High School of Art & Design: Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. (Pablo Picasso)

The High School of Art & Design is located on 57th and 2nd Avenue. From Washington Heights you can get here by taking the A train and switching over to the E. Art & Design is a career and technical school, although 90% of their graduates do go on to post-high school education, especially colleges and universities that specialize in the arts.

Art & Design has four majors: cartooning & animation, architectural design, graphic design & illustration, and new media. Within graphic design & illustration, students may specialize in advertising design, editorial design, or fashion illustration.

Art & Design also offers a variety of Advanced Placement classes to challenge you academically. Some examples are Art History, Biology, Calulus, English Language/Literature, Spanish Language, Studio Art, US History & World History. You can study Chinese, French, or Spanish, and all students enjoy an hour and a half of Art Studio time every day for four years!!

Sports are a part of Art & Design too. Boys can play Baseball, Basketball, Bowling, Fencing, Soccer, and Volleyball. Girls can play Basketball, Softball, and Volleyball. There are a variety of clubs too, like Yearbook, Math Team, Weightlifting, Music, and Portfolio Development.

To apply, students must have a portfolio consisting of 10-20 piece in a variety of media (pencil, colored pencils, paints, markers). When you audition, you will have your portfolio evaluated and you will be asked to draw from a live model, draw from imagination, and solve spatial problems. All these things can be practiced in your own home! Auditions are held in the months of October, November, and December.

If you envision yourself as a cartoonist, architect, or fashion designer in 10 years, than this is a great place to apply! Also, if you've always loved art but know you want to get a solid academic education too, Art & Design may be the place for you! Ms. Jones hopes to visit this school before June, so let her know if you're interested in coming along :)

You can find more information about Art & Design here: http://www.artanddesignhs.com/

Bronx High School of Science

BRONX HIGH SCHOOL OF SCIENCE

The Bronx High School of Science is a Specialized High School located in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx. While it is called a school of "science", it has excellent programs in mathematics, humanities, and social sciences. This means that the student body is filled with students that have a wide variety of interests. This is another one of the best high schools in the United States.

Bronx Science has a student body of slighly less than 3,000 students. You gain admission based upon your score on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). Many, many students compete to gain one of 700 seats in the freshman class.

Facilities at Bronx Science are top-notch. They include computerized science laboratories, a television studio, weather station, rooftop planetarium, high-speed internet access and televisions in every room, its own Holocaust Musuem, two rooftop greenhouses, and a state-of-the-art library.

Bronx Science offers a rigorous, college prepatory curriculum and dozens of Advanced Placement (AP) classes. Students can also do independent research and study a second language from many options such as French, Latin, Italian, Chinese, and Japanses. Bronx Science also offers electives in every subject area, including fascinating courses like "Basic & Advanced Acting", "Introduction to Psychology", "Advanced Computer Programming", "Genetics & Evolution", "Photography", "Computer Graphics", "Chorus", and "Flag Football".

Bronx Science offers several sports at both the J.V. and Varsity level. Some choices are baseball, basketball, bowling, golf, soccer, swimming, tennis, and volleyball. Other after-school options include dozens of clubs like "Art & Cartoonists Society" and "Stock Market Club".

More information on The Bronx High School for Science can be found here: http://www.bxscience.edu

Stuyvesant High School: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." (Aristotle)

Welcome to Stuyvesant High School. Located on Chambers Street in downtown Manhattan, Stuyvesant is regarded by many as the best public high school in New York City. In fact, in regards to the SHSAT, Stuyvesant has the highest cut-off score, making it the most difficult school to gain admission to.

Last week, I visited Stuyvesant during their college fair. While most people don't start thinking about college until their junior year, this fair was attended by sophomores and even some freshman! This shows how serious Stuyvesant students are about their future. In 2002, it was ranked the 9th top public high school in the United States.

Stuyvesant's new campus is a ten floor building that cost $148 million. It includes 65 classrooms, 450 computers, 7 pairs of escalators, two gymnasiums, an indoor pool, its own theater, and a skylit cafeteria.

Students at Stuyvesant take a course load that prepares them to enter the nation's top colleges. Aside from mandatory classes, like English, History, Science, and Mathematics, Stuyvesant also offers a huge variety of elective courses. You can study many languages, such as French, Spanish, German, Latin, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Italian. Other options include art, computerized drawing, debate, acting, journalism, creative writing, and business management.

Sports are also important at Stuyvesant. They have 32 varsity teams, including swimming, golf, bowling, volleyball, soccer, basketball, wrestling, tennis, football, and lacrosse.

Stuyvesant is a great option for anyone who enjoys being challenged and is committed to going to college. Let Ms. Jones know if this school sounds like a place you'd like to go!

Specialized High Schools

Currently, New York City has nine Specialized High Schools. All New York City residents are eligible to apply to these schools, which are listed below:

LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (Manhattan)
Bronx High School of Science (Bronx)
The Brooklyn Latin School (Brooklyn)
Brooklyn Technical High School (Brooklyn)
High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at City College (Manhattan)
High School of American Studies at Lehman College (Bronx)
Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (Queens)
Staten Island Technical High School (Staten Island)
Stuyvesant High School (Manhattan)

Each school will be featured in an upcoming blog entry.

For eight of the Specialized High Schools (all except LaGuardia), admission is based on a student's score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). This competitive test is administed in October of your eighth grade year. With proper preparation, any of you could achieve a high enough score on this exam to go to a Specialized High School.

When you take the exam, you rank the eight Specialized High School in order, #1 being the school you most want to attend, and #8 being the school you are least excited about. Keep in mind, all eight schools are great schools. However, you can choose only to rank three schools, if you'd prefer to stay in Manhattan for High School.

The SHSAT has a verbal and a math section. These are sort of like the state ELA and Math tests, but a little different too.

The verbal section has reading passages with multiple choice questions, just like the ELA. There are five passages with 6 questions about each. It also has five scrambled passages and 10 logiccal reasoning questions. There are 45 questions in total, and you have 75 minutes to complete this section of the exam.

The math section is made up of 50 multiple choice questions. Some are straightforward, while others are more comlicated word problems. You also have 75 minutes to complete this section of the exam.

If you think you might want to go to a Specialized High School, you should tell Ms. Jones. It's not too early to start preparing for this test today!

"Insist on yourself; never imitate." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

If there's one thing that my students know about me, it's that I absolutely love to read. Believe it or not, I absolutely love to write too. Think about it - without good writing there wouldn't be anything worth reading, and I personally can't read a book without also studying the way the author uses language to communicate their story.

I actually started my first blog when I was fourteen and I loved the way that things that had just been floating around in my head five minutes earlier could exist for other people to read. I know that if you try it, you will love it too.

Surely, there are some things that are best saved for notebooks you can keep hidden somewhere safe. But, what amazes me most about putting your thoughts out there for people to see is that you realize how often people understand exactly what you mean! A blog is a chance to be thoughtful, influential, or even silly. It's a brave little way to say to the world "I exist, and these are the things that occupy space inside my head."

Let the blogging begin!