Admissions
Admission to the high school is only granted in seventh grade, and is a two-step procedure. Students from the five boroughs of New York City with strong scores on standardized tests are eligible to take the Hunter College High School Entrance Exam in the January of their sixth grade school year. Eligible students must first meet Hunter's standards in reading and mathematics proficiency on fifth grade standardized exams. For example, in 2011, sixth grade students who wished to enter Hunter during the 2011–2012 school year must have achieved scores of at least 689 out of 770 on the reading test and 722 out of 780 on the math test, that is, scores in the 90th-and-above percentile of all test takers.
The admissions test has thirty-five multiple-choice mathematics questions, sixty multiple-choice English questions, and an essay-writing portion. Out of about 3,000 test-takers, about 175 are offered admission on the basis of the exam. This 6.6% admissions rate, not considering the many students denied the chance to take the exam because they did not meet the state exam requirements, makes Hunter one of the most selective high schools in the nation.
Approximately 50 students from Hunter College Elementary School also enter the 7th grade class each year. Beginning with incoming students in the 2010–2011 school year, elementary school students must make 'satisfactory progress' by fifth grade in order to gain admission to the high school. Prior to this, students at Hunter College Elementary School were guaranteed admission into the high school. In total, entering 7th grade class contains approximately 225 students.
Most students, commonly known as "Hunterites," who enter the high school remain there through their senior year. In eighth grade, some Hunter students take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test to transfer to other competitive public high schools in New York City, although most choose to stay at Hunter. The graduating class usually retains about 200 students. The total enrollment from grades 7 through 12 is approximately 1,200 students.
Hunter is an open campus, allowing students to go outside during lunch and free periods.
Although a publicly-funded school, Hunter’s student body is increasingly unrepresentative of the community it serves. White and Asian students are over-represented while Black, Hispanic and poor students are less common than among the city's population. In a city where three-quarters of students qualify for reduced-price school lunches (a proxy for poverty), only ten percent of Hunter students meet the reduced-price threshold. This trend has accelerated in recent years. In 1995 the student body was 12% African American and 6% Hispanic. By 2009, these numbers were just 3% and 1%. This trend may be caused by expensive private preparation for the school’s admissions test giving applicants from richer families an advantage compounded by Hunter having dismantled its affirmative action preparatory program In 2012, commentator Christopher Hayes speculated the school could soon have a class with no African-American or Latinos.
Read more about this topic: Hunter College High School