<p>I adore my school. It has tons of APs, honor classes, sports teams, and even more clubs then imaginable. It's huge and pretty competitive. I'm not sure of the exact number but I've heard rumors that the freshmen class was over 1,200 which would be twice the size of the senior class. Our town has had a surge of people and I think we're the 2nd fastest growing town in the state of texas or the US, I don't recall which. Our town currently has 3 high schools about the size of mine, possibly a little smaller & we're expected to need 7 by 2015. They're in the process of building a 4th which will be finished at the beginning of my senior year, but I doubt I'll transfer.. unless is dramatically effects my class rank :o)</p>
<p>Depends on a lot of different things. At my old hs (I'm first year college), there were about 2,900 (over-capacity, so there are about 20 trailers next to the main building). Good variety of classes, but also HARD to get a decent class rank (I graduated with a 4.0 and wasn't even in the top 25% of my class) Advisors have too many students assigned to them, so they don't know you at all, and you end up getting extremely general advice when you talk to them). Too much competition for extra-curriculars (Couldn't do the musical unless you sing like a star, couldn't get onto many of the sports teams or cheerleading unless you were excellent, student government and "positions of leadership" were near impossible). Lunch room was impossibly crowded - they ended up letting both juniors and seniors leave campus for lunch - not enough room. Good things: No unavoidable cliques, good variety of classes.</p>
<p>I go to a school of about 2100, so we are not particularly small or anything, although not MEGA. We are over-capacity and more people transfer in every year b/c we have the IB program so they add a few portables every year.
I really like my school, everyone seems, in general, pretty nice, althought I know this doesn't really have bearing on its size.
Also, because all my classes are IB, I do have a smaller community right there, but there are 130+ people in my grade who are doing heavy IB so there is still a lot of variety.
As we're over capacity, some of my classes can be really large (my calc class has 45 people and my TOK class-36) but I really don't mind it at all.
We have tons of clubs and like tryinhard said, there is heavy competition, but there's still something for everyone. People are always starting clubs. A few people started a Harry Potter Club in October and there are about 200 members already, so it's fun to be able to do that kind of thing. And also our sports rock, its fun to go to games and everything.</p>
<p>Yeah, so I love my school, on the most part!</p>
<p>My high school had roughly 2500 students when I graduated last year. Not mega, but not small either.
When I started there I was in shock. I'm from a small town (4000ish people) and went to the same school from 1-8 grade. That school had just 600 kids in it. We were bussed to the neighboring city for high school, because no body felt it was worth it to build a school in town that would graduate 70 kids a year. The town also could never have offered nearly as much as the city school did.
I loved my school. I was very shy, and not at all outgoing through elementary and middle school. In high school I was able to take the honors and AP courses. I made friends, and got involved. Sports were big in my high school, and nothing was better than the Friday night football games, surrounded by 1000 or so students and another 1000 or so teachers and alumni. The academics were offered at many levels, and there were loads of classes to choose from. I was certainly challenged in high school (even after coming from one of the best elementary/middle schools in the state). I was able to be involved in extracurriculars. I had soo many opportunities that I never could have had in a small school.
Was the size overwhelming? Occasionally. Did I feel lost in the crowd? Sure, when all 2500 of us were in the same gymnasium. But I also got tons of attention from my teachers. Classes were really fairy reasonably sized. Teachers were always available for help.
I graduated from that school in June. I'm now at the state university, part of a class of well over 3000. And I'm loving it here too.</p>
<p>My school only has 100 kids, and most are freshmen. It's good that you can develop good relationships with the teachers, but there are no electives (except for two that you are required to take - strange, yes) and only a few mediocre sports for extracurriculars. Needless to say, social life kinda sucks. At least most of us can get good recs when the time comes. Our GC is clueless but the teachers are pretty cool. I would love to be a school with more extracurriculars. I play varsity sports, but it wasn't exactly competitive and I would like to be involved in other activities too. My town is SUPER small, so it's hard to find other things to do outside of school. Anyone else in the same too-small situation?</p>
<p>Big schools are better. I go to a school with about 2,800-3,000 kids. Lots of sections of classes, rank looks better, leadership in huge clubs looks better, more ECs available.</p>
<p>I love my small school and couldn't imagine going to a big one. There's a huge international school in Geneva, with three campuses, each with like 1500 students. I think that would be terrible. There about 100 kids in each grade and its so nice because we know everybody (a blessing as well as a curse) We also know our teachers very well, a lot of us are friends with them outside of school. The small class sizes are nice. My math class has 9 people, my German class has 5 people, TOK has 11. It's so nice because it facilitates discussions and the teacher has more time for everyone. I love it.</p>
<p>Hi! My school has about 3700 kids. It used to be set up with two seperate buildings a few blocks apart. One was for freshman and sophmores and the other was for upperclassmen. That system worked pretty well for the past 20 years. The school for upperclassmen had a more relaxed and mature atmosphere, and students seemed to enjoy being there.</p>
<p>However, this year (my senior year), massive construction was done at one building, and the two buildings have "merged" to compensate for the large class sizes. So, now everyone has classes at both schools.</p>
