Introduction

Hunter College High School (HCHS) is a public high school of New York City, currently located on the Upper East Side, on 94th street and Park Avenue. It is a part of CUNY Hunter College. "High school" is a bit of a misnomer for HCHS, as it encompasses grade 7-12. The high school is also the location of the prestigious Hunter College Elementary School, housing kindergarten - 6th grade.

History and Rank

HSHS was founded by Thomas Hunter and Commissioner Wood in 1869, called the Female Normal and High School. It was established to admit anyone who qualified, regardless of race (quite a forward idea when you consider the date of origin), and eventually split up into the high school and the college. As you can tell from its original name, it also used to be an all girl's school, and you can see old dusty photographs of those times (sewing machines! Girls in uniforms! Whoa!) inside HCHS near the auditorium.

Unlike the terrible college ranking, the high school is considered to be the top-ranked public feeder high school in the nation, outranking the next highest high school in New York City (Stuyvesant High School) by nearly 100 places (#26 vs #120), feeding a disproportionate percentage of students to the Big Trinity: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Approximately 10% of the students will enter every year. Like the phrase "high school", "public school" is also a bit of a misnomer for Hunter: it is a free school, and open to anyone to qualifies, but you've only got one, and only one chance of getting in.

The school colors are technically lavender and white, but nobody ever stocks lavender and most people would die than wear that kind of color, so it's usually some shade of dark purple and white.

Entrance Exams

The only way to get into HCHS is to take an exam in the 6th grade that tests your math, English, and writing skills (not unlike the newly or soon to be revised SATs). The math and English portion are graded first; if the person in question achieves over a certain cutoff, the essay is read. If the essay, too, achieves a sufficient score, the student is accepted into Hunter. However, the only way to be allowed to take the test is to score above a certain percentage in the 5th grade math and English yearly examinations (Above 90%). About 4,000-8,000 students will qualify for this exam, and then from that group, only 250 students are selected to go.

And that's it. There's no other way in. While many students, over the years, leave the school, there is no way to transfer in.

There is one other route to get into HCHS: through the Hunter College Elementary School. Approximately 48 students are selected to be part of the kindergarten in the elementary school, and like the high school. No one else is allowed to transfer in. Those who remain in the 6th grade take the test, like other applicants, but are automatically accepted into the school; they don't receive their test scores until they reach 9th grade. The Hunter "brats" are very easily recognizable once you enter the school: many of them are children of parents who live on the Upper East Side and their lifestyles and behavior show it. Those who recognize the neighborhood will understand; those who don't, well, let's just say some of these kids are heirs to fortunes that would make Paris Hilton blink. Many of them could probably afford to attend a private school instead.

Recognizability

So why isn't the school as well recognized as schools such as Stuyvesant High School or Bronx Science? Well, one of the reasons is the entrance exams. Unlike the exams for the three technical schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Technical High School), Hunter's exam isn't open to everyone (see above for exam requirements).

Also because of its odd entrance system and sponsorship, HCHS does not properly classify as a "public" school nor a "private" school because a) it is the domain of a college; b) it is not technically open to everyone; and c) it's free. Because of their odd classification, they tend to get very little money in public funding and consequently, very little publicity. (Incidentally, Townsend Harris High School also gets the shaft because of this.)

Hunter's strength are in the humanities. The debate team is particularly strong at Hunter, since the school emphasizes and encourages public speaking quite enthusiastically (sometimes it'll be 10-20% of your grade in some classes). The math and science programs suffer slightly for it, though they do pump out their share of Intel Competition finalists/winners and the math team in general is ahead of Bronx Science and behind Stuyvesant.

Also because of its extremely small size, sports teams tend to suffer as well. This varies from year to year, though; the girl's sports teams tend to perform a lot better than the boy's teams overall. The school also doesn't really tend to associate with the other public schools in team meets and such; by and large, the majority of Hunter's opposing schools come from the wealthy, private schools such as Collegiate and Regis.

Lack of recognition make Hunter students pretty miffed about it, and have a rivalry against Stuyvesant High School (who they feel is unjustifiably famous) that is largely ignored by the other side (as in, "Er, I didn't even know you guys existed").

Quirks

• The school is affectionately (or cynically) called the "Brick Prison" by its students, as the building itself is a bit of an anomaly in Manhattan; its appearance resembles a fortress, made of brick, with few windows (the majority of classes do not have windows), a courtyard, and two sealed towers. History has it that the building itself used to be an old Civil War armory.

