I kind of know this school because I am from China and I know an alumni of PRISMS from Chinese websites. PRISMS was founded by teachers from a top Chinese high school in Beijing, who established the school in 2013. Half of the student body is Chinese because most of them are chosen from the student body of the Chinese high school in Beijing. It is so focused on STEM that every year, almost half of the student body participates in AIME, but it is not a good school if you are an athlete or musician or you are into literature.
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I think a part what contributes to its rankings is the student body that they admitted. The student are already very talented kids.
I asked my son and he had heard of it primarily because the school competes in some of the local regional science and math HS competitions. He said the rep among students is this is one of the places affluent Chinese families send their students from China to attend as a precursor to applying to Ivy+ US colleges.
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Anecdotally, despite having lived in the area my entire life, I’ve never met anyone who goes to PRISMS, and have only heard of one person who goes there (friend of a friend). It seems like a very insular place; I didn’t know it existed until late in my high school career, and it’s maybe come up in discussion five times. The general impression that the people I know have of it is that it’s mostly international, and the students tend to be very heavily academic (and not much else; one of my friends, who now goes to MIT, explicitly ruled out going to high school there because he wanted a more varied learning environment).
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heyo! im a current student there. I honestly think its one of the best schools ive ever been to. theres like 0 drugs/alcohol and were all pretty well monitored bcs of the small number of students. its an issue if your kid is more social with a bigger group. its very helpful if a student coming in is bilingual in chinese and english, but its completely fine if not too, as were getting more kids from across the world and usually were forced to speak english during the school day. everyone has a very close relationship to at least one of the teachers here.
hope this helps! find me if you have any more questions
I’d hardly call these positive endorsements.
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Is that a comment about the content or the punctuation?
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I am questioning my own English. Is there such a thing as a negative endorsement?
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