Newsweek releases Top 1000 high schools in the nation.

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Xonoahbin

Senior member
Aug 16, 2005
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295 Cheyenne Mountain Colorado Springs Colo.

My school absolutely hates that school..

 

91TTZ

Lifer
Jan 31, 2005
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Originally posted by: miniMUNCH

What about college placement, SAT scores, etc.

If you look at SAT scores, the list would look even more biased. People with liberal beliefs would not like the way reality turns out.

If you do some research, you'd find that SAT scores correlate closely with race. When you have a sample size in the millions, it's not going to be due to a statistical abberration or fluke.

The scores correlate more closely to race than to wealth. Poor Asian children still score better than wealthy black children. Schools with high percentages of white/asian kids are going to score better on average than schools that have high percentages of black/hispanic kids. Sure, there will always be statistical outliers, but when you're talking about millions of people, averages rule.

There are times in life when people cannot handle the truth. Sometimes the truth is painful, or simply not socially acceptable. This leaves people scrambling to devise other explanations, none of which hold up under scrutiny.

I did not make the facts the way they are- I'm just reporting them, so don't blame the messenger.
 

91TTZ

Lifer
Jan 31, 2005
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Before anyone gets their panties in a wad, I think I should explain something.

Does the fact that certain groups of people consistently score lower on tests make them inferior or less of a person? No, it does not. It only tells you that they don't perform as well at certain cognitive tasks. If you ask me, there are a lot more important things in life to focus on, such as one's propensity to help people or make them feel good. I think American society has become sick with its lust for money, and the lengths we'll go to get that money. Nowadays, the value of a person seems to be gauged by how much money he makes, which is really messed up when you consider that humanitarians generally make next to nothing.
 

Theiananator

Senior member
Dec 6, 2004
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81 Boston Latin Boston Mass. 3.398 29.0 71.6



What a stupid system. All good high schools put a cap on the number of AP's you can take. If thye didn't people would fvck themselves over because they wouldn't have the time to do all the work and their GPA's would die.

EDIT: My school has 30 seniors going to Harvard next year.
 

Dessert Tears

Golden Member
Feb 27, 2005
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#1 has an index of 14.128? That's ridiculously high. What's generally considered "passing" for AP: a 3?

Originally posted by: AznMaverick
whoa, none of the schools here in hawaii are on that list at all...haha.
Public schools, which is not really a surprise. If your comment is meant to rag on the numerous private schools, they're not included on the list. My guess is that the "two that matter" would have Index scores around 3-4.
Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
This is while back for me...but when I was in HS taking AP's most of my friends were not taking AP's at all because the schools they were going to (MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvey Mudd) DID NOT accept AP tests for full class credit.
Not taking APs at all seems pretty severe. IIRC, Harvey Mudd accepted almost nothing, but the other schools you list gave some specific credit, general credit, and the privilege of taking placement exams.
 

JDrake

Banned
Dec 27, 2005
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Originally posted by: Brainonska511
Originally posted by: hypn0tik
I'm an idiot for quoting all of this stuff.

Wow. Longest post ever?

You may remember the story/post of Nate the Snake...
Or on freakin' pi day some idiots made the first couple infinity-sets of pi in one post

And the reason I c/ped that was so people could do a control F all at once and not on each page
 

lukatmyshu

Senior member
Aug 22, 2001
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My high school had a ** next to it (Troy #46) which means that it only gave IB scores. Now I attended 8 years ago so much might have changed, but I'm pretty sure that there were less students enrolled in IB than those who took AP (with good cause, AP tests are *much* easier than IB tests). Since this would only hurt Troys ranking, I wonder why they did it?
 

eits

Lifer
Jun 4, 2005
25,015
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www.integratedssr.com
my old high school is 367th. it used to be in the 200s when i was there :(

it's all because my principal left the school and some new dictatorial douchenozzle took over.
 

sunzt

Diamond Member
Nov 27, 2003
3,076
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Public schools are ranked according to a ratio, devised by Jay Mathews, that is the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a school in 2005 divided by the number of graduating seniors

This ranking is pretty useless since it doesn't factor in the SCORES of the tests. You can just have a lot of people taking AP tests, but averaging like a 3.4 vs a smaller indexed school with a higher average.
 

miniMUNCH

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2000
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Originally posted by: Flatscan
#1 has an index of 14.128? That's ridiculously high. What's generally considered "passing" for AP: a 3?

