Nice campus Clean and lots of activities including the track invitationals of which we attend! Super pretty part of Camden avenue! read more

Leland High School - Middle Schools & High Schools Near Me - San Jose, California

DO NOT ATTEND IF YOU CAN. Deeply disappointing experience that the teaching staff, administration, and students all played a role in. The pre-pandemic experience was good but the post-pandemic experience was extremely poor. Was physically assaulted on the basis of my sexuality and administration had asked me to be as quiet about the situation to avoid controversy. Administration would constantly bother students over extremely minor things such as completing work outside during the tutorial period or sitting in a car during the lunch or snack break. (I have heard the micromanaging has gotten significantly worse after I left.) Teachers are generally mediocre or genuinely uninterested in teaching; I was interested in pursuing computer science but I found that to be challenging since in my introductory computer science course, my computer science teacher would only teach for 15 minutes during two hour block periods before spending the rest of the time playing computer games. Felt extremely uncomfortable when a teacher seemingly accidentally made a joke calling a dark-skinned student "three-fifths of a student." One teacher has had a history of predatory behavior to young women, even minors, but still continues to teach. Student culture is also poor. Being around these students will motivate you to be successful as they are very driven but there is a toxic competitive culture where students feel like they need to one-up each other in order to succeed. Lots of explicit racism towards black and hispanic people (if you are part of these demographics I highly suggest not coming here) and undertones of racism as some students only prefer being close to students of their own ethnicity / race. Leland comparatively has significantly less resources to other high schools in the area of similar academic caliber. Affluent & competitive students use outside resources such as expensive tutoring services and college counseling to fulfill their academic goals, creating a gap between students who are able to and actively use these resources and students who don't (important to consider as in the college application process, you directly compete with these students.) Leland may or may not be a place where you can succeed and thrive depending on the type of person you are. However, it will likely not be a space where you feel happy or comfortable if you do not conform to the dominant demographics of the school. If you are a parent looking to buy or rent a home in this area with the allure of the "great schools nearby" I strongly suggest you look elsewhere. read more

If you wanna be surrounded by Almaden parents who have no idea how to drive nor understand how to properly raise kids. Leland's the perfect place for you! And with the new district policy your kids will totally not fail out of high school! (75% of grade is tests and 25% quizzes) I pray for any incoming freshman. My best advice would be to transfer. Overall, all they care about is performance. They don't credit you for hard work and they sure as hell don't prepare you for college. I'm sure if they had more school funds too they would hire better teachers that aren't pedos. The only thing they have going for them is the whole "Blue National Ribbon School". Yeah because they drive kids to the ground with work. To quote Leland's Values... "At Leland we value critical thinking, creativity, college readiness, social and academic responsibility." I find this so ironic especially the last part about responsibilities. I remember at the end of second semester where everyone was scrambling to figure out their transcripts only weeks before graduation. I really loved how Leland would announce critical deadlines one week before they were due. The admin can't even follow Leland's values. The "social responsibility" aspect is even funnier. Students, specifically those who are white and heterosexual, will drop the n word slur and f word slur all the time, no hesitation. And I thought middle school was bad... just wait. Cheers to the worst 4 years of my life. Oh and also everyone that goes there is addicted to nicotine and don't even get me started on the bathrooms. And shoutout to Ms. Cohen who was the only genuine and supportive teacher i ever had at that school, i seriously pray for her. And as for the rest of Leland's admin, do better and be better. Give consequences to those who are disruptive and disrespectful. Be giving and rewarding towards those who are kind and caring. All Leland is raising are students who are prejudice, ungrateful, and extremely entitled. If i could rate this school zero stars, i would. BE BETTER. read more

Leland High School - Middle Schools & High Schools Near Me - San Jose, California

