i would give it 4.5 stars but thats not possible so i rounded it to 5...
such is the mentality of a northsider (what kids from this school refer to themselves as)...
well, the name says it all, but i promise its not false advertising like other "college preps" in the CPS system.
The curriculum- pretty challenging. There is no such thing as "normal" class (where a GPA for an A=4), as all students are automatically in enrolled in honors classes (A=5) except for extracurriculars like art and PE. Not that thats challenging enough, since the majority of students are taking AT LEAST 1 AP class (A=6) by sophmore year. Most kids graduate Northside having earned several hours of college credit through AP classes. The average is probably about 1 or 2 semester's worth of credit. Im not kidding, its pretty ridiculous. Oh and theres block scheduling which instead of taking 8 periods a day you take 4 periods every other day not including wed, thats for half days...
The faculty- Well, theres a new principal now, I loved when Dr lalley was principal. The faculty really cares about its students, and many themselves are young yet achieved in their professions. They are not easy, but are incredibly caring and helpful.
Facilities- The school is like, 8 years old what doesnt it have? it has a lunchroom, which one side is all glass leading to the outdoor patio(btw you can usually have a snowball fight outside during lunchtime in the winter).... a huge pool that goes up to 12ft deep, nice classrooms, a really nice stadium-seating auditorium, a gym with rock climbing walls, fully equiped science labs, a 2-story library, 2 computer labs(not including the one in the library and about 5 comps per classroom)... i mean the school has its own weather meter and solar panels...
student body- mostly white and asian, not to say the school isnt diverse... lots of people complain that the school shouldnt have such a large difference between ethnicities(i think avgs its white 40%, asian 30%, hispanic 20%, africanamerican10%, and other is less than 1%) but the truth of the matter is that this school is magnet and has really high standards for admittance, and unfortunately some people are better equipped than other in their educational careers, so they would tend to be better qualified for attendace here...
So... i think i covered it all.
They got -.3 points are for their horrible IMP (math)program that I hope doesnt exist anymore...its not that you dont learn, but you learn rather unconventionally...like writing papers (yes, papers) for math, kinda like a lab report for science but worse since you have to show your math work on these papers as well as explain problems along the way and what you learned....
Then they get -.2 points for the fact that the school is kinda nerdy. Not nerdy in the look-at-me-be-out-of-fashion-and-talk-funny way, but in the im-a-cheerleader-in-APcalc-but-still-pretty-way ,and look-at-those-people-practicing-their-spanish-outside-of-class way....yea. Its like a bad habit thats still endearing in a way...
Oh, and it used to have mediocre school spirit, but I attribute it to the fact that the school was new and was still trying to build a history, i think school spirit has gotten progressively better with time, so i didnt add or take off stars for that.... read more