NYC Moms/Dads: Is It Possible to Get Into HYP From NYC Without a Hook?

jonri
Sun, 05 Aug 2007 15:06:54 +0000

I know nothing about Rosovsky, but I think anyone but an ostrich would admit that when geographic diversity focuses on getting representation from all 50 states, both Jewish and Asian applicants suffer because those groups tend to cluster together. They are not evenly distributed among 50 states. Fred Hargadon at Princeton really emphasized geographic diversity based on state of residence and it was one reason the faculty, particularly Jewish faculty members, were less than enamored with Hargadon.

Following his departure, the president of Princeton made it well known that Princeton wanted “Stuyvesant types”–she used that exact phrase and used her hands to make quotation marks.

It helped that the ONLY NYC Jewish public magnet high school kid Hargadon admitted during one of his last years as admissions director won the award for most outstanding member of the junior class at Princeton. The faculty saw him as living proof that the best thing Princeton could do to make itself a better place academically was to admit fewer suburban jocks from Montana and more kids from NYC public magnets.

My understanding is that the highest # of kids from a Stuy class admitted to Princeton in any given year during Hargadon’s reign was seven. The year following his departure, it was 13. Hunter, another NYC public magnet, had rarely sent more than 2 kids a year to Princeton, and the majority were either legacies or recruited athletes. The following year, it was six. it was almost unheard of for Princeton to take an unhooked applicant from BxS; it does so all the time now.

There are also some excellent Jewish day schools in NYC. The head of Ramaz, one of the best, was very vocal about the fact that while Harvard and Yale routinely took about half a dozen a year, Princeton admitted not one during the Hargadon years.

NYC is VERY different from most cities. While we have plenty of poor folks, the best and the brightest can go to the “sci highs,” Hunter, Townsend Harris, the top track at LaGuardia or top independent schools via Prep for Prep. ( Stuy, thanks to former schools chancellor Rudy Crews, offers special summer programs for the best and the brightest kids from the weakest NYC elementary schools to prepare them to take the “sci high” test. Hunter reserves 15% of its class for the disadvantaged. They take the same test as everyone else.) And the Catholic schools in the City also do a great jo of educating the poor. This is especially Regis,an all-scholarship, all male Jesuit high school which gives an admissions test but admits only a fraction of those who make the cut-off score. The interview is crucial–but so is poverty. While LOTS of very wealthy Catholic boys attend Regis, the poorer you are, the more likely it is you will be admitted if you have equal test scores.

Even kids who go to regular old public high schools can get into Columbia’s and NYU’s programs for poor NYC kids.

NYC is unique among American cities in that it has many, many very wealthy residents living in the city–not suburbia. It is also unique in that many of them choose to send their kids, especially during high school, to the City’s public schools.I firmly believe that, despite all its problems, the NYC public school system offers more opportunities to smart kids from poor families than does any other public system in the US. That is also true for college–HEOP is one of the best programs of its kind.