By Jason He
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Saturday, Nov. 25, 2006, The OG, features

THIS YEAR UNI has welcomed six transfer students, half of whom are new to the Champaign-Urbana area. (For the purposes of this article, we're defining “transfer” as any student who enters Uni after subbie year.) Three students moved from out-of-state areas — New York, Massachusetts, even England — shortly before school began on Aug. 23. The Gargoyle interviewed all six students, and here's what we found.

Sian Best, freshman

Sian Best (pronounced “Sharn”) moved to C-U from England just 10 days before school started. She discovered Uni High two years ago when she visited the Champaign area and noticed that Uni “seemed like a really good school.”

Even though she's only 14, Best already has a few years of experience in a high school setting; she started high school in England at age 11. England's curriculum is also somewhat different from a typical course of study in the U.S.; for instance, the schedule may differ each day to accommodate a wider variety of classes in a week.

Best's initial experiences at Uni were pleasant — the teachers and students were very welcoming, and she was relieved that there are no uniforms. Best became less ecstatic when the homework started to pile up. In England, she says, out-of-class studying typically takes up to an hour at most.

Uni's P.E. curriculum isn't all that much fun for Best, either. Even though she was part of a nationally ranked swim team in England, she says that Uni's intensive fitness program was “shocking.”

But despite these setbacks, Best thinks Uni is great. After all, she — not her parents — decided to apply here, and it's likely she won't regret her decision. She's found that Uni's atmosphere is nice, the students are friendly, and there's a great variety of clubs to join.

When asked if she would take part in Uni's math team to participate in competitions, Best said she'd consider it. She won first place one year in a nationwide math contest in England.

Costas Cangellaris, freshman

Costas Cangellaris was born in Arizona and moved to C-U at age 5. Before coming to Uni, he attended Countryside School, which he describes as nothing short of “terrible.”

In fact, Cangellaris misses nothing about his old school, unlike the other transfers. Furthermore, unlike other transfer students who needed to take time introducing themselves to their peers, he says he already knows a lot of other students in his class.

Cangellaris, whose sister Anna is a Uni junior, still believes his new school has its own faults — the unlocked lockers, lack of a cafeteria, and separate gym are “weird,” he says. Nevertheless, he greatly prefers the teachers and environment here.

“My parents didn't really care,” he says about his decision to come to Uni. A lot of his classmates were applying, and he decided to follow that trend.

An accomplished athlete, Cangellaris enjoys sports and is part of the Uni soccer and basketball teams. He also enjoys listening to rock and rap music in his spare time.

Rachel Hurley, junior

Most Uni students live in C-U and need no more than 15 minutes or so to get to school. But Danville resident Rachel Hurley's morning commute is thrice as long.

“The drive isn't all that much fun, and I have to get up earlier than I would like,” she says, “but I really want a good education, and I think I can find it here.”

The 16-year-old transferred to Uni from Danville High School. She misses her old friends, her tennis team, and the somewhat less rigorous curriculum. Still, she doesn't regret her decision to transfer.

“I think it will turn out that I made the right choice,” she says, adding that her parents encouraged her to apply to Uni but it was her own choice to attend.

Uni is a dramatically different from Hurley's old school. She especially enjoys the larger degree of freedom — particularly when it comes to free periods, which were limited to academic studies at Danville High.

Hurley is also pleased with how friendly Uni students are.

“Just like every high school everyone has ‘their group,' but no one has been anything but nice,” she says about her classmates.

Outside of school, Hurley dedicates a lot of her time to church-related activities, especially when it comes to singing. She also enjoys hanging out with her friends in her free time.

Grace Man, freshman

Grace Man lived in Syracuse, N.Y., for seven years before recently moving to Champaign. She found out about Uni and applied because she heard that it was a “very elite school.”

Coming from a private religious academy, it's no surprise that Man finds Uni to be wildly different from what she's used to.

“I was surprised to find out that there is no cafeteria,” she says, “but I think eating your lunch with your friends by their lockers is a nicer way because you don't constantly have to find a table and save seats.”

During her first few days of class, Man also quickly discovered the freedom Uni students are entitled to: a “free” period that's true to its name, the ability to petition out of P.E., and the privilege of eating outside of school for lunch.

But the best part about Uni so far, she says, is that there's no state-mandated standardized testing. In New York, Man took Regents exams, statewide assessments that accompany the high school transcript and are “very grueling to study for.”

Larissa Pittenger, junior

Larissa Pittenger attended Unity High School until her sophomore year, when she decided to apply to Uni through both her parents' encouragement and her own interest in the school.

Within her first day of class, Pittenger noticed that Uni students were “much more concerned with learning” than her former classmates at Unity, many of whom cared only about the school's athletics and were blatantly uninterested about their academic performance.

Even though students at Uni are much more conscious about their schoolwork, Pittenger also feels that the atmosphere isn't so serious and focused on studying all the time.

“I like how [the school is] real laid-back,” she says, commenting on the many quirks of the Uni environment, such as open lockers and a student lounge.

In her free time, Pittenger enjoys literature and the fine arts. She has been involved in activities such as theater and drama since the age of 3, and she appeared as Olga in Uni's fall play, “You Can't Take It With You.”

Pittenger's younger sister, Tianna, is a Uni freshman. Tianna entered as a subbie last year.

Richard Wang, sophomore

Richard Wang first learned about Uni when his father received a job offer from the University of Illinois and his family searched the area for a high school. While his parents were very excited about the school and insisted that Wang apply, he didn't share their enthusiasm — not out of any ill will toward Uni, though.

“I really did not feel like leaving my old school,” he says.

Born in Boston, the 14-year-old lived in Newton, Mass., up until the week before Uni's school year began.

“People here are nice and friendly,” says Wang. “There are many intelligent people.”

But though Wang observed many positive things about Uni on his first day of class, he says he had difficulty adjusting to the school's atmosphere.

“It certainly is difficult to come to a school where everyone already knows each other,” he says.

Despite Wang's reluctance to leave his community back in Massachusetts, he acknowledges that Uni is “one of the top high schools” in the United States. He looks forward to gaining a valuable education here, even if that means having to cut short a few “Family Guy” episodes every week to make time for homework — which, unsurprisingly, Richard says there is “way too much of!”