2. Baccalaureate School for Global Education
This New York City public school, located in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, is listed among the Washington Post’s Top 1% of the Most Challenging Schools in America, and is ranked fourth among New York City High Schools by the New York Daily News. U.S. News & World Report ranks this magnet school 136th in the country and 26th in the State.
Competition to enter the school is high and only 5% of those who applied for the 2013-2014 school year became a part of the more than 400 member student body. The average SAT score for students at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education was 1636, with 97% of its students graduating from the school, and 92% going on to further education, reports the NY Daily News.
This public school was founded in 2002, and like Queens itself, which has one of the broadest bases of ethnic diversity in the country, ethnic diversity flourishes at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education.
While preference is given to Queens residents, students from all of New York’s five boroughs attend. In contrast to many of Manhattan’s elite schools, 73% of Baccalaureate’s students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds according to U.S. News & World Report.
Classroom sizes are small, while student-teacher ratio is low, 12.4 to one, as noted by the High-Schools website, with approximately 40 teachers serving between 400 to 480 students.
While academic performance is stressed, Inside Schools notes in its review of the Baccalaureate School for Global Education that the school combines “serious learning with a laid-back atmosphere”, with many of its teachers sporting jeans, and where rules are not emphasized in favor of personal responsibility of students. Students are assigned one to three hours of homework to complete after the school day ends at 2:10.