I went to this school for three years. My experience, discounting the bipolar swings that are a part of high school, was mostly good. I got to hang out with some cool guys, and the girls at Leland were gorgeous! I went to some great parties (here's to you guys, M.J., K.H., G.S., A. D. and A. R.!). But let's face it, at Leland the snobbier characteristics of high school are amplified; Almaden Valley, where the school is located, is an isolated well-moneyed enclave, where quite a few of the residents have a sense of entitlement. Unfortunately this attitude spills over into the school culture and spoils a number of the students. Plus it's also boring as hell to interact with kids who can't think of a thing to say outside of American Idol. Still, you never have to worry about crime at Leland (are you kidding, the mere suggestion of a gangbanger and the SWAT team rides in) and that is probably a pretty solid selling point for a high school these days. And then again, the school is nationally ranked in a number of academic categories, so if you want to get into a good college, you're in the right place. Just go hard on the studying and easy on the parties. Oh, and find your own group of friends, don't spend your high school years in vain pursuit of the A-list crowd - it's not worth it. read more

Terrible experience. Sure, it had its ups & downs, but I NEVER got invited to ANY parties, I decided for myself to NOT go to any of the dances, and since I was socially awkward geek who had Aspies, it kinda f*ucked up my reputation throughout those miserable 4 years. From sophomore to senior year, I was frequently bullied and the justice was so unfair. The asshole that picked on me used to threaten my life, occasionally hit me, and everyone seemed to like him (makes a lot of sense, right? It doesn't). At least I went to my grad night (Class of 2011) and that was fun. I had some loyal friends during senior year, like Meelaud and the legendary Vincent, we would all hang out at the senior wall and I would casually sing & play my guitar, as all the women got serenaded. It'll be interesting to attend my high school reunion and see where everyone is .......hahahahahahahahahaahhahaha read more

40% Asian, 40% White, at least the last time I checked anyway. Upside: Excellent US History AP course Top notch speech and debate team Excellent sports facilities Downside: Inflated competition Surrounding neighborhood costs too much. This is one of those high schools bolstered by its student body. For the most part, the teachers are mediocre, but there are a few gems. Since many of the teachers retired several years ago, there is really no reason to attend here, but there are a few. Rob Miller (Economics), Joe Kerwin (History), Gay Brasher (Speech and Debate), Helen Arrington (Math, Engineering). Jankowski (English) and Sitkewitch (Math) are worth your time, but otherwise, if you can afford a private school (Bellarmine, Mitty, Presentation, Notre Dame), I would recommend that over Leland High. read more

Ick. High School. They say everyone has fond memories of High School... and its true. I have one in particular. Leaving. The whole time I was there, this place was a pit. Why? Because all the houses around it started at 1.3mil for a 1 bedroom condo (I'm being a little facetious here). The district took all the money, and spent it everywhere else. Not to mention the admin office was staffed by a gang of witches who strived to deny any service to students that they possibly could without breaking the law. True story: "I missed Friday because my grandmother died and I had to fly to Oregon for the funeral" "I'm sorry you needed to get a form and have it signed by your teachers for me to let you back to class today". At least the only thugs here were total posers, and wouldn't actually do anything, because it would hurt their chances of getting into college. And oh yeah, my Chem teacher turned out to be a child molester. We KNEW it! Goooo Leland! read more

Class of 2006. I went there because it was the closest to my house. But there was too much pressure here, too many parental expectations to fulfill, and the students and teachers here were so serious. I was always more always more laid-back. My favorite teacher here was Ms. Lucarotti for Spanish 3,4 during my sophomore year. I admire her for organizing the Christmas Giving Tree project for Key Club and because her class was the most laid back class I've ever had other than Mr. Miller for AP Econ. I don't even remember how to conjugate Spanish verbs or how to explain the law of aggregate demand! hahaha I think Leland is a school where you go to learn a bunch of facts, regurgitate them on a test, then forget it all. Your only goal here as a student is to get good grades and go on to a UC. Oh yeah, I went to UCSD and majored in Literature. I wasn't a very good student though in Leland or otherwise :p Nowadays, I just come here to run the track in the Pat Tillman stadium and play tennis on the courts until 10 PM when all the lights turn off. 4 laps is equal to one mile. read more

