High School Guide: Admissions, reviews, and advice

skyfall, yeah, that’s exactly where we’re headed—computer technician
NASA doesn't stand a chance unless they bring back entrance exams; last year they were accepting people with over 77 points, and there's no way they'll hit that mark again

if they implement an exam, then he might have a shot because he absolutely crushes his motherboards

but there are still those vocational technical programs... he'll find a spot somewhere

prep school academics—nearly impossible unless even these "easier" tracks introduce an entrance test🍿

Kate Jackson4 said:skyfall, yeah, that’s exactly where we’re headed—computer technician
NASA doesn't stand a chance unless they bring back entrance exams; last year they were accepting people with over 77 points, and there's no way they'll hit that mark again

if they implement an exam, then he might have a shot because he absolutely crushes his motherboards

but there are still those vocational technical programs... he'll find a spot somewhere

prep school academics—nearly impossible unless even these "easier" tracks introduce an entrance test🍿

That's honestly true.😕

I mean, that's just two B's in core subjects over the last two years of high school.
Which subjects do they actually count toward the score?

They definitely need to introduce an entrance exam.

Computer science is a massive draw right now. If I recall correctly, last year you couldn't even dream of getting into a program in a major city like Chicago with fewer than 70 points... maybe 72 at least, and if you were aiming for a top-tier school like MIT, you'd need even more to account for the decimals.

I don't think they've released last year's official cutoff tables yet; I can't find them anywhere online.

The scoring is based on American History, a foreign language, the MAT, Chemistry, Physics, and technical subjects.

Kate Jackson4 said:Computer science is a massive draw right now. If I recall correctly, last year you couldn't even dream of getting into a program in a major city like Chicago with fewer than 70 points... maybe 72 at least, and if you were aiming for a top-tier school like MIT, you'd need even more to account for the decimals.

I don't think they've released last year's official cutoff tables yet; I can't find them anywhere online.

The scoring is based on American History, a foreign language, the MAT, Chemistry, Physics, and technical subjects.

Honestly, skipping the entrance exam entirely? That just doesn't seem right at all.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I suspect that potential technicians might struggle most with the NASA entrance exams—specifically those core technical assessments—rather than anything else. Another real hurdle could be a language barrier, especially if English isn't their first language.
And just like that, those decimals start piling up...
Honestly, without an entrance exam, it’s a bit of a gamble. You never really know what kind of math and phys background someone is bringing to the table, or what specific topics they're expected to master as they move forward.
The grading criteria—and honestly, even the lectures and project requirements themselves—feel incredibly inconsistent. It’s all over the place.

https://bhvedu.com/2023/01/05/sajam-...nje-u-americi/
Here’s the link—if anyone actually cares to look into it.

Here is the link containing last year's admission point requirements

Kate Jackson4 said:Here is the link containing last year's admission point requirements

This is honestly so fascinating to watch...🤣

It’s especially true once you start heading out of Washington, D.C., or any of the bigger metropolitan areas.
It’s interesting to look at how admissions work these days. You have private and Catholic high schools that accept students with all sorts of different grade point averages, but then you look at the classical academies—which used to be the gold standard and the most rigorous option back in the day—and they actually seem to have the easiest entry requirements in Washington, D.C., especially if you're looking at the advanced language tracks. 🤦)

Everything feels totally upside down right now.
I was looking at the latest numbers for the technician position in accounting and mechatronics over at Mount Rushmore, and someone just jumped in with a 76—which actually puts them at 77.35 total points. It looks like they pulled a couple of Cs in those core subjects, which really shaped the final score. 😲
They’re probably going to have to bring back entrance exams. 🤣

Why on earth would it be considered wrong if a computer technician program required more points for entry than a standard high school diploma track? To me, that makes perfect sense.

What I find truly shocking, though, are the minimum score requirements for STEM-focused academies in smaller US towns. It would be fascinating to conduct a full socioeconomic study on those local populations and their specific educational preferences.

Michelle Nelson4 said:Why on earth would it be considered wrong if a computer technician program required more points for entry than a standard high school diploma track? To me, that makes perfect sense.

What I find truly shocking, though, are the minimum score requirements for STEM-focused academies in smaller US towns. It would be fascinating to conduct a full socioeconomic study on those local populations and their specific educational preferences.

