Posted 9:46 AM by Blah blah

Top High Schools in America (Education)

The 100 Best High Schools in America (Newsweek). Here are their rankings.

The closest school to me is Gunn High School (#50) in Palo Alto. It's right next to Stanford University, about 25 miles away from me. Palo Alto High (#199, a.k.a. "Paly") and Gunn High are the tops.

A girl on my reading list, Paz, goes to Palo Alto High. She actually reads and likes my political entries!

Next is Monta Vista High (#82) in Cupertino. Lots of rich kids there. I went to Cupertino High (unranked) myself. Our best departments were English (I took every advanced class we had), German, and math (before my favorite teacher Mr. Jim Symons left for DeAnza College).

Then comes Lynbrook High (#85) in San Jose. My parents live just near it, and my brother went there.

Then Mission San Jose High (#122) in Fremont and Saratoga High (#143) in Saratoga---where my cousins went.

Note that all of the schools I just listed are PUBLIC schools. Free. The price of admission depends on where you buy a house. We have some very smart people around here---parents with VERY high expectations of their kids.

It's strange they left out two private Catholic prep schools in San Jose, which I also think are tops: Bellarmine College Preparatory (all-boys) and Presentation High (all-girls). In high school, I competed for four years in Speech and Debate, and Bellarmine had one of the best high school debating teams in California. Santa Clara University, a private Catholic school, gives scholarships to a few high school students each year to take any college math classes they like there. I got scholarships for two years of math there when I was 16. Two of my classmates were girls from Presentation High. One later went to Caltech and the other to Stanford.