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Schools like these magnet schools provide an atmosphere of academics and nurturing, so that students can study.
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<p>You are exactly right. </p>
<p>The environment that is created is one that is conducive to learning and wanting to excel. Combine it with the fact that most of the students who attend are bright and the faculty consists of committed teachers who are very appreciative of the calibre of the students and it is not surprising that these schools do so well.</p>
<p>In addition to the star status of TJ, Fairfax and Arlington County schools are very good. Many of them make Jay Mathews list of top public high schools.</p>
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"And, yes, the Bethesda Md. public high schools have also been highly rated. There has been so much growth in that area (and therefore new schools) that I am no longer sure of the top ones - I believe also that the "Bethesda" good school reputation has expanded to nearby Rockville/Gaithersburg/Potomac."
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I must really be an ignorant teenager, but I've lived in Montgomery County, MD my whole life. And while BBC has its merits, the top, by reputation, are the three W's: Wootton, Whitman, and Churchill (<em>W</em>inston Churchill). Wootton is in Rockville, Churchill is in Potomac, and Whitman is Gaithersburgish. These three consistently have top SATs score, large groups of kids taking AP & getting passing/high scores, and large percentages considered college ready.</p>
<p>Hope I didn't insult any BBCers... but that's just my take on things... I knew Mont. County had good solid schools, but didn't think them to be <em>top</em> in the nation. I guess when you take away all the schools with magnet or IB programs...</p>
<p>This site gives some interesting comparisons, it shows a fairly accurate ranking by state, at least for the few that I have any knowledge of. Unfortunately there is no way to correlate it across states since they use different standards to rank them, i.e. regents exam scores for New York or Ill Standard Achievement Tests for Illinois. Average SAT scores may be misleading for non-magnet public schools. They start with a more intellectually diverse population but there is also the question of which students take the test. Here in the midwest the ACT test is the standard and at the top ranked high schools virtually all the students take it. It is actually part of the state-wide standardized tests that are administered to every junior but only students planning to apply to selective colleges typically take the SAT.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree that these schools take good students and make them even better. Not having to teach to the middle as they do at most high schools, the teachers can take these kids further.</p>
<p>oh yeah? my h.s. has acceptances to Laney college, the prestigious DVC (tons), the highly-ranked Vista community college and the #1 ranked Alameda college. we got like 10 national merit semifinalists and like 40 commended... all only out of a 700 person class. Now what? </p>
<p>btw: TJ is really really impressive. Thank god i didn't have to go there.... (musta been very stressful to compete with those kids)</p>
<p>I had alot of friends who attended Stuyvesant and Bronx Science back in the stone age when I was in HS, I lived in NJ so wasn't eligible but I doubt I could have made the cut. They were extremely competitive drawing the brightest kids from all over NYC. My friends all lived in Queens and had hours long rides on the subway to get there. They did manage to get most of their homework done during the commute. I don't think putting schools like this or similar magnets into the same category as publics is appropriate. Their admission policies and resources are much more like elite private schools. What I want to know is what are the top hs that draw from their district population. I'm sure we'll see a high correlation between success and money but I think it would be more meaningful as to which schools are achieving more as opposed to which shools have the smartest kids.</p>
<p>The top non magnet high schools are going to be totally correlated with high incime and lack of diversity. I believe Westchester County in NY has many of these.</p>
<p>Average SAT scores seem a tremendously poor indicator of how well a school educates its students. Our local public high school is rich in diversity (50% non-white, maybe 5% of that are Asian), on the surface, the average SAT of 1000 or so sounds terrible in comparison to what has been quoted in this thread. Some kids score really low, some end up with perfect scores, 5's on numerous APs, great grades, etc. Would you hold it against that top of the line kid, just because they haven't had access to "better" schools? As long as they have a peer group of similarly abled students in their honors classes, does it really matter than in the class next door there are kids struggling just to graduate? Perhaps they bring with them greater insight into the real world.</p>
<p>Hunter College High School - diverse public magnet grades 7-12 in NYC - draws from all five boros - admission by test - was ranked #1 public in terms of percentage of students going to HYP (or maybe it was to Ivies) in an analysis by Worth magazine a few years ago.
This year's Intel winner was from there. Graduating class about 180; at the top or near the top in percentage of NM semi-finalists; 10-12 to Harvard each year</p>
<p>MomofFour, I think I could have written your post and plugged in our high school, other than we don't have the racial diversity but we have other diversity. The rest of what you wrote fits to a T.
Susan</p>
<p>my high school, Horace Greeley (in Chappaqua NY), which is a top hs, has an avg SAT score of 1250 :-D and somewhat large # of students go to ivy leage colleges... something like like 15%, and the graduating class is like 300 or so</p>
<p>"I don't know about TJ, but the top scoring magnets in NY have student bodies that are nearly all Asian. These kids were brilliant when they got there!"</p>
<p>I assume that this implies that it could help the mean SAT reach even higher.
This is NOT necessarily true. The average SAT scores of Asians have trailed the scores of white until recently. The advantage in Math was mitigated by a disadvantage in verbal. While the SAT of Asians is slightly higher in the middle of the bell curve, it is not so at the end of the curves. The highest combined scores are still predominantly white, and especially the scores of jewish students. The fact that white students outnumber asians by 6 or 7 to 1 plays an important role as well. </p>
<p>To get a glimpse of how far the verbal scores trail, look at the bottom of distribution of the SAT Chinese for a small footnote that shows the average scores SAT of the students who take the test. Assuming that most students who take the SAT Chinese are indeed asian, it is natural to conclude that the verbal scores of asians trail the math scores by 140 points. </p>
<p>Actually, that wasn't meant to be my point. My point was lack of diversity and that it's ashame to have to give that up to get high scores. Anyway, someone pointed out they are only slight majority Asian, which is more diverse that I thought.</p>
<p>In NYC, admission to Hunter takes place earlier than the other selective public schools. The competition for it is staggering, at least at the elementary school level where I encountered it. People who get their kids into Hunter Elementary feel like they've hit the lottery, because they have virtually a private school education for free. I've heard of people passing up career moves because they didn't want to have to take their kids out of Hunter.</p>
<p>My eldest was a finalist, passing the IQ test and maybe something else, but then didn't make the last cut. So near, but yet so far...</p>
<p>As stated therein: "University High School's Advanced Placement program is at the head of its class globally when it comes to testing success, according to the board that oversees testing around the world."</p>
<p>My S was admitted to UHS, but opted for a more balanced/artsy private HS, and will be attending the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Alas, if he'd gone to UHS for free, we might be better able to afford NYU. But then, would he have been admitted to Tisch if he'd gone to a HS that focused so much on academics over the arts? I'm so tired of all this!!! Obsession, obsession, obsession.....</p>