Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School, founded in 1904, is a math and science public high school in New York City. Admission is based solely on an entrance exam, and tuition is free. Stuyvesant is one of the most prestigious public high schools in the United States.
Overview
Admission to Stuyvesant High School is open to residents of New York City entering high school. Enrollment is based solely on performance on the Specialized Science High School Admission Test (SSHSAT). Of the 20,000 students who take the exam each year, only about 800 students who score in the highest score bracket are admitted. Those who score in the second highest score bracket are offered admission to the Bronx High School of Science, and those who score in the third highest bracket are offered admission to Brooklyn Technical High School.
Known for its excellence in mathematics and science, "Stuy," as it is often known, has produced numerous Nobel Prize laureates and a host of accomplished alumni. It consistently leads the nation in number of National Merit Scholarships as well as Intel Talent Search Semi-Finalists and Finalists. A 1958 study found that Stuyvesant graduates earned more Ph.Ds than those of any other high school in the nation. Stuyvesant will celebrate the graduation of its centennial class in 2004 with many events and reunions scheduled to take place throughout the year, including an All-Class Reunion on June 6, 2004.
Stuyvesant's foreign language offerings now exceed those of many universities, and include Hebrew, Japanese, Italian, and many more. In 2000, Mandarin Chinese and Korean were introduced in response to Stuyvesant's burgeoning Asian American population.
Stuyvesant High School
Seal of Stuyvesant High School
Pro scientia atque sapientia
(For science and knowledge)
Established | 1904 |
---|---|
School type | Public |
Principal | Stanley Teitel |
Location | New York City |
Enrollment | approx. 3,000 |
Campus | Urban |
Homepage | www.stuy.edu |
History
Stuyvesant High School is named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New Netherland before the colony was taken over by England in 1664.
The school was established in 1904 as a manual training school for boys, hosting 155 students and 12 faculty. In 1907 it moved from its original location at 225 East 23rd Street to 345 East 15th Street, where it remained for the following 85 years. Its reputation for excellence in math and science continued to grow, and the school had to be put on a double session in the early 1920s to accommodate the rising number of students. In the 1930s, admission tests were implemented, making it even more competitive. During the 1950s, a $2 million renovation was done on the building to update its classrooms, shops, libraries and cafeterias. In 1969, 14 girls enrolled, marking the first co-educational year. Now, approximately 43 percent of studentd are female.
Stuyvesant High School moved downtown to 345 Chambers Street in Battery Park City, TriBeCa in 1992. The new ten-floor, $250 million building has 12 laboratories, a large cafeteria overlooking the Hudson River, 12 shops, multiple gymnasia, a 25-yard, six-lane swimming pool, over 450 computers on 13 networks, and a 26" color RCA television in almost every room. Moviegoers may be able to recognize the school from several scenes in the movie Hackers, filmed in November, 1994 using upperclassmen students as extras.
Shortly after the new building was completed, a bridge was built at a cost of $10 million to allow students to enter the building without having to cross the extremely busy and dangerous West Street. The bridge is now the primary method by which students enter the building, and many Stuyvesant students will have memories of crossing it twice a day.
Demographics
Although heavily Jewish in its formative years, the student body as of 2004 was approximately five percent Asian and 39 percent Caucasian, with Blacks and Hispanics in severe underrepresentation, each constituting roughly three percent of the population. Russian and Indian students are well-represented, and Jews continue to maintain a strong presence.
In the past few years, several articles have been published in The Spectator, Stuyvesant's student newspaper, commenting on what seems to be a complete lack of interaction between the different racial groups at Stuyvesant. Most students prefer to socialize within their own ethnic groups, and Stuyvesant has developed into a miniature of New York City's "salad bowl" — with different sections of the Stuyvesant building being implicitly reserved for members of particular ethnic groups.
It is well known at Stuy that the sixth floor is for Asians, while the second floor is for whites, the fourth floor is for Indians, and the fifth floor is for blacks. Although a few attempt to break the status quo by socializing with students outside their ethnic groups, the situation is thus far unresolved.
Some students don't mind the geographic racial breakup of the school [1]. The site, which offers a student's point of view of the school, says there is significant racial interaction despite the location of the groups' lockers. The site insists all of the aforementioned areas have multiple individuals of different races residing in those areas that discredit the seemingly territorial connotations the "designations" imply.
