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<p>Probably because he is lacking in the cousins’ department. On the other hand, Mini has plenty of parents in India! :)</p>
<p>I’ve never seen PG rant about nerds or intellectuals or anything of the sort. </p>
<p>I agree with her. You don’t seem to grasp that things could’ve positively changed in the nearly two decades since you’ve been in high school.</p>
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<p>Oh. Well, that’s nothing like me. I embrace my nerdy roots, I’m hardly jock-oriented, and I hate sales calls. I am not a social butterfly in the least. And if I were “anti-intellectual,” I hardly would have gone on to an elite school in a rigorous honors program and encouraged my kids to go to similar types of schools. And I’ve posted multiple times about how going to an environment where smarts were valued was exciting and liberating for me. So, I might “remind you” of someone, but you’re completely off base. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, I, like most adults, don’t go ON and ON and ON about high school and the perceptions of teachers in my high school and what other parents of high school classmates did and didn’t do and so on … because it’s not relevant to anything today. I can’t believe no one has ever given you feedback that your high school looms larger in your head than it really needs to. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s no more or less important than any of the other 29,999 high schools in this country.</p>
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<p>Look in threads about the working lifestyles of those in academia or how she disparages what academia considers most important without considering what may be important in the world of business/management consulting isn’t important or sometimes, may even be considered possible negatives by TPTB* in academia even if I disagreed with mini on the degree of absoluteness about those negatives.</p>
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<li>Being “too social” or “popular”…especially among undergrads/parents who aren’t academics tends to be considered suspect among some academics…especially old-school types who feel that’s a form of “pandering”. It’s an attitude I understand somewhat…though feel is over-the-top.</li>
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<p>Forget it, cobrat. Tell me MORE about Stuy. I’m dying to hear even more about it.</p>
<p>Iirc, she said something along the lines of they don’t live like monks like you claimed. That’s not anti-Intellectual.</p>
<p>(I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, pg, if I’m confusing you with someone.)</p>
<p>I’ll let the thread get back on track now. My apologies.</p>
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<p>Considering the headline of the OP’s article combined with what I’ve heard from old teachers/friends who teach in the NYC public school system and my knowledge of NYC educational politics from being a student and a resident…what positive changes???</p>
<p>What’s more interesting is that subsequent local news reports seem to reveal that in most NYC public schools…the “improvements” were mostly a politically choreographed sham. Similar to NCLB nationwide…</p>
<p>Close some problematic schools, move the students…including problematic ones with violent/criminal tendencies to other schools*, and hope they all improve or else blame the teachers when the real roots of the problems lay with the politicians, problematic students, and their parents.</p>
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<li>This factor was how Murray Bergtram HS went from being a desirable HS emphasizing business careers 10-15 years ago to becoming a rowdy violent HS with a poor reputation today. Then again, I will concede this HS as it stands now is a marked improvement over my old neighborhood’s zoned HS right before it closed.</li>
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<p>I would give someone credit for having gone to Stuy, especially if they did well there. Intelligence is a fairly stable trait, and doing well on the SHSAT and at a place like Stuy indicates high intelligence.</p>
<p>I would give someone credit for having gone to Stuy, especially if they did well there. Intelligence is a fairly stable trait, and doing well on the SHSAT and at a place like Stuy indicates high intelligence. </p>
<p>This – and you can not buy your way in.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl and Sybbie,</p>
<p>I disagree with 90% of what cobrat posts. However, it does matter in NYC if you went to one of the top magnets. Stuy and other NYC public magnet grads include this info on resumes for at least 10 years after graduation when applying for jobs in NYC. It does help.</p>
<p>My lawyer kid listed the high school attended on resumes when looking for jobs at NYC law firms. It did come up in several interviews. </p>
<p>As you probably know, the NAACP has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to change the “test only” admissions practices at some of these schools. I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what will happen. However, I know that the alumni of these schools will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. I doubt you’ll find the same kind of zeal in the alumni networks of most public high schools. </p>
<p>It may not matter to either of you where people went to high school. It DOES matter to the grads of these schools–and there are a LOT of them in NYC. Moreover, many people who did not attend these schools see attendance at one as a plus.</p>
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<p>Upon graduating from college, I stopped listing Stuy on my resume. A few years ago at Stuy alum bar nights, several older alums were shocked at that and urged me to list it on my resume as even after 20 years, they’ve found it to be helpful in professional networking/job searches. </p>
<p>Personally, I am on the fence as I’d rather keep my HS networking strictly on a fun social basis like I do with my college networking. </p>
<p>However, there’s much fun value in irritating those like Pizzagirl…as much as I enjoy her comments. 
