Stuyvesant High School is a public college-preparatory specialized high school in Manhattan, New York City, United States. The school specializes in developing talent in math, science, and technology. Operated by the New York City Department of Education, the school offers tuition-free, advanced classes to New York City high school students.
Stuyvesant High School was established in 1904 as an all-boys school in the East Village of Lower Manhattan. Starting in 1934, admission for all applicants was contingent on passing an entrance examination. In 1969, the school began permanently accepting female students. In 1992, Stuyvesant High School moved to its current location at Battery Park City to accommodate more students. The old campus houses several smaller high schools and charter schools.
Admission to Stuyvesant involves passing the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, required for the New York City Public Schools system. Every March, approximately 800 to 850 applicants with the highest SHSAT scores are accepted out of about 30,000 students who apply to Stuyvesant, an acceptance rate of less than 3%.
Extracurricular activities at the school include a math team, a speech and debate team, a robotics team, a yearly theater competition, and various student publications, including a newspaper, a yearbook, and literary magazines. Stuyvesant has educated four Nobel laureates. The municipal architect and engineer C. B. J. Snyder, who designed many of the city's public school buildings, had repeatedly mentioned a need for more basic mathematical and scientific preparation in New York's growing numbers of public secondary schools in the late 19th century. The Board of Education approved the plans in April 1904. It suggested that the school occupy a plot on East 15th Street, west of First Avenue. But that plot did not yet contain a school building, and so the new school was initially housed within Public School #47's former building at 225 East 23rd Street. the last Dutch Director (governor) of New Netherland (and its major port town of New Amsterdam) and owner of the area's Stuyvesant Farm. At the time of its opening, it had 155 students and 12 teachers. Thereafter, Stuyvesant became renowned for excellence in math and science. In 1909, eighty percent of the school's alumni went to college; other high schools sent only 25% to 50% of their graduates to college.
By 1919, officials were restricting admission based on academic achievement. Stuyvesant implemented a double session plan in 1919 to accommodate the rising number of students: some students would attend in the morning and others in the afternoon and early evening. All students studied a full set of courses. These double sessions ran until spring 1957. The school implemented a system of entrance examinations in 1934.
Co-educational school
In 1967, Alice de Rivera sued the Board of Education, alleging that she had been banned from taking Stuyvesant's entrance exam because of her gender. The lawsuit was decided in her favor, and Stuyvesant was required to accept female students.
In 1972, the New York State Legislature passed the Hecht–Calandra Act, which designated four citywide selective specialized public high schools in New York City—Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical High School, Bronx Science, and the High School of Music & Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School)—as specialized high schools of New York City. The act called for a uniform exam to be administered for admission to Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, and Stuyvesant. The exam, named the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), tested the mathematical and verbal abilities of students who were applying to any of the specialized high schools. The only exception was for applicants to the music and arts program at LaGuardia High School, who were accepted by audition rather than examination. When classes resumed on September 21, 2001, students were moved to Brooklyn Technical High School while the Stuyvesant building served as a base of operations for rescue and recovery workers. This caused severe congestion at Brooklyn Tech, and required the students to attend in two shifts, with Stuyvesant students attending in the evening. Normal classes resumed on October 9.
left|alt=A southward view of Stuyvesant High School from Hudson River Park. The Hudson River is seen at right, and the skyscrapers of the new World Trade Center can be seen in the background.|thumb|A southward view of Stuyvesant High School from [[Hudson River Park, with the new World Trade Center in the distance|300x300px]]
Nine alumni were killed in the World Trade Center attack. On October 2, 2001, the school newspaper, The Spectator, ran a 24-page section with student photos, reflections, and stories. On November 20, the magazine was distributed for free to the greater metropolitan area, enclosed within 830,000 copies of The New York Times. In the months after the attacks, Annie Thoms, an English teacher at Stuyvesant and the theater adviser at the time, suggested that the students take accounts of staff and students' reactions during and after September 11 and compile them into a collection of monologues. Thoms published these monologues as With Their Eyes: September 11—The View from a High School at Ground Zero.
