<p>I just have a stupid, mindless but interesting question that I’d want to share here.</p>
<p>Will the top student of Whitney High School (near LA), Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology or Stuyvesant High School be able to go to Princeton, assuming he had maximized all his/her academic and non-academic opportunities in his/her high school, and garnering all the awards he/she got with regards to his/her strong area of passionate interest?</p>
<p>No shaddup</p>
<p>You’re asking a self-fulfilling question. If the student in question doesn’t get into Princeton, then he or she clearly wasn’t the “best student” at Whitney/TJ/Stuy (actually not sure why Whitney is included here - definitely not in the same category).</p>
<p>Most people will say that Princeton is a reach for everyone but … eh, if you’re talking about TJ I’d imagine so … I mean private schools like that send 30-40% of their students to Ivies + Stanford + MIT.</p>
<p>TJ and Stuyvesant are famous public magnet schools.</p>
<p>It’s hardly impossible that the #1 student at either would be turned down at Princeton. But not very likely. And there would probably have to be some enormous character issue. Those are probably the two most impressive public high schools in the country, and very competitive. I’m sure both send multiple kids to Princeton every year. If a kid is seen as THE top student there, that’s a very powerful argument for admission anywhere. The same is true with a handful of private schools, mainly the top boarding schools, a few in NYC, Harvard-Westlake in LA, a couple in Washington.</p>
<p>The top student at TJ or Stuveysant will most likely be accepted bar any serious problems on his or her application. Not sure what Whitney is.</p>
<p>Whitney is known to be a competitive high school near Los Angeles. Not Harvard-Westlake, but the rigor there is apparent, it seems.</p>
<p>From <a href=“http://www.ap.org/california/schools/hstenth.html;[/url]”>http://www.ap.org/california/schools/hstenth.html;</a></p>
<p>Whitney High School is the top-ranked High School in California.</p>
<p>^ That’s from 1999 and the metric for assessment isn’t even provided. What I’m trying to get across is that Whitney isn’t comparable to Stuveysant or TJ.</p>
<p>It’s probably based on the California standardized test scores, which is blatantly a poor measure of “top schools,” at least when you’re trying to narrow down the top 5.</p>
<p>Where I went to high school all the top students would opt out of taking the state standardized test (with special permission from their parents of course) because these tests always took place the week or two before APs and the top students felt it was a better use of their time to study for APs than take the silly tests. This of course drastically drops the school’s overall performance on this assessment, since most of the top 10% did this. Which ended up sucking for our district since it directly affects how much state funding the school district receives, but I digress…</p>
<p>I’ve never even heard of a student from Whitney, whereas I know tons of kids from TJ and Stuyvesant (as well as places like Montgomery Blair, and of course the private schools). But really only TJ stands out.</p>
<p>Yeah, honestly, I’ve never heard of Whitney High School other than in high school rankings, which are pretty pointless to be honest. The most famous CA high schools are Harvard-Westlake, Lynbrook, Monta Vista, Troy, and mine :)</p>
<p>Whitney is legendary in Academic Decathlon which is where the OP may have heard of them (…the movie Cheaters perhaps? we watched that in AcaDec following nats 
)</p>
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<p>You mean D.C. right? Not the state of Washington? </p>
<p>And assuming you mean DC, would that include Georgetown Day School?</p>
<p>Lynbrook and Monta Vista are famous (apparently), but for whatever reason don’t actually tend to send many people to top schools (other than UC Berkeley), especially relative to many of the other good schools in the bay area.</p>
<p>^ I wouldn’t have mentioned it bc it seems silly but newest newb’s post made me think of it…</p>
<p>I go to a really rural school and almost no one goes to prestigious schools…it’s an accomplishment when some one gets into our main state school. However, once in a while we get someone great who ends up going somewhere: a few years ago MIT, a couple years ago UPenn, this year Harvard, hopefully in 2 years I will be one of those people. </p>
<p>Well, anyway there’s this magnet school a few hours away from us that is the best school in our state…and they kick our butt in every academic competition. However, I don’t notice a huge difference in the colleges they send their students to. The majority of them go to small, private, lower-than-state-school colleges. Their valedictorian went to Georgetown, but their sal didn’t go anywhere special. </p>
<p>Sorry if this sounds like school snobbery…I realize that some people might want to go to these schools. But I had just been thinking about it and newest newb’s post reminded me of it, so I was just wondering if anyone experienced something similiar or could offer an explanation</p>
<p>Thank you. Maybe the school’s name may not tell just goodness in its best students sometimes.</p>
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<p>Are you sure? One of my family friends is (according to my parents) an average student at Lynbrook (he’s going to Berkeley) and he mentioned a lot of acceptances to top schools, especially MIT.</p>
<p>And “most famous” is probably different in different parts of CA I guess. I probably exaggerated on Monta Vista but Lynbrook is pretty well-known.</p>
<p>According to Princeton Facebook, there are a total of 4 students currently at Princeton who went to Lynbrook HS.</p>
<p>And just for the sake of ending this thread:
52 current students from TJ
24 from Stuyvesant
2 from Whitney</p>
<p>@ newest newb…Can you only get that because you are going to Princeton next year? If so, if you get a chance would you mind looking at from which high schools PA Princeton students are from? If it’s too much trouble don’t worry about it…I was just wondering :)</p>
<p>Yes. Indeed Whitney may not be the best public school in CA after all…</p>
<p>But then, the point is, the top students from the top rigorous schools like TJ and Stuy can have a high chance of enrolling into Princeton.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If YellowDaisies’ question is answered, then the thread should be closed.</p>
<p>@ ruennsheng…sorry not sure exactly what you mean - was I not supposed to ask that? Sorry!</p>