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Phoenix Back To School SectionAist sBY JARED R. CLOUD%u201cAfter you fail the Hunter test, where else do you go?%u201d asks Elizabeth Ubell of 2nd Street.A senior at Manhattan%u2019s Stuyvesant High School this fall, this is her explanation for ending up as a student at the math-andscience oriented school. Hunter, a six-year school for which prospective students are tested in the sixth grade, is regarded as more competitive than Stuyvesant by many students, but by the time eighth graders are looking into high schools, Hunter is years behind them.I didn%u2019t even take the Hunter test. In the eighth grade, I decided that I would go to Stuyvesant. Never mind that it is just above Manhattan%u2019s Lower East Side, an hour%u2019s commute from my Park Slope home. Never mind that it is a public school with almost 2,700 students, and that since kindergarten I had attended a private school which never had more than 600 students in it, from K through 12th grade. And, especially forget about the fact that I knew next to nothing about the school itself, and that at the time, I was only vaguely interested in science and I hated math. I was determined to go, because Stuyvesant had %u2014 and still has %u2014 a hot %u201creputation.%u201dA friend who also lives in the Slope went to Stuyvesant a year before me, and told me a little about it. But the main source I had for information about Stuyvesant is through people at school and my parents.I had known about Stuyvesant since I started junior high school, and had always sort of assumed that was where I%u2019d go. I became less sure when I realized I had to take a test to get in.HARDEST IS STUYVESANTThe test is also used for admission into the other two science high schools, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School, which along with Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music and the Arts, the High School of Art and Design, and the High School of the Humanities, make up the principal specialized academic high schools.Stuyvesant is generally the hardest of the science schools to get into, but when overpopulation becomes a problem in one of the other schools, they trim down the freshman class by raising the test score needed for admission. Since I am now entering my senior year at Stuyvesant, and am looking at colleges, I do not intend to use the same method.Like Elizabeth Ubell, though, some of my other friends used different criteria than just %u201creputation.%u201d Michael Chaplin, also going into his senior year, looked mainly to Catholic parochial schools. His first choice was Regis, a Catholic school, in Manhattan (which he didn%u2019t get into); and his second choices were Xavier and Stuyvesant. He chose Stuyvesant because %u201cit%u2019s got an easier attitude with sm arter people. And hey, it%u2019s got girls.%u201d Still, not the best way to pick the place where you%u2019ll be spending the next four years (though many I know would disagree with me on that point).USED KAPLAN%u2019S HELPStuyvesant requires a high score on a special admissions exam to get in. There/ \\ P T %u00bb ! - 1 _ ! _____ Ai / i r i C M i g A m g i iJared Cloud participated in the Model City Council as part of a program at StuyvesantHigh School. (Phoenix/Kirk Photo)10 TIPS TO HELP YOUMAKE THE CHOICE1. Make up a list of all the schools that you might be interested in. Cross off any that zoning restrictions prevent you from attending.2. Get a copy of the Board of Education%u2019s Directory of Public High Schools. It costs $2 at the Bureau of Administrative Services, Room 137B, 110 Livingston Street, Brooklyn 1120L Read what it has to say about the schools you picked. Keep in mind that the book tends to make all schools sound equal. Some are more equal than others.3. Talk to your parents, and find out what schools they are going to push you to go to. Most parents have very definite ideas on this subject, and it is best to find out early on what they are. Besides, parents often learn a lot about schools from their friends%u2019 kids and research they may have done.4. Talk to your guidance counselor and teachers. They will also have information and ideas about schools. They may have taught at some, and so have an insider%u2019s view.5. Contact relatives, friends or siblings of friends who attend the schools you are interested in, and find out the things that your parents, teachers and guidance counselors wouldn%u2019t tell you (or didn%u2019t know). Ask about teachers, facilities, strange requirements or rules and crime rate. If possible, get more than one opinion for each school.6. Call the school. Talk to someone in the guidance office, and find out whether or not you have a reasonable chance to get in, what kind of college acceptance record the school has, what kind of counseling students get, how schedules are made.7. Try and visit the school during the day, and sit in on a class. If possible, go with someone you know at the school who can give you a guided tour (this has the added advantage of giving you some idea of where everything is, so you don%u2019t have to hunt for rooms and labs when you%u2019re a freshman). Talk to more students. (You should be getting the message from this list that talking to students who actually go to the school is the most important thing you can do.)8. Talk to kids in your class about the school. What kind of reputation does it have? What are the latest rumors about it?9. Many high schools have open houses evenings, where they invite eighth graders to listen to speeches made by the school%u2019s administration and staff, read pamphlets, and drink juice. Go to these, but take everything that%u2019s said with a grain of salt.10. Above all, don%u2019t panic. You can always transfer to your zoned school, and most other schools take transfer students into the tenth grade.