Later history
During the 2003–04 school year, Stuyvesant celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding with a full year of activities. Events included a procession from the 15th Street building to the Chambers Street one, a meeting of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology, an all-class reunion, and visits and speeches from notable alumni.
In the 21st century, keynote graduation speakers have included Attorney General Eric Holder (2001), United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan (2004), and comedian Conan O'Brien (2006).
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In 2020, Stuyvesant teachers wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, advocating to shut the city's public school system in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Shortly after, the entire school system was temporarily closed.
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Buildings
15th Street building
thumb|alt=A grayscale postcard showing the Old Stuyvesant Campus in Manhattan's East Village. The postcard's vantage point is from down the street from the old building and depicts the five-story stone facade of the building.|[[Postcard black and white art featuring the 15th Street old Stuyvesant High School building, of 1905–1907, now known since 1992 as the Old Stuyvesant Campus housing several smaller secondary and charter schools |362x362px]]
In August 1904, the Board of Education authorized municipal architect and engineer Snyder to design a new facility for Stuyvesant High School at 15th Street. The new high school structure was designed in the then popular Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical / Classical Revival architecture for its grand imposing style. It would be shaped like the letter "H", with two interior light courts; the shape also allowed natural light to illuminate more inside windows and parts of the building. Approximately $1.5 million was spent on constructing the school, including $600,000 for the monumental stone exterior alone.
alt=A view of the facade of the Old Stuyvesant Campus in 2021. There have been few modifications to the facade compared to the 1909 postcard view. The school name remains engraved in the pediment.|left|thumb|Modern color photograph of former Stuyvesant High School, 1907–1992, now renamed The Old Stuyvesant Campus on East 15th Street, as seen in 2021|336x336px
A half-century later, during the 1950s, the building underwent a $2 million renovation to update its classrooms, shops, libraries, and cafeterias. the High School for Health Professions and Human Services, and lower grades of PS 226.
Current building
In 1987, Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo announced the construction of a third new Stuyvesant High School building to be situated in Battery Park City. The Battery Park City Authority donated of land for the building. The authority was not required to hire the lowest bidder, which meant the construction process could be accelerated in return for a higher cost. The structure's main architect, Alex Cooper of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, had also designed much of the surrounding development of Battery Park City. The Stuyvesant library has a capacity of 40,000 volumes and overlooks Battery Park City.
Shortly after the building was completed, the $10 million Tribeca Bridge was built to allow students to enter it without having to cross the busy West Street. The building was designed to be fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and is listed as such by the New York City Department of Education. As a result, the building is one of the five additional sites of P721M, a school for students with multiple disabilities who are between the ages of 15 and 21.
In 1997, the eastern end of the mathematics floor was dedicated to Richard Rothenberg, the Stuyvesant mathematics department chairman who had died from a sudden heart attack earlier that year. Sculptor Madeleine Segall-Marx was commissioned to create the Rothenberg Memorial in his honor. She created a mathematics wall titled "Celebration", consisting of 50 wooden boxes—one for each year of his life—behind a glass wall, featuring mathematical concepts and reflections on Rothenberg.
In 2006, Robert Ira Lewy of the class of 1960 made a gift of $1 million to found the Dr. Robert Ira Lewy M.D. Multimedia Center. In 2007, he donated his personal library. In 2010, the high school's library merged with the New York Public Library (NYPL) network in a four-year pilot program, in which all students of the school received a Stuyvesant High School/NYPL student library card so they could check books out of the school library or any other public library in the NYPL system.
An escalator collapse at Stuyvesant on September 13, 2018, injured ten people, including eight students. As a result, various escalators remained closed off to students for examination and renovation for the next few years.
Mnemonics
alt=A wall in the school decorated with a mural named "Mnemonics." The mural was created in 1992 by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel.|frameless|1x1pxDuring construction, the Battery Park City Authority, the Percent for Art Program of the City of New York, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York City Board of Education commissioned Mnemonics, an artwork by public artists Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. Four hundred hollow glass blocks were dispersed randomly from the basement to the tenth floor of the new Stuyvesant High School building. Each block contains relics providing evidence of geographical, historical, natural, cultural, and social worlds, from antiquity to the present time. The installation received the Award for Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York.