• The school makes it very clear that it likes to flout the public education rules. New York State (and California as well) participates in the Regents given by the Regents of the University of California, a set of subject examinations given yearly. The Regents allows for a standardized curriculum in every subject, but because of its nature, teachers teach around what is needed to pass the exam and Hunter doesn't particularly like the style or the curriculum that the Regents offer (especially the Sequential Math sequence... the high school teaches all their stuff out of order and/or early). There's a very small and overlooked rule that says you can bypass these exams if you provide something equivalent or harder to it, and Hunter takes full use of that rule. I believe the only Regents exams required are: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, one of the language regents, and most recently, the English Regents.

  Due to its small size, Advanced Placement classes are open to everyone, regardless of how they did in previous classes. I understand that you need to get a certain grade in biology in order to take AP Biology in other schools (Stuyvesant comes to mind), but Hunter doesn't do that.

• It offers some very nice gym classes that no other school can offer due to its location and ties to a college: lifeguard training, racquetball, and squash can be taken at Hunter College, and classes like orientation and rock climbing happen at Central Park.

• Swimming is a required gym class. Rumor has it that some former Hunter student drowned, and that the grieving parents made a large donation to Hunter on the condition that every student attempts to learn how to swim. We'll probably never know if it's true or not. Either way, 8th graders are stripped down to their bathing suits and trunks inside Hunter College (on 68th street), trying vainly to learn how to swim. As 8th graders are solidly in the middle of puberty, swimming class can result in hilarity.

  This is, by the way, absolutely miserable work when it's the dead of winter, and you've got class after the gym class so you have to trek back up to 96th Street to make it to class.

• There is a two year required course called C/T (Communications and Theatre) that occurs during 7th and 8th grade. Bluntly speaking, it's an acting class. The class encourages public speaking, and the upper level version of this is the required course Speech during 10th grade.

• The school has no official mascot; every year the mascot is determined by the graduating class. Typically a few entries are chosen and voted upon; highest voted entry gets to be the mascot, and stuffed animals are issued to the class, depending on the what the mascot is. The only requirement, it seems, to be an entry is that it has to be a clever pun or in-joke of some sort: entries range from "Quantum Sheep" (pun off of quantum leap), "Chimp Daddy" (pimp daddy), or, my favorite in-joke of them all, "Butter Beagle".

  "Butter Beagle" is an extreme in-joke. There's a deli around the corner of the school run by Korean people, and whenever anyone ordered a butter bagel one of the cashiers would shout to the Mexicans in the back, "butter beeeeeegle." This is funny when you hear it, trust me.

• There's a school trip every year in the early fall where the entire school spends the entire day at Bear Mountain. Lots of people go hiking, and lots of people get lost on the mountain. No, it does not affect the attrition rate of the school or they would never go; there are few enough students already. So don't go and think that this is a plan for the school to shed a few excess students.

• There is a yearly event called Carnival, which is part of Spirit Week. This happens at the end of the year. The courtyard is turned into a festival, with booths selling food or flowers or services like painting faces in exchange for tickets (which are bought in the cafeteria beforehand). There are no classes that day. Most fun is getting "married" to a friend. Always worth it for a laugh. I used to sponsor a couple every year.

  I don't know if this particular thing is still in effect, but winner of the pie-eating contest got to shove a pie into the face of any teacher he or she chose.

The Students

With ~230 students to start off, six years to spend, and nobody new to see, students get to know each other pretty quickly. The attrition rate is pretty high by the time one graduates; some burn out, some leave because of circumstances (moving away), but the majority simply transfer over to Stuyvesant High School, either because a) they want to start over or b) they're solely math/science people. By the time one graduates, the class size is closer to 190-200 people.

There's a lot of freedom in the school; students are allowed to leave the building any time to get lunch or spend their free periods elsewhere. It's actually encouraged, as the cafeteria and hallways can't really support all the students.

This is probably the case of all elite high schools, but prestige whorism is rampant. Everyone wants to go to an Ivy League. To give you an idea: I remember discussing with a friend about some girl's grades, and we dismissed it as "Berkeley level", not so great but not so bad. Some people deal with the competition better than others.

You honestly either love it or you hate it. There's no happy medium. On one hand, you really get to know friends very well; on the other, you may get pigeon-holed into a "type" or "clique" that stays static for the next six years. You can work your ass off here and the teachers will still find something to find fault in; you can see it as an overly critical (and Ivy League hungry) flaw of your person or you can see it as an encouragement to be a better person. How you'll survive is a matter of luck and personality. Like all high schools, really.

Famous People (or at least semi-famous)

• Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City). Intersting fact: she spoke at the 2004 graduation ceremony.
• Mike Maronna (probably know best from Home Alone).
• Irulan from Real World Las Vegas.
• Young M.C.

Other Things

Because of its location and odd appearance, it occasionally shows up in film from time to time. The courtyard was filmed in the The Fisher King.