A long time ago, on a subway far, far away*, I attended HCHS. Most of the great teachers I had…read morehave either retired or passed away. Last time I looked, my 9th grade math teacher was still soldiering on slinging the equations and one of my classmates is now continuing the tradition as a social studies teacher, following in the footsteps of Mr. Marienhoff (a great teacher and influence on many of us).
Here are some facts about the school not often known outside the Hunter community. Every year, if you take the top 10% of 6th Grade kids in NYC (~2200-2500) that scored well on the 5th grade NYS ELA & math exams (what used to be called the city-wides), gave them the entrance exam and took the top 10% of those, you'd end up with the top 1%, which is roughly, a typical Hunter 7th grade class. Remember that this happens a full 2 years before they would take the Specialized High Schools exam (SHSAT). This gives Hunter the advantage of reaping the cream of the crop long before Stuyvesant, Bronx Science or Brooklyn Tech can get a crack at them. Over the first couple of years, some students will have personal, disciplinary or academic problems and will leave or be asked to leave, but their places are not filled by new students because they can only enter at the beginning of 7th grade. Those asked to leave go back and excel at their neighborhood schools.
Like the other NYC specialized high schools, the education is tuition free and the best that the city can offer. Unlike those schools, you'll be staying for 6 years from grades 7-12. The Hunter College Campus Schools (including the Elementary School) is administered by Hunter College (CUNY) and not the NYC Dept of Education. This raises a whole load of other issues because Hunter is not subject to the Chancellor of the DOE nor receives funding like other NYC schools. Starting in 7th grade also gives students at Hunter the opportunity to finish their NYS Regents requirements by 10th or 11th grade and allows them to take more AP courses and to do an internship in their senior year. Completing both programs, the graduate receives both the Hunter and Regents diplomas.
There has been a lot of press and allegations lately about the lack of diversity at Hunter and other Specialized schools that are groundless. If you can pass the test, you get in, end of story. Whether you received outside test prep or not, the bottom line is you were either prepared or not, no matter what your ethnic background.
You better believe that if you attend Hunter, you will be going to college. With the Hunter name on your diploma, you stand a better than average chance to get into a top tier college or university. Hunter is known as the top feeder to the Ivy League and that is not a hollow statistic, but is proven every year. Among my class of 200, 10 students went to Cornell alone, with 4 to Harvard and others to Columbia, Princeton, UPenn, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. We even had 3 going to MIT. Those are big percentages that is repeated year after year and that you will not find in any other school.
I have very fond memories of my alma mater and appreciation for the place grows as you get older. So what I say to all the recent students and graduates that gripe about their experience at Hunter is that you'll be thankful for it in 10-20 years when all the bad experiences are in the past and you remember all the good things such as your life-long friends and the stellar education that you carry with you for the rest of your life.
Here's an example of the work of some current students and a tour of the school.
http://vimeo.com/62474345
And to make this a true Yelp review, what little cafeteria food we had was absolutely horrendous. You were better off going to any of the local delis (except the one we used to call the smelly deli).
*Star Wars did come out about that time in ancient history and the records of us cutting class to go see it are lost in the mists of time. Han shot first!