I hated it. Class of 1979. I did absolutely nothing and nothing happened. No help and no guidance. Sorry for the poor writing skills, I went to Leland read more

this is a school who cheated in the JV baseball game in April with a "ghost" varsity pitcher (#4, C. Hsiao) to play for the JV game. and you cannot even find that pitcher on their Varsity roster list. even the MaxPrep website is now suddenly remove the page of that varsity player (and Leland website cannot find this guy neither varsity nor the JV rosters). however, one can still find the MaxPrep page cached by google. a school teaches kids to cheat in the game, what's the point Leland!? your entire JV pitchers are so incapable? and what kind of value you want for their life? To cheat is best way to win? (5/14/18) google cached page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:x9Hbl-RZfB4J:www.maxpreps.com/athlete/calvin-hsiao/W3pxoRdkEeiT-Oz0u-e-FA/default.htm+&cd=2&hl=zh-TW&ct=clnk&gl=us read more

I have willingly forgotten most of my time here, because it wasn't a great experience. Few good classes unless you're at the AP level (and even then the science classes were lacking, though I am now a chemical engineering major), and teachers were often overworked and unable to respond to student needs. read more

Class of 2003 here. I can't write much in this review because I've forgotten (purposely? or accidentally? haha) much of my experience here. It was probably an average experience. Despite a horrible science curriculum here at the time I went to Leland, I somehow survived a biochemistry major at UCSD and am graduating from optometry school at Berkeley soon, and I have 4 other colleagues that are from Leland too! It's true though, the best thing about Leland is the speech and debate team...one of the best in the country! read more

My daughter is a student there now and while I think the teachers have mostly been great, the staff in the office have been unfriendly and bordering on rude! They never want to answer your questions and seem intent on treating parents like nuisance callers. This does not say very much for Principal Park. read more

We went here for a season of my son's flag football league. It's actually pretty deep in San Jose near the hills almost. It's a very nice high school and there's plenty of parking. The neighborhood is actually very beautiful. The high school was clean. The football field is nice and I like how they have bathrooms just right there. We ended up going back to another field because apparently the athletics director didn't like our league being there. That's just what I heard. read more

Leland High School - Out on the field for CYFF - Middle Schools & High Schools Near Me - San Jose, California

Avoid Avoid Avoid!! Dismal mediocrity centered around apathetic administration, passionless teachers and ripe with cheating. Spent $1mil to get here only to discover the farce. Prime example of what unions foster when left unchecked. Sad, because so much is riding on our public schools. My daughter earned a satisfactory 3.2 while playing 2 varsity sports and socializing. I am certain her GPA would have been higher if the class curves weren't so skewed by regular and visible tolerated cheating. All the girls talked about how shocking and pervasive it was. Clearly when a 3.2 puts you in the BOTTOM 40% of a high school class, something is amiss. Too many tenured unimaginative and often absent teachers, whereby the talented new teachers get cut after a year. Case in point: a swim coach who taught not a single lecture all year and ruined the potential for discovery in a science course that should be exciting and stimulating; Mr Monsees stole an entire year from my daughter. And he not nearly the only teacher like this. Just go to "RateMyTeacher.com" for the students' honest evaluations to discover the truths here. The only shining star of this school (aside from a Mr. Holland /English teacher) is their fantastic athletic program and booster group. No disappointment here. * just my two cents read more

