<p>[Chicago</a> Public Schools : Selective enrollment](<a href=“http://www.cps.edu/Schools/High_schools/Pages/Selectiveenrollment.aspx]Chicago”>Error | Chicago Public Schools)</p>
<p>In Chicago there are a handful of elite magnet high schools called “Selective Enrollment” schools. To get into these schools they take your 7th grade grades, your ISAT (Illinois State Achievement Test) score, and your entrance exam score for the school and use these scores to create one raw score out of 1000. But this score really doesn’t mean anything because, similar to college applications, scores alone aren’t guarantees. (There was an article in the paper about a year ago where some kid scored a perfect 1000 and got denied from the best school in the city.)</p>
<p>The competition to get into the top tier Selective Enrollment schools is worse than some colleges, with often 25-30 kids applying for every 1 spot. The top 3 schools in the state of Illinois (not top 3 publics, top 3 SCHOOLS period) academically are public Selective Enrollment schools, which is pretty great because I was able to get a fantastic high school education for practically peanuts. To get anything close to the academic quality of some of these schools, you’d need to be rich enough to live on the North Shore and go to New Trier, or rich enough to pay for your kid to go to Latin or UChicago Lab School.</p>
<p>The competition has been getting even worse now with the downturn of the economy. People can’t afford private school and Chicago Public Schools outside of the Selective Enrollment schools are abysmal, especially on the South Side. So everyone tries to cram their kid into one of the 5 good schools in the city. Something will have to give eventually.</p>