:D</p>
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<p>Something which concerns me and many other NYers…even non-SHS alums, especially when some of the same educational activists/politicians supporting the suit were the very same ones/similar to those who tried that BS in the late '60s and caused CCNY/CUNY to go to seed within a decade after 1969. </p>
<p>Now that CCNY/CUNY has made many improvements and increased their academic standards…they’re complaining it’s leaving out academically marginal students from the 4-year colleges.</p>
<p>Jonri, in the event that you did not read my post, I did graduate ( with honors) from a specialized high school. as I said in my over 35 years in the work force no one other than the Ap guidance at Stuy cared about where I went to school. In the interview she inquired about knowing about the pressures of attending a specialized high school which is when I mentioned to her that I had attended and graduated from a specialized high school.</p>
<p>And…I’m just saying that some people who did interview my kid for jobs in NYC a lot less than 35 years ago DID care. That’s all.</p>
<p>Care about, or just make polite conversation when it was noticed?</p>
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<p>My apologies. This should’ve said POSSIBLY changed, not positively. I just got a new phone and the typing is much different than my last phone (I lost my handy dandy swipe 
).</p>
<p>I see Stuy/Bx Science as a tremendous plus (and I went to high school in NJ). Students do not get in based on legacy, athletics, AA etc. Its all about brains. IMHO.</p>
<p>It’s all about the results of one test on one day in one month. It’s a tricky test and if the student’s parents can afford a lot of prepping, they can do much, much, much better. The higher the score on the test, the more Asian (mostly East Asian, although there are a good number of South Asians at Brooklyn Tech), with over 70 percent Asian kids at Stuy.</p>
<p>Do you think Chinese kids (the most disproportionate group) are inherently smarter than white kids? The NYC school system has approximately 15 percent Asian kids and 15 percent white kids. At Stuy, 72 percent Asian, 23 percent white.</p>
<p>I say that as the mother of a Chinese girl (and for what it’s worth, Stuy, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech are all around 60 percent boys. Not that she’s complaining about that!).</p>
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<p>Yes, I think they are slightly smarter on average, with an average of 105 vs. 100 for whites – see [The</a> Global Bell Curve](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Bell_Curve]The”>Richard Lynn - Wikipedia). Small differences in the mean of two distributions (5 IQ points is only 1/3 of a standard deviation) can result in large differences in the tails. A second cause of the disparity is that East Asians have a relative strength in math and relative weakness in verbal skills, which make schools such as Stuy attractive to them and motivate them to study hard for the SHSAT. A final factor may be that as a school “tips” Asian, some whites may not want to go there for that reason alone.</p>
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<p>Ok, Beliavsky, go to page 32 of this document and examine the Scrambled Paragraphs section of the SHSAT test:
<a href=“http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/1F19F679-EAAB-4372-A6C7-E89E951E8C6C/0/201213SHSHandbook.pdf[/url]”>http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/1F19F679-EAAB-4372-A6C7-E89E951E8C6C/0/201213SHSHandbook.pdf</a></p>
<p>How could someone with weaker verbal skills do well on this section without a huge amount of prepping? Remember that Stuy requires a score approximately 50 points higher than the next school, Bronx Science. Yes, the composite score gives a slight advantage to a kid with extreme strength in the math or English, over someone with a more even score. But it’s not a huge advantage. Many of the Asians who do very well on the test have parents that don’t speak English and some only started living in the U.S. sometime during elementary school years.</p>
<p>Also, a good proportion of the students categorized as white are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These students and the South Asians and the East Asians all have a very strong culture of test prep.</p>
<p>There are two complete sample tests in the document, plus explanations for the answers. Take a look!</p>
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<p>Stuy was barely over 50% Asian/Asian-American when I started there in the early '90s. There was a greater proportion of URMs as well which is a reason I am a bit disturbed that the percentages of Black students dropped sharply from my time there. </p>
<p>1-3% is much lower than it was back when I was a student. Something which I don’t think could be explained by the test as they took the same type of test we all did to get in. </p>
<p>Some differences which may account for this drop include dilution of K-8 curricula in many NYC public schools<em>…especially in the poorer neighborhoods for the sake of that politically choreographed sham I mentioned in an earlier comment, a greater proportion of URMs who would have attended the SHS opting to attend private/boarding schools on scholarship than in the past, principals of many junior highs discouraging students from taking the test for sake of maintaining their own junior high/local HS ratings</em><em>, lack of information/encouragement to take the test in many neighborhoods due to ignorance/apathy from local school admins/teachers</em><strong>, discontinuing of the summer discovery program for low income students who scored within 60 points of a given SHS’s cutoff due to political machinations from the DOE</strong>**, etc. </p>
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<li>Something I kept hearing from old HS teachers I’ve had who still teach along with friends who now teach in the NYC public school system.<br></li>
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<p>** Even back when I was in middle school, most middle schools only allowed their advanced “SP” students or sometimes only the top portion of them to register for the exam. My middle school was one of the few to allow any student who was interested…even non-SP students to register to take the exam. I was one of the “non-SP kids”. </p>
<p>*** This factored into how despite scoring high enough on the Citywide exams to qualify to take the Hunter College HS exam in 5th grade, my Catholic School was ignorant enough about it to not convey that information to me/my parents until it was too late to register for it. A huge missed opportunity considering one can only take the exam to enter in the 7th grade. The SHS at least allowed two chances for applicants hoping to make it in…enter in the 9th or 10th grade.</p>
<p>**** This program needs to be brought back and allowed to operate on the original criteria to provide a “second chance” and to allow low income students falling slightly short of the cutoff to prove they could handle the workload and rigor and thus, qualify for admission.</p>