Keep in mind the 690 were those of us who made it to senior year. My graduating class started 9th grade with 950 students* but we had ~ a 28% attrition rate mostly between 9-10th grade because students decided the academic rigor/workload and/or expectations were too high and opted to transfer back to their zoned high schools or in the case of the upper-east sider set…switched to one of the NYC area/NE private day/boarding schools where it wasn’t nearly as “sink or swim”.
- 50 more than the usual expectation of 900 back then.
When I attended Stuy, there was a much higher percentage of URMs attending and Asian/Asian-Americans had just started to exceed 50% of the student body.
Also, most of us were immigrant/first-generation Americans and eligible for free/reduced price lunches with the notable exception of the upper-east sider set. The Asian/Asian-American majority at such schools are still mostly low-income immigrant/first generation Americans…especially those from Flushing which unlike the other two named neighborhoods isn’t a wealthy enclave. Quite the opposite, in fact though gentrification has started to affect it as well.
While I’d admit Stuy and BxSci can be cutthroat and sink or swim, that rep was well known to most applicants long before they opted to take the exam or accept their admission offer. .
Incidentally, from talking to some relatives, college classmates, and colleagues who attended private day/boarding schools…including the NE elite boarding schools…the impression I got was that they were far from being pressure cookers.
In fact, some went out of their way to nurture…sometimes even coddling their students which caused them issues in undergrad and sometimes post-college as I observed with some older college classmates*.
- I.e. Feeling our LAC profs were "too rigid with deadlines" when from my perspective, those same Profs were more than willing to provide extensions even to students who clearly "needed" those deadlines because they goofed off most of the semester...and even then, they still needed more "extensions". Seemed like their private day/boarding schools were willing to provide extension after extension without too much scrutiny.
None of my Stuy teachers would have entertained the idea of providing an extension unless there was a drastic medical emergency or something similarly severe. One teacher I had gave the final grade of D to what was an A paper because it was 2 days late.
None of the college/grad school Profs…or even my employers were an equivalently as strict IME…and I’ve worked in firms/supervisors who were sticklers for meeting deadlines.