It's because for years, especially around here, the narrative has been that a liberal arts high school provides a "broader" education... so naturally, you wouldn't expect someone with mostly B's (or even lower) to enroll there. Especially not for classical studies, where kids have parents who believed in a broad education as early as middle school, pushing Latin and Greek on them, only to want to continue studying those dead languages later to maintain that breadth...
especially in a place like New York City, where everyone is supposedly a straight-A student.
But the good news is that you can get into high schools—and not just private ones—with just B's, and sometimes even more than that, so it doesn't look like everyone is an honors student.

And it definitely feels wrong that in a school where they don't demand a broad knowledge base or care about a curriculum spanning from antiquity through the Middle Ages, a student showing genuine talent and interest in math, physics, and tech stands no chance if they have more than three B's... they don't stand a chance even if they have great grades overall, provided they just couldn't care less about history or biology, leading to some C's in those subjects, perhaps mixed with some B's in electives like music.

I get that certain paths are trendy, and that mechatronics and robotics are certainly more popular now (and more lucrative in the job market) than a classical liberal arts track, but in this situation, the school should really implement entrance exams. Why let a kid slide in just because they got B's in American History and a foreign language, when they absolutely crush the very subjects the school will focus on so narrowly?
Especially since we know that middle schools vary wildly in the level of math and physics the kids receive, so those A's are definitely not all created equal.

Michelle Nelson4 said:Why on earth would it be considered wrong if a computer technician program required more points for entry than a standard high school diploma track? To me, that makes perfect sense.

What I find truly shocking, though, are the minimum score requirements for STEM-focused academies in smaller US towns. It would be fascinating to conduct a full socioeconomic study on those local populations and their specific educational preferences.

Personally, I find it curious that the cutoff for the STEM track at the high school I attended—which was in a small town—was under 70 points. Back when I was applying, we were still under the old system, but almost everyone managed to hit the maximum 61 points available through regular means (basically straight A's in core subjects plus good conduct), yet there were still people who fell below the line. That was just one single STEM class; there were three other tracks back then, two language-focused and one general, and even then, some kids couldn't get into a high school at all. And that school actually drew quite a few students, myself included, from the surrounding areas.

Nowadays, enrollment quotas are lower, and from what I can tell, there are open spots left in pretty much every program. I suppose that's just a reflection of the current demographic shifts.

Traditionalists have always kept their standards incredibly low 🤷

Parents often try to "sneak" classical languages into their kids' schedules by enrolling them in specialized private academies where class sizes are smaller and the pressure feels a bit more manageable. They figure, "Hey, it won't hurt them," and they just get used to it.

And of course, the entry scores look lower because they’re pulling from a disproportionately tiny pool of students, which ends up stretching that grading scale from a perfect 4.0 all the way down to a passing grade. Given how many kids are hitting those minimum requirements at local three-year vocational schools, I suspect there are still plenty of them out there 😁

Honestly, all this outrage about needing such high scores to get into an elite school like Isaac Newton is kind of ridiculous. It's the perfectly predictable outcome of a policy that decides admissions should be based solely on classroom grades and absolutely nothing else. Any time you make a one-sided decision like that, you're going to see these kinds of anomalies. This isn't a new problem; the current system has been fundamentally flawed for decades, and this is just one more symptom of that deep-rooted issue.

If they actually implemented standardized testing for the specific subjects these schools care about, then a kid's history grade wouldn't matter nearly as much. That would give students the actual power to choose between a STEM-focused academy or somewhere like Isaac Newton.

rowdypanther12 said:Traditionalists have always kept their standards incredibly low 🤷

Honestly, even these "standard" programs have relatively low average scores compared to the rest of our top-tier prep schools. It's not just that the classicist approach isn't trendy anymore; it’s been true for at least a decade now—these are some of the easiest high-level academies to get into, provided you aren't looking at the ones out in the suburbs or those private Catholic schools that take anyone with a decent attitude.

It all comes down to the demographics... urban centers require significantly higher scores than the suburbs, and New York City is likely the worst case scenario.

The entry threshold for computer technicians climbs by about two points every year; in New York City, if you aren't an honor student, you're basically out of luck.

