Parent realizing I'm lost

High schools with lots of kids can still have high average ACT scores. Our class has 750 and average ACT of 28. The class profile divides the scores up by groups. 170 kids at 33+.

@Knowsstuff I have friend whose D is about to start at Lane in the fall. He started to tell me about the process to get in there and places like Walter Payton. Didn’t sound like fun.

I graduated from Lane Tech! Loved it.
I wonder if the STEM kids still have to take 2 yrs of shop and 2 yrs of drafting…and the passing periods are still 4 minutes.

Back in the covered wagon days when I was about to enter HS, the boundary for Lane Tech was to have an address north of Madison (or was it Roosevelt?) Anyhow, quite a few of my elementary school friends would somehow get fake addresses, walk a mile to the Western Ave bus station and take an almost 1 hour bus ride to there. Whitney Young had just opened up but they had a tight lottery in those days. That was it. Either Lane/Lindblom (didn’t want to endanger my life taking public transportation there), or Young. I chose to screw it and stay with my fairly terrible local HS. It worked out ok… Anyhow, it’s nice to see that there are at least 5-6 elite school options for CPS high schools nowadays.

It is nice that there are several elite school options in Chicago. And then if you consider the top students at the suburban schools, it’s no wonder a lot of students leave the state for college. A huge number of very smart high school graduates are produced every year. UIUC, Northwestern, U of Chicago, etc can only accommodate so many…especially with the desire for diverse student bodies and the demand for certain majors.

The process is explained in the link I gave above. It’s crazy. If you score in the top percentile then you can like choose your school, which is what my son did. If you score lower then it’s by which Tier you live in and what scores can get you into what. For the top 2 schools it’s been legend that getting into them is harder then the Ivys. They are run like private schools.
Lane has really come on strong in science and math. They have a great 7/8 grade accelerated program like Whitney Young. Kids come out to advance. Some are taking trig or Calc in Freshman year. Some have already had some of their basic science classes. Etc.

Wow…crazy indeed. On one hand, it’s great that CPS schools are providing challenging learning environments and churning out great students. On the other hand, the stress must be very high.