September 11 and Stuy
Stuyvesant is a quarter-mile from the former site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed on September 11, 2001. The school was evacuated during the ordeal and the students were temporarily relocated to Brooklyn Tech starting September 21 while the Stuyvesant building was used as one of several bases of operations by rescue and recovery workers. Normal classes resumed three weeks later on October 9. The following is a list of the Stuyvesant alumni who were killed during the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center:
- Daniel D. Bergstein '80 (tribute)
- Alan Wayne Friedlander '67 (tribute)
- Marina R. Gertsberg '93 (tribute)
- Aaron J. Horwitz '94 (tribute)
- David S. Lee '82 (tribute)
- Arnold A. Lim '90 (tribute)
- Gregory D. Richards '88 (tribute)
- Maurita Tam '97 (tribute)
- Michael Warchola '68 (tribute)
Notable Alumni
- Robert Alda '30 -- actor
- Albert Axelrod '38 -- 1960 Olympic Bronze Medal Winner, Fencing
- Steven Bellovin '68 -- AT&T Bell Labs, Internet security authority
- Richard Ben-Veniste '60 -- lawyer, assistant prosecutor on the Watergate Task Force
- Len Berman '64 -- broadcaster
- Martin Brest '69 -- actor, director, producer, writer
- Bernie Brillstein '48 -- producer and manager
- James Cagney '18 -- actor
- Thomas Calabro '77 -- actor and director
- Bram Cohen '93 -- author of Bittorrent
- Paul Cohen '50 -- mathematician, shared the 1966 Fields Medal, won National Medal of Science in 1968
- Bobby Colomby '62 -- musician and producer, Blood Sweat and Tears
- Lucy Deakins '88 -- actress
- Noam D. Elkies '82 -- mathematician and musician
- Joseph File '40 -- Enrico Fermi Award
- Bob Frankston '66 -- co-creator of Visicalc, Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
- Stanley Friedman '53 -- former Bronx Borough President
- Robert Fogel '44 - Nobel Prize-winning economist
- Ben Gazzara '46 -- actor
- Howard Golden '45 -- previous Brooklyn Borough President
- Ronald J. Grabe '62 -- astronaut
- Neil Grabois '53 -- former president of Colgate University
- Brian Greene '80 -- mathematician, physicist, author of The Elegant Universe
- Roald Hoffmann '55 -- chemist, winner of 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Eric Holder '69 -- former Deputy Attorney General of the United States
- Frank Hussey '24 -- Olympic gold medal sprinter
- Roy Innis '52 -- national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality
- Steven Koonin '68 -- former Vice President and Provost of California Institute of Technology
- Eric Lander '74 -- head of the Human Genome Project
- Raymond Lau '89 -- software programmer (Stuffit), research scientist
- Joshua Lederberg '41 -- geneticist, winner of 1958 Nobel Prize in medicine
- Sheldon Leonard '25 -- actor, producer director
- Lucy Liu '86 -- actress
- Hans Mark '47 -- former Chancellor of the University of Texas system, former Deputy Administrator of NASA, former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Bernard Meltzer '34 -- radio personality
- Thelonious Monk '35 -- jazz musician (did not graduate)
- Dick Morris '64 -- politician
- Robert Moses '52 -- organizer of 1964 Freedom Summer
- Lewis Mumford '12 -- historian of technology and science
- Jerrold Nadler '65 -- U.S. Congressman
- Jack Nash '46 -- former Chairman of Oppenheimer & Company
- Stacey Nelkin '77 -- actress
- Vladimir Pozner '48 -- Soviet television personality
- George Raft -- actor
- Paul Reiser '73 -- actor and producer
- Tim Robbins '76 -- actor, screenwriter, director, producer
- Matt Ruff '83 -- writer
- Peter Sammartino '21 -- former Chancellor of Fairleigh Dickinson University
- Kate Schellenbach '83 -- musician with the Beastie Boys and Luscious Jackson
- Fred Schoenberg '15 -- former Principal of Stuyvesant High School
- George Segal '41 -- sculptor
- Albert Shanker '46 -- former President of the American Federation of Teachers, awared the Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Joseph Shenker '57 -- former Provost of C.W. Post College
- Robert Siegel '64 -- radio journalist
- Ron Silver '63 -- actor, director
- Thomas Sowell '48 -- economist
- Elias Stein '49 -- mathematician, winner of 1999 Wolf Prize
- John Theobald '22 -- former Chancellor of New York City Board of Education
- Eric Von Lustbader '64 -- author
- Kai Winding '40 -- composer, musician
- Herbert Zelenko '22 -- U.S. Congressman
Also of note, Frank McCourt taught English at Stuyvesant before the publication of his novel Angela's Ashes.
See also: Hunter College High School, NCSSSMST
External links
- Stuyvesant HS official website
- Student-run Stuyvesant HS site
- Stuyvesant HS Alumni Association
- The Campaign for Stuyvesant/Alumni(ae) & Friends Endowment Fund, Inc.
- Stuyvesant Centennial Celebration
- A wiki devoted to Computer Science at Stuyvesant
- Statistics and general information from the New York City Department of Education