this is the worst school to run a track meet at. first of all, i was hoping to be in a friendly, nice environment....BUT ONCE I GOT AT THE HIGH JUMP PIT, THE LADY IN CHARGE WAS SO RUDE. SHE HAD THE AUDACITY TO GIVE ME A LOT OF ATTITUDE AND NOT LET ME GO TO MY OTHER EVENT WHEN I HAD TO PRACTICE MY HANDOFFS FOR 4x1, BUT I DIDNT EVEN GET TO PRACTICE THEM CUS SHE WOULDNT LET ME LEAVE. second of all, i was first leg for 4x1 and the blocks wouldn't work so i tried getting new ones but all of a sudden she was like "on your mark." in addition to this, the man with the heat sheets but his hand in our faces when we tried asking of fucking question. LIKE HOW RUDE! AND THEN, the man who was telling us to line up kept yelling at our faces with hella attitude. in conclusion, i suggest you guys take out that black net behind the field goal it's very inconvenient. OH AND ALSO, they didn't even put our school name on the website. the video we took said we did a 56 second time, so obviously we placed cus the 6th place person ran a 56. their unorganized ass don't know what they're doing so i suggest tidying up a bit. thank you for your understanding. AND in the 100 meters they did not care at all if you were in the correct heat or lane. they were only saying your name not land number. read more

wow. i almost laughed when i found out that my old high school has a yelp page. very amusing. class of 1999, so yeah. some things change and some things don't. reaching my 30s, i'm able to truly find out how Leland has impacted my life. The Good (at the time, dunno about now): -ASB student government. although i was somewhat forced to join (by my family, big surprise), it really helped me learn how to deal with a combo of lazy people and OCD people for those horrible group projects of dances, fundraisers, etc. and WHO says that Leland DOESN'T apply to real life??? HA! Ever had a JOB yet? you either work with workaholics or stupid lazy people for the typical workplace. -The Good Kind of Peer Pressure. peer pressure can make or break people, esp in high school. i wanted to challenge my intelligence by secretly competing with these "nerds". when i mean competing, i mean that i had no idea what their actual grades ever were, but i suspected that all of their grades were better than mine. this became my challenge. my personal goal to beat "the game." it paid off. -AP courses. my existing career doesn't really involve calculus or english (thank god!), but it does involve biology.... vaguely. why do AP anyways? good practice for studying for national licensing exams for your future careers. high school AP scores allow for better choices for college class selection and college dorm room selection, every year. i dunno if thats still true these days, but for me it was. i got my preferred college teachers and my single dorm rooms. oh yeah. -Safe. so safe that it was crazy boring. me and my nerds hung out by watching the latest movies and hanging out at the mall. during my 4 yrs of leland, 2 tragic car accident deaths and 1 suicide death (tragic childhood). sure, some kids were dealing drugs, drinking alcohol, and sex. but.... i'm pretty sure that ALL these things are happening at ALL high schools, so you can't say that leland is bad for having these things. leland (at the time) was a little better, because these negative influences didn't seem to affect every single student here. the bad: -almaden valley is in the middle of nowhere! boring. -homes are too expensive. the gas used to drive on almaden expressway.... ugh. crap. -my teachers during '95-'99 were mostly really really poor. we'd get grades for the most useless projects ever! no actual learning occurred during these non-AP classes. blech. only a couple really good teachers changed me academically. but they've all retired. -cliques... meh. cliques in all schools. apparently, you can only stick with one group of friends or else you're a traitor to the other group of friends. i have no idea why. so juvenile. overall, leland shaped me into an organizing, hardworking individual who was lucky enough to finish all my schooling (including graduate school) in my mid 20s, allowing me to have complete freedom in my life. life at leland was somewhat unbearable, but at least it helped me overcome my post-high school academic obstacles. thanks leland. i guess you really did help me in life. read more

This is the most horrible high school. My son went there for 2 years and had to pull him out, because being an extraordinarily intelligent person, he was struggling, sad and losing his self esteem...teachers were incompetent. The Accelerated English teacher's qualification was, that he was a football player in college and did not have a degree in English. Teachers were inconsiderate, inefficient robot, who would give grade to the students based on, on how well they know them on a personal basis. My son is in a different high school and is a happy, straight A student. Please don't waste your money on a million dollar home on liquifaction ground with water in the crawl space (thats how most Almaden homes are). Just take your money and run... and save your child too.... read more

