The most recent issue of Newsweek lists Uni as one of the 21 “public elite” schools in the nation, but what does it really mean?

By Michelle Gao
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Thursday, May 4, 2006, The OG, opinions

Uni's been ranked by Newsweek as one of the top 21 “public elite” schools in the country. That's … pretty awesome, I have to say. This is the entire country we're talking about. The fact that the high school that we go to has been ranked one of the top 21 … that seems pretty prestigious.

What irks me, though, is the way that the schools were ranked, and then portrayed. Were we chosen just because our ACT and SAT scores were high? Wasn't anything else looked at? In Bianca Zaharescu's May 2 article, Assistant Director Sue Kovacs said someone from Newsweek told her that Uni didn't qualify for the magazine's main list of top 1,000 public high schools “because we have too high a percentage of students who go to college and do well on tests.”

That doesn't make sense to me at all. Because Uni (and 20 other schools, apparently) was “too good” for the main ranking, Newsweek decided to make a separate list of “public elites.” And then after listing those public elites, the magazine didn't really say anything about them. For instance, here's the sentence on Uni: “A five-year high school partnered with the University of Illinois.”

Is it just me, or is that completely ridiculous? So now we're the five-year high school. Fantastic. How descriptive. They don't talk about why any of these schools are so wonderful, apart from test scores and a few generalities. And this leads into the whole issue of whether or not standardized tests are a good way to evaluate intelligence.

So while I'm glad that Uni was ranked — we really do have a great school — it's not a feeling of overwhelming joy. It's kind of like, OK, so they noticed that our test scores were higher than average, and we're a five-year high school. Great. Let me think about this for all of five seconds, and then completely forget about it.

In addition, this obsession that everyone has with ranking things is utterly absurd. Getting back to the test scores … there are probably lots more schools out there that outshine Uni in some aspect. Music, art, science, math — schools each have their strong points.

Another thing schools are supposed to do is get their students ready for real life. Not just the academic stuff. Standardized test scores don't reflect how well students are being taught about these things. They reflect how well students are being taught to know what test-writers want them to say, and fill in a little bubble.

You don't have to go to an elite high school to get into an Ivy League school — oh, shoot, there I go again. Ivy League. Top-ranking colleges. Again with the rankings.

Let me try again: You don't have to go to an elite high school or college to make it in real life. It'll help, sure. But if you have the drive and talent, it shouldn't matter where you go to school. The name might get you into high places, but you'll have to rely on yourself to stay there.