Transportation
The New York City Subway's Chambers Street station, served by the , is nearby, as is the Chambers Street–World Trade Center station served by the . New York City Bus's and routes stop near Stuyvesant. Students residing a certain distance from the school are provided full-fare or half-fare student MetroCards for public transportation at the start of each term, based on how far away they reside from school. As of 2024, students are provided with OMNY cards that offer four free rides per day, as well as public transportation access over the weekend.
Enrollment
{| class="wikitable floatright sortable collapsible"; text-align:right; font-size:80%;"
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| Two or more Races
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| American Indian/Alaska Native
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| Male
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| Female
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| Economically disadvantaged
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Entrance examination
Stuyvesant has a total enrollment of over 3,000 students and is open to residents of New York City entering ninth or tenth grade. Enrollment is based solely on performance on the three-hour Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, The list of schools using the SHSAT includes eight of New York's nine specialized high schools. The test score necessary for admission to Stuyvesant has consistently been higher than that needed for admission to the other schools using the test. Admission is based on the applicant's SHSAT score and their ranking of Stuyvesant among the other specialized schools. Ninth- and rising tenth–grade students are also eligible to take the test for enrollment, but far fewer students are admitted that way. The test covers math (word problems and computation) and verbal (reading comprehension) skills. Former Mayor John Lindsay and community activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) have argued that the exam may be biased against African and Hispanic Americans, but attempts to eliminate the exam have been criticized as discriminatory against Asian Americans. The paucity of Black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant High has often been an issue for city administrators. In 1971, Mayor Lindsay argued that the test was culturally biased against black and Hispanic students and sought to implement an affirmative action program. A few students judged to be economically disadvantaged who came within a few points of the cutoff score were given an extra chance to take the test.
In 1996, community activist group ACORN International published two reports, Secret Apartheid and Secret Apartheid II. The reports call the SHSAT "permanently suspect" and a "product of an institutional racism", saying that black and Hispanic students did not have access to proper test preparation materials.
Many students take preparatory courses offered by private tutorial companies such as The Princeton Review and Kaplan, Inc. to perform better on the SHSAT, often leaving those unable to afford such classes at a disadvantage. In 1995, the Board of Education started the Math Science Institute, a free program to prepare students for the SHSAT. Students attend preparatory classes through the program, now known as the Specialized High School Institute (or DREAM), at several city schools from the summer after sixth grade until the exam. But Black and Hispanic enrollment has continued to decline. After further expansion of free test prep programs, the proportion of black and Hispanic students still did not increase.
In 2003, The New York City Department of Education reported that public per student spending at Stuyvesant High School is slightly lower than the city average. Stuyvesant also receives private contributions from alumni, retired faculty, charitable foundations, and educational grants to build up its endowment.
Academics
Stuyvesant's college-preparatory curriculum includes four years of English, history, and laboratory-based sciences. The sciences courses include requisite biology, chemistry, and physics classes. Students also take four years of mathematics; Several exemptions from technology education exist for seniors. Stuyvesant offers a selection of elective courses, including astronomy, New York City history, Women's Voices, and Computer Graphics Design in the Computer Science Area. Most students complete the New York City Regents courses by junior year and take calculus during their senior year. The school offers math courses through differential equations for more advanced students. A year of technical drawing was formerly required; students learned how to draft by hand in its first semester and how to draft using a computer in the second. Now, students take a one-semester drafting course and a semester of introductory computer science. For the class of 2015, the one-semester computer science course was replaced by a two-semester course. in math, science, history, English, and foreign languages. This gives students opportunities to earn college credit and boost college admission chances. AP computer science students may also take three additional computer programming courses after completing the AP course: systems level programming, computer graphics, and software development. There is also a one-year computer networking class that can earn students Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification.
Stuyvesant's foreign language offerings include Spanish, French, German, Latin, Mandarin, and Japanese. In 2005, the school also started offering courses in Arabic after the school's Muslim Student Association raised funds to support the course. Stuyvesant's biology and geo-science department offers courses in molecular biology, human physiology, medical ethics, medical and veterinary diagnosis, human disease, anthropology and sociobiology, vertebrate zoology, laboratory techniques, medical human genetics, botany, the molecular basis of cancer, nutrition science, and psychology. The chemistry and physics departments include classes in organic chemistry, physical chemistry, astronomy, engineering mechanics, and electronics.