Dont bother eating the food unless you want to pay later. You only rent the food you dont buy it. Student body is relatvely intelligent just watch out for the inner city kids in the cafeteria. They dont really do anything to you they just stare you down. If you're a liberal you will love this school. If you arent you will most likely be harassed by both the student body and faculty. The facilities are nice and most teachers seem to care but there are of course a few just fly it in. And what the hell is that purple thing in the middle of the quad? The school colors arent even purple. read more

arrived at Leland in august 2013 and have been here for 3 years (junior at Leland now) and my experience here has been terrible. One of the biggest problems with Leland is that the material that they teach is not relevant to what you do in life out of high school. They put so much damn emphasis on your grades, and almost nothing on your personal happiness, and No helping you get ideas on what you want to for a career, or what you want to do in life. Many of the things you "learn" are not used in day to day life, and only somewhat used in careers. Another issue is what they expect form students. if you have issues talking to other people (social anxiety) well you are going to fail. much of the work in most classes require you to work with other people. had a meeting with my teachers, and academic councilor about it, though they did nothing, and still want me to interact with other students (1 of my teachers allowed me to completely avoid presentations so at least a few teachers understand) ill most likely end up having to drop out due to not making any progress in high school. Though thanks to Leland i have completely no idea about anything out side of school because they dont teach that stuff. Pros -there are a few really good teachers in the school. in my experience the animation, and one of the physiology teachers are the best/friendliness -free Autodesk. take introduction to engineering design (IED) or the other engineering class (forgot the name) and you can get a free membership of autodesk CAD software. -free flash animation software+flipbook. take an animation class and may be able to get a student pass for that software. -living close (if you live nearby) Cons -No thought about personal happiness/emotions/ideas. it's all about your grades, and college. -No preparation for life outside of the education system. no cover letters, no job applications, no health knowledge (CPR+put pressure on a wound is the most), no food preparation/nutrition, ect. -no help for those with social anxiety -get up too early to eat properly, or get a good amount of rest as a teenager (we all know teens stay up late naturally) -traffic. never drive pass leland at 7-8am or 3pm you will be sitting there for quite some time. -terrible security. there are 2 cameras (only ones) in the parking lot but iv heard from quite a few people they are offline. (hope no one is jealous about your car). oh and the run, hide, and defend drill is a joke. -deal with it attitude from teachers if you get too much work. -got issues in your personal life and have trouble being motivated to work? well too bad you are seen as a lazy person and teachers look down on you (without even thinking that something may be wrong with your life) -terrible counseling. the 2 counselors they have are pretty friendly, though they cant do anything to help you. -good luck finding a place to sit during lunch that is clean (most students eat on the ground) -expensive neighborhood. -no usable male restrooms (busted locks, dangerous slippery floor, toilets are clogged sometimes) read more

we moved here in 2005. My son finished 12th grade at Leland and HATED it. The teachers for the most part stunk, and the kids were stuck up. We live blocks from all 3 "blue ribbon schools" ( graystone, bret harte leland) and if I had to do it again I would have stayed back East where the schools have real counselors instead of cops, professional music and PE teachers, wrap around special ed services for all children so they can succeed and not feel like losers. CA has a 30 % drop out rate. Gee I wonder why?? The only kids that make it in CA are kids with no learning differences and are straight A students who can tolerate utter boredom and banality. I have never seen such utter mediocrate in my life. I went to really good public schools back East. These "aint" it. Unless your kid loves football or speech and debate, stay as far away from CA and Leland as you can. Just because they have high scores doesnt mean all kids do well here. Its a lie most parents don't understand. I have 3 kids with special ed needs and I am warning all parents: stay out of CA and go back East. read more