Originally posted by: AznMaverick
whoa, none of the schools here in hawaii are on that list at all...haha.
Public schools, which is not really a surprise. If your comment is meant to rag on the numerous private schools, they're not included on the list. My guess is that the "two that matter" would have Index scores around 3-4.
Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
This is while back for me...but when I was in HS taking AP's most of my friends were not taking AP's at all because the schools they were going to (MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvey Mudd) DID NOT accept AP tests for full class credit.
Not taking APs at all seems pretty severe. IIRC, Harvey Mudd accepted almost nothing, but the other schools you list gave some specific credit, general credit, and the privilege of taking placement exams.


Well...this was 12-13 years ago. Most of the folks I talked to @ Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley said the AP's would be a waste of money since I was interested in engineering and they did not accept AP's for science/engineering track calc, chem and physics.

I ended up not going to any of those schools but even at Cal State, my 5 on the physics AP was worthless because it only gave me credit for the non-physical science/engineering track physics.

THe Calc, US history, and government AP got me out of 4 classes, though.:thumbsup:
 

TreyRandom

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2001
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I went to #43 many years ago - the first year the school became an academic magnet. However, as it was the first year that Nashville had any sort of magnet program, many of the teachers weren't used to teaching smarter kids, and it was a complete mess (at least for some classes). I left midway through my sophomore year to go to the school to which I was normally zoned... and ended up getting just as good of an education. It's all in what you put into it.

By the way... the school from which I graduated didn't even make the list.

CLIFFS:
1) Attended #43 about 23 years ago (damn, I feel old now)
2) The teachers sucked
3) Got as good of an education at an "unranked" school
 

Patrick Wolf

Platinum Member
Jan 5, 2005
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My high school isn't ranked at all, actually I don't think any North Dakota high schools are ranked, lol, this state is full of dumbasses. Except me of course, and a small handfull of other people. :)
 

ta8689

Golden Member
Feb 5, 2006
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Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, AURORA, ILL.:
A residential school near Chicago that enrolls 10th through 12th graders.
my friend is attending there next year.
IMSA is a VERY GOOD school
 

Ricemarine

Lifer
Sep 10, 2004
10,507
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AHAHAHAHAHAHA my school didn't even rank!...

Shorecrest High School.

But of course, rich schools like Kamiak got ranked... But at 990 hahaha

Then again, its weird how Garfield and Inglemoor got in, even though they are some of the inner city Seattle schools...
 

Woofmeister

Golden Member
Jul 18, 2004
1,385
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I notice that both Nassau County, New York and Montgomery County, Maryland each have more than five schools among the top 100. Says a lot about how easy it is to create great public schools with a huge tax base and hyper-educated parents, but doesn't tell us much of anything else.

For me, the more interesting questions a list like this raises are whether any schools from less advantaged areas made the list and, if so, how were they able to do it?
 

50

Platinum Member
May 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: DaiShan
Originally posted by: Safeway
Originally posted by: 50
This is a ridiculous way of ranking schools. For example, my school only allows about 95% of the class to take maximum of 3 AP's (the top 5 percent can take 4); however, I know many high schools that let you take as many as you want. Somehow we are still in the top 100.

That's the shittiest rule I have ever heard. I took 18 AP classes, 17 AP tests, and passed all 17.


If it's a public school it isn't a bad rule. Public school AP exams are funded by the school, not the students. When I was in high school some of my friends at public school thought that it was a big joke and actually walked out of their AP tests. No harm, no foul to them. I had extra incentive to pass because my parents told me that if I didn't I would be paying the ~$87 for the test. I'm not sure if they were serious or not, but it got my attention and I passed them all heh :D

At my school we have to pay full price for all of our AP tests.
 

Killerme33

Senior member
Jan 17, 2006
399
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Originally posted by: Homerboy
where'd you football team rank OP? yeah thought so/...

lol

my school:
1019 Chaparral Scottsdale Ariz. 1.118 less than 1 28.8

But I do agree that is a pretty dumb way to rank schools. I know plenty of seniors who aren't taking the AP tests because the college they are going to doesn't accept the credit.