The English Department offers students courses in British and classical literature, Shakespearean literature, science fiction, philosophy, existentialism, debate, acting, journalism, creative writing, and poetry. The Social Studies core requires two years of global history (or a year of global followed by a year of European history), a year of U.S. history, and a semester each of economics and government. Humanities electives include American foreign policy, civil and criminal law, prejudice and persecution, and race, ethnicity and gender issues.
In 2004, Stuyvesant High entered into an agreement with the City College of New York (C.C.N.Y. – part of the larger City University of New York) whereby the college funds advanced after-school courses taken for college credit but taught by Stuyvesant faculty. These include linear algebra, advanced Euclidean geometry, and women's history.
Before the 2005 revision of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), Stuyvesant graduates had an average score of 1408 out of 1600 (685 in the verbal section of the test, 723 in the math section). while the class of 2013 averaged 2096. , Stuyvesant students' average SAT score was 1510 out of 1600 points. Stuyvesant also administers more Advanced Placement exams than any other high school in the world and has the highest proportion of students who reach the AP courses' "mastery level". , there are 31 AP classes, with a little more than half of all students taking at least one. About 98% of students pass their AP tests. In addition, Stuyvesant has ultimate teams for the boys' varsity, boys' junior varsity, and girls' varsity divisions.
15 years after moving to Chambers Street in Battery Park City, in September 2007, the Stuyvesant High football team was given a home field at Pier 40, on the Hudson River waterfront of the westside of Manhattan situated north of the school at Houston Street and West Street. In 2008, the baseball team was granted use of the pier after construction and delivery of an artificial turf pitching mound that met Public Schools Athletic League specifications. Stuyvesant also has its own swimming pool, but it does not contain its own running track or tennis court.
Student government
The student body of Stuyvesant High School is represented by the Stuyvesant Student Union, a student government. It comprises a group of students (elected each year for each grade) who promote and manage extracurricular activities (clubs and publications), by organizing out-of-school activity such as city excursions or fundraisers, and provide a voice to the student body in all discussion of school policy with the administration.
Clubs and publications
Stuyvesant allows students to join clubs, publications, and teams under a system similar to that of many colleges. , the school had 150 student clubs.
The Spectator
The Spectator is Stuyvesant's official in-school newspaper, which is published biweekly and is independent from the school administration and faculty. There are over 250 students who help with its publication.
Founded in 1915 (and now 109 years old), The Spectator is one of Stuyvesant's oldest publications. It has a long-standing connection with its older namesake; the Columbia University's Columbia Daily Spectator, and has been recognized by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's well-known nation-wide Columbia Scholastic Press Association. founded 1925.
The Voice
upright|thumb|right|The Voice, May 1977
The Voice was founded in the 1973–1974 academic year as an independent publication only loosely sanctioned by school officials.
Relying on the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court holding in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that "undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression", Motley ordered the New York City Board of Education to permit the distribution of the survey to the juniors and seniors. There Judge J. Edward Lumbard, joined by Judge Murray Gurfein and over dissent by third Judge Walter R. Mansfield, held that the distribution of the questionnaires was properly disallowed by the administration.
SING!
upright|thumb|right|alt=A black-and-white playbill for the SING V program in 1977. There are two double-black-outlined boxes on a white background. The top box text is "the STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL UNION proudly presents," then the icon for SING V in stencil letters, followed by the performance dates. The bottom box, which contains three-quarter circles at its corners, consists of a crude sketch of a backstage area.|SING V program, 1977
The annual theater competition known as SING! pits seniors, juniors, and "soph-frosh" (sophomores and freshmen working together) against each other in a contest to put on the best performance. SING! started in 1947 at Midwood High School in Brooklyn and has expanded to many New York City high schools since then. SING! at Stuyvesant started as a small event in 1973, and since then, has grown to a school-wide event; in 2005, nearly 1,000 students participated. The entire production is written, directed, produced, and funded by students. Their involvement ranges from being members of the production's casts, choruses, or costume and tech crews to Step, Hip-Hop, Swing, Modern, Bolly, Flow, Tap or Latin dance groups. SING! begins in late January to February and ends in final performances on three nights in March/April. Scoring is done on each night's performances and the winner is determined by the overall total.
