooling. I wonder why you waste your time looking up all of these SAT averages and what not. No one wants to get into the debate. </p>

<p>On a seperate note, do most schools across the country have Academic Decathlon? Just wondering because my school placed in the top 5 but I'm not really sure how expansive of a competition it is.</p>

<p>We just started Aca Deca three years ago [reinstated after our team made states and felt like partying all night a few years ago], but hmmm, yea we've actually made it to states three years running though we've never cracked the top 10 though we come close. But I know that it's $1000 to register and $1000 for either nine or ten sets [depending on if the coach gets a set, can't remember] of materials for the ten sections or rather seven since you don't really get anything for essay, speech, and interview, but you know. Though damn those Old Tappan [though they've disappeared since their coach retired] and Indian Hills kids :p</p>

<p>I know my school has AcDec, but I don't follow it too closely. I just know that they made states this past year.</p>

<p>Tonyt88 where you from?</p>

<p>im from indian hills....and it was mad crazy all over the school, especially since we made it to nationals, i was on acadec last year when we placed 2nd to old tappen...wat a bummer</p>

<p>i got ya, yea we're pequannock, perhaps the most hated team in our region, but it's all good, though yeah i was on the team the past three years, and it was good times, yeah bummer, i actually wanted you guys to win over old tappan b/c it gets so boring that they win every year, so...</p>

<p>bergen county academies is pretty elite among the public schools in NJ.</p>

<p>admissions rate into the HIGHSCHOOL itself is now below 20% for the county.
it's getting crazy in terms of competition, and it's not even college!</p>

<p>as for my class, class of 07, we got 2 into Harvard early, 2 into Yale early, 0 into MIT (wow...22 deferred, 1 rejected haha GEORGE HOTZ good job there bud XD ) 0 into Dartmouth early (1 deferred, 1 rejected), 2 into Cornell early, 2 into Upenn early, 5 into columbia early, 2 into princeton early. </p>

<p>I'm gonna be going to bowdoin ^.^'</p>

<p>yeah BCA is prety good .</p>

<p>New Jersey Top Public High Schools
1) Math, Science, & Technology High (Morris County Vo-Tech)
2) Bergen County Academies
3) High-Tech (Monmouth)
4) Magnet (Union County)</p>

<p>Based on average SAT scores. I know #1 was a 2038 and #4 was a 1923.</p>

<p>Hm. The term competitive is pretty subjective.</p>

<p>I think my school is competitive. We have plenty of APs- two AP english classes, AP Micro and Macro, Euro, American History, AP French/Spanish, AP Bio/Chem/Physics, AP Psych... probably more that I can't remember. Even the college prep classes are hard- I'm only in CP Precalc this year and the teacher doesn't take it easy on us at all. The entire Math department isn't allowed to curve tests or give extra credit, if you fail, you fail.</p>

<p>Plus, my school has some pretty smart kids. 1 ED to Yale, Cornell, U Penn and Columbia; plus plenty of deferrals to MIT. There are probably more that I just don't know about, I'm not very connected when it comes to knowing about these things. I also know that a lot more kids applied RD than ED, so a lot of people are still waiting.</p>

<p>I know that probably isn't at all competitive compared to some schools, but that's just my opinion. I actually like my school- the teachers are good, and while some of the kids in my grade are complete slackers, I feel that the majority are interesting and smart.</p>

<p>people usually add in 'competitive hs' to make their low rank seem better. however, really competitive schools like TJ don't rank because the competition that ranking fosters would be detrimental to the learning environment.</p>

<p>competitive is a highly subjective term. some people use it to justify their ranking. some are actually competitive schools. my suggestion is to take it with a grain of salt, i guess.</p>