My boy won't even consider prep school... he says he has no interest in studying everything, just the things that actually matter to him.😁

Michelle Nelson4 said:Parents often try to "sneak" classical languages into their kids' schedules by enrolling them in specialized private academies where class sizes are smaller and the pressure feels a bit more manageable. They figure, "Hey, it won't hurt them," and they just get used to it.

And of course, the entry scores look lower because they’re pulling from a disproportionately tiny pool of students, which ends up stretching that grading scale from a perfect 4.0 all the way down to a passing grade. Given how many kids are hitting those minimum requirements at local three-year vocational schools, I suspect there are still plenty of them out there 😁

Honestly, all this outrage about needing such high scores to get into an elite school like Isaac Newton is kind of ridiculous. It's the perfectly predictable outcome of a policy that decides admissions should be based solely on classroom grades and absolutely nothing else. Any time you make a one-sided decision like that, you're going to see these kinds of anomalies. This isn't a new problem; the current system has been fundamentally flawed for decades, and this is just one more symptom of that deep-rooted issue.

If they actually implemented standardized testing for the specific subjects these schools care about, then a kid's history grade wouldn't matter nearly as much. That would give students the actual power to choose between a STEM-focused academy or somewhere like Isaac Newton.

Regarding Isaac Newton—it’s about damn time they implemented an entrance exam. I mean, maybe I'm being too harsh, but honestly? It feels necessary at this point.

Michelle Nelson4 said:Honestly, even these "standard" programs have relatively low average scores compared to the rest of our top-tier prep schools. It's not just that the classicist approach isn't trendy anymore; it’s been true for at least a decade now—these are some of the easiest high-level academies to get into, provided you aren't looking at the ones out in the suburbs or those private Catholic schools that take anyone with a decent attitude.

I've heard enough people claiming that the technical high school over in Newport is absolutely top-tier—so, I guess if you don't manage to get into Isaac Newton, that’s where everyone ends up heading.

Kate Jackson4 said:It all comes down to the demographics... urban centers require significantly higher scores than the suburbs, and New York City is likely the worst case scenario.

The entry threshold for computer technicians climbs by about two points every year; in New York City, if you aren't an honor student, you're basically out of luck.

My boy won't even consider prep school... he says he has no interest in studying everything, just the things that actually matter to him.😁

Yeah, the cutoff scores are climbing—it’s getting absolutely ridiculous at this point. I mean, honestly, every school that's being flooded by these incoming waves really ought to implement an entrance exam, and one that actually carries more weight than what we're seeing now. It just seems like the only logical way to handle the influx, I guess. Maybe it's too blunt a solution, but things are getting out of hand.

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Wait, so both the humanities and general tracks have three hours of math in 3rd and 4th grade? If that's the case, why does the humanities track end up with fewer math hours than the general track just to make room for more language classes?

In third period, we’ve just got one hour of geography, but then in fourth, we have three hours of general studies—with history taking up three and language being two.

Thanks, 😁
So, if you aren't entirely sure whether you'll lean toward social sciences or natural sciences later on in college, does it really matter much if you choose the general track or the language track? I feel like the general one might have a slight edge. 😁

Yeah. And honestly, I know plenty of people who jumped from math straight into linguistics—just as many who started out in humanities or language studies and ended up finishing degrees in math, computer science, physics, and all that stuff.

Kate Jackson4 said:Computer science is a massive draw right now. If I recall correctly, last year you couldn't even dream of getting into a program in a major city like Chicago with fewer than 70 points... maybe 72 at least, and if you were aiming for a top-tier school like MIT, you'd need even more to account for the decimals.

I don't think they've released last year's official cutoff tables yet; I can't find them anywhere online.

The scoring is based on American History, a foreign language, the MAT, Chemistry, Physics, and technical subjects.

Well, it looks like the cutoff for the Computer Technology track in the Electrical Engineering Department was actually 69.55. This means it’s likely mostly students passing with straight A's, though maybe someone with a B average could squeeze in if they aced all those core science and math classes. Back in my day, those were the kind of averages you'd see for "top-tier" schools, not for a place like General Electric. But hey, there might still be a spot left for someone with a few B's in those specific subjects, though I wouldn't count on it lasting long.