Reputation
The Stuyvesant High School has produced many notable alumni, including four Nobel laureates. As of 2024, U.S. News & World Report magazine ranked Stuyvesant as 2nd among New York City high schools and 21st among STEM high schools in the country. In December 2007, The Wall Street Journal studied the freshman classes at eight selective colleges in the U.S. and reported that Stuyvesant sent 67 students to these schools, comprising 9.9% of its 674 seniors. In recent years, Stuyvesant High’s student newspaper has reported on college admissions of the graduating classes, with the class of 2021 having 133 students offered admission to Ivy League institutions.
U.S. News & World Report included Stuyvesant on its list of "Best High Schools" published in December 2009, ranking 31st. In its 2010 progress report, the New York City Department of Education assigned Stuyvesant an "A", the highest possible grade.
Stuyvesant has had the second highest number of National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists, behind Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. From 2002 to 2010, Stuyvesant has produced 103 semi-finalists and 13 finalists on the Intel Science Talent Search, the second most of any secondary school in the United States behind the Bronx High School of Science. In 2014, Stuyvesant had 11 semi-finalists for the Intel Search, the highest number of any school in the U.S. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) economists compared high school outcomes for Stuyvesant students who barely passed the SHSAT score required for admission, to those of applicants just below that score, using the latter as a natural control group of peers who attended other schools. The study found no discernible average difference in the two groups' later performance on New York state exams.
Notable people
Notable scientists among Stuyvesant alumni include mathematicians Bertram Kostant (1945) and
Paul Cohen (1950), string theorist Brian Greene (1980), physicist Lisa Randall (1980), and genomic researcher Eric Lander (1974). Other prominent alumni include civil rights leader Bob Moses, MAD Magazine editor Nick Meglin (1953), entertainers such as songwriter and Steely Dan founder Walter Becker (1967), Thelonious Monk (1935), and actors Lucy Liu (1968), Tim Robbins (1976), and James Cagney (1918), comedian Paul Reiser (1973), playwright Arthur M. Jolly (1987), sports anchor Mike Greenberg (1985), and Columbia University, early NBA and minor league pro basketball player and bookmaker Jack Molinas (1949). In business, government and politics, former United States Attorney General Eric Holder in the Obama presidential administration is a Stuyvesant alumnus (1969), as are 2008 presidential election campaign manager and later presidential administration Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama David Axelrod (1972) and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, Dick Morris (1964).
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt was a Stuyvesant faculty member and taught English at Stuyvesant before the publication of his memoirs Angela's Ashes, Tis, and Teacher Man. Teacher Man third section, titled Coming Alive in Room 205, concerns McCourt's time at Stuyvesant, and mentions a number of students and fellow faculty. Former New York City Council member Eva Moskowitz (1982) graduated from the high school, as did the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, Bram Cohen (1993). A notable Olympic Games medalist from the school was foil fencer Albert Axelrod, and a notable coach was two-time fencing Olympian Herb Cohen. Economist Thomas Sowell was also a student of Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out early at age 17 because of financial difficulties and problems in his home. Russian (and former Soviet Union) journalist / propagandist Vladimir Pozner Jr., known in the West for his numerous appearances during the 1980s and 1990s on the ABC News late-evening program Nightline, with Ted Koppel, on the topic: U.S.–Soviet Space Bridge and influential longtime daytime talk show host / moderator Phil Donahue, was also a student of Stuyvesant High School.
Four Nobel laureates are Stuyvesant alumni:
- Robert Fogel (1944) – Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 1993
- Roald Hoffmann (1954) – Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1981
- Richard Axel (1963) – Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2004
See also
- Education in New York City
- Health effects arising from the September 11 attacks
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets
- History of New York City
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
- Stuyvesant High School's Official Newspaper—The Spectator