^ C I I U U I%u25a0are numerous tutorial services which attempt to prepare kids for the exam. At the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center, where I went, there%u2019s a catch: there are extra hours and hours of take-home work to do, at a time when you%u2019ve got more than enough pressure and work from your normal classes. Plus, the type of person who applies to Stuyvesant and the other science schools tends to already be very dutiful about finishing assigned work. Which can mean that when the time to take the admissions test rolls around, there are some very flustered and panicked 13-year-olds out there. I know I was.I saw Stuyvesant twice before I became a freshman there. Once, when I took the test, and I was too nervous to notice anything anyway (there are four dates to take the test, all on weekends. One weekend for eighth graders, one for ninth). The second time I was there was at a special night in June for accepted students and their parents. All I really saw this time was the auditorium, and I was so thrilled to simply be there that again, I barely remembered what I saw.SOME SURPRISES IN STOREStuyvesant had some surprises in store even after I took the test. It turned out that in order to graduate, aside from all the academic requirements, I had to take one term of sophomore shop, one year of mechanical drafting (as a sophomore), and one term of double-period senior shop. I hate shop.There were other things about Stuyvesant that I didn%u2019t like. I was only allowed to take one foreign language at a time; previously,I had been taking two. But I later realized that two languages would have been too much work anyway. The lab facilities aren%u2019t quite what you%u2019d expect for a math-science school %u2014 something that will be changing as plans for a new school building for Stuyvesant progress.But, on the plus side my vague interest in science grew, and on the threshold of my senior year I%u2019m seriously considering a physics major in college. Last year I took calculus, and decided that math wasn%u2019t as bad as I had thought.Another plus, too, comes when you begin to talk to colleges you might be interested in attending. I%u2019m finding that when you answer %u201cStuyvesant%u201d to the high school question from many admissions officers; their eyes glaze over, their knees get weak, and their pulse speeds up %u2014 well, sort of.On the down side, however, some schools have higher admissions standards for kids from Stuyvesant, because so many of its students apply to the prestige colleges.It was pure luck that I ended up liking Stuyvesant as much as I did. There was a good chance of my hating it, and then I would have been in trouble because I had no desire to go to my zoned high school, and since I never learned anything about other schools in the eighth grade, I still knew nothing about any of the other high schools.As I begin the search for a college, I will keep that in mind, and I will definitely not apply to a college just for its reputation.But, I have heard that Brown%u2019s pretty good, and almost everyone I know is applying ...Heard It Through The Grapevine: A Kid%u2019s H.S. PrimerEverybody has their own way of getting information about high schools. Some get it out of the books, others by talking to friends. Yet others find out the hard way %u2014 through experience. This is what I hear and have heard about some of the city%u2019s specialized high schools and their programs. %u2014 J.C.LAGUARDIA HIGH SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND ART: I%u2019ve heard a lot of things about LaGuardia, mainly concerning the building. Back when I was a freshman, one of Stuyvesant%u2019s magazines did a report on the new LaGuardia High School, caning it a maximum securiiy prison, with cameras in the halls, spot checks on bookbags and so on. Plus, it said the building is falling down around the students (and after the City spent all that money three years ago). Thestudents who go to LaGuardia tend to be avant-garde in dress and temperament.EDWARD R. MURROW: Murrow is a very open school. The small number of guards makes hanging out in the hall and oilier capital offenses almost legal. Students there are very proud of their theater department. The students are also very trendy, especially the way they dress.BRONX HIGH SCHOOL OF SCIENCE:This is a school for all the people who didn%u2019t make it into Stuyvesant (heck, no; I%u2019m not biased). It%u2019s too far out for------------- x -------------x x_ xi--------%u2014 x v . ________ t u i j u u c vu w o r n w g u u i u t u u u i c u u m i,unless you live in the Bronx. But I hear the academics are about par with Stuy, so it does have merits. Those people who show up at the Stuyvesant dances whom you haven%u2019t seen in school go to BronxScience.BROOKLYN TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL: This school is filled with people who didn%u2019t get into Stuyvesant or Bronx Science. The academics are good, and are set up strangely, so that in your junior and senior year you have to take several courses in a %u201cconcentration,%u201d like a college major. It%u2019s too big for my tastes %u2014 4,000 people, let alone 4,000 teenagers, is just too many for one building.JOHN DEWEY HIGH: Under no circumstances could I deal with eight hours of school every day. And it may be in%u2019 * X S l %u00bb _ (P------- ------------X J ------------- 1--------X V - %u00bbJD lU U IV iyil, U U l i t o 1CU o u t , u u m i ujr u m *southern edge of Bensonhurst. School starts at 8am and ends at 4pm, and you can%u2019t leave the building during the day %u2014 not that you can in most schools, but eight hours?MIDWOOD HIGH AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE: Mid wood students seem to think that they%u2019re Brooklyn%u2019s answer to Stuyvesant. They may be right, since their Medical Science Institute%u2019s academic program is pretty good, I hear. But they don%u2019t have Stuy%u2019s reputation. They also have a new humanities program, so maybe the school is trying to be all things to all people.CITY-AS-SCHOOL: City-As is a mishmash of diffemt types of students who didn%u2019t like normal high school, and people who just wanted to try something diff C r C n t ^ A M '%u25a0%u2018 o r * f r n ' H o r o i i t o v f K n i r n o r cand come out with nothing at graduation, but I know people who actually graduated before their contemporaries in other schools. City-As is pretty much what you make it.August 28, 1986, THE PHO ENIX, Pags 21