<p>This is pretty awful for everyone. Now, the timid freshmen are forced to negotiate a large campus and deal with the big mean seniors. And the seniors have to deal with the puny freshmen and an administration at one building that seems to think everyone just came from middle school. Everone also faces the logistical issue of getting from one building to another in the alotted 5 minutes. We have over 1100 kids moving between buildings every period!</p>
<p>In addition to all that nonsense, our teachers went on strike for 21 days this year, halting school for eleven thousand students for the the last week of October and the better part of November.</p>
<p>Anyway, that's enough ranting about how my school is making a mess of my senior year. Having a large school is actually pretty nice in terms of educational opportunities. My school offers all but a handful of the AP courses. Actually, students can take any AP as an independednt study course, or if there is enough interest, my school can make a section for that class. For example, if a dozen of my friends and I had decided to take AP Phys C - E&M, there would have been someone to teach it. That's the benefit of such a large student body and faculty.</p>
<p>The large class size makes the social scene a bit different than the stereotypical high school, though. There really aren't any "popular" people, just nice and likeable people. Most students have their own group of friends, which works out pretty well. The only problem is that with 12 different lunches, it is likely that these groups get split up. Some people complain that they know no one in there lunch. Luckily, I know just about all of the seniors in my lunch.</p>
<p>So, with a large school, educational opportunities can be great, social scenes can be different, and logistics are key.</p>
<p>Kennedyk, do you go to new trier? haha your description sounded exactly like it... :/</p>
<p>I also go to the same school munkeegirl does. Stuy pride! It's big, but it's great. Sure some classes are hard to get into, sure, you're a bit of a number... but so many new people to meet! And.. it's medium-college sized! :D</p>
<p>Kelsi? Is that you?</p>
<p>jackson, i'm in the (almost) EXACT same situation...
we have calculus as our elective... kinda ironic, as we're forced to take it.
the clubs (what few there are) consist mostly of the same five or six people. and we're way too small to have cliques - there's like two or three groups of close friends, but no one's really out to get each other or anything.</p>
<p>1400 kids
I see about 18 a day, 30 at max.
Stupid schedule people split up the IB kids into two seperate groups of classes. I basically just go around school with the same 18 people all day. They might as well just stick us in one classroom and have the teachers come to us like in elementary school.</p>
<p>sydney-
you actually have clubs? haha i'm not kidding when i say we don't. the sports are the after-school activities and no one ever wants to play. i'm counting on college for the social life too! it's all the same people here, some from kindergarten.</p>
<p>My school has approximately 3700 students, 800 of whom are seniors. We have around 100 applicants to Cornell every year, and much more to schools such as NYU and Boston University. We are a very competitive school, and we have the highest number of Intel Semifinalists in all of New York City. The atmosphere is very congested with many shortages of supplies. Competition for top tier schools is cutthroat. Schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UPenn, Dartmouth, Columbia, Georgetown, Univ of Chicago, Duke, etc take around 1-3 every year. Cornell loves our school and takes around 10-15 people every year. The school has many opportunities but there are just too many people. An annex to the school has been in the planning stages for 20 years and is still not being built. Our school was built in 1941 and the annex calls for a new building with an overhead bridge connecting the two buildings (unprecedented for a high school in Brooklyn, NY), with state of the art wireless laptops, laboratories, and a huge library. This is of course only going to be built after the class of 2030 graduates. Otherwise, the school is nationally ranked and well-known.</p>
<p>jackson - you can hardly call them clubs, we've got newsletter, yearbook, and student council - no one EVER accomplishes anything in them, but they're the ones that kind of last throughout everything. Our school tries every year to put together a debate team and such, but after the first meeting, everyone forgets about it. As for sports, we had a girl's basketball team in 9th grade... and that was it.</p>
<p>um, yeah its Kelsi.... who are you? and yeah I go to NT</p>
<p>Go Trevs!!!</p>
<p>I go to a pretty big school (little over 3000). I like going to a big school after being stuck in a tiny Catholic school for 9 years, which only had 200 people. </p>
<p>Pros
Good variety of classes to choose from, especially science and social studies.<br>
Lots of EC's and sports-- the more people, the more active.</p>
<p>Cons
Forming better relationships with counselors is pretty hard. Only 7 of them. </p>
<p>Scheduling is a horror for most people. Classes, like AP Chem fill up very quickly. So you just hope you don't get screwed.</p>
<p>I live in the Washington DC area (I get the Post!) and my school has 2,900 students. I like it because it never gets boring. You could just stand around, have no friends, and still not get bored. There are lots of different types of people, but the only real cliques are the minorities (which actually aren't blacks in this case because the school is 57% African American) There are a lot of classes, but chances are you won't get into the electives you want. I was placed in photography instead of drama and i HATE it. Also, at my old school of 270, the principal and deans and teachers I didn't even have knew my name, at my school, if the administration knows your name, you must be a really big troublemaker! All in all, I don't think I would like to (or be able to) go back to a small school again.</p>
<p>there's this one high school (or, should I say, 3 high schools on one campus) in my state that has nearly 6,000 students. it is the 2nd biggest campus in the country.</p>