When hundreds of high school students trade in their school uniforms for square hats and flammable nylon robes, it must be commencement season.
Jersey City’s six public high schools – Henry Snyder, Ferris, McNair Academic, William L. Dickinson, Liberty, and Abraham Lincoln – will graduate their 2011 classes on Monday, June 27.
Jersey City-based County Prep High School, one of two schools of technology run by Hudson County, graduated its 180-student class of 2011 on June 23.
Jersey City’s six public high schools will all graduate their 2011 classes on Monday, June 27.
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In interviews last week several seniors spoke fondly of their high school years. Yet, in their refusal to dwell on the past it was clear they all believed the best is still to come.
Back to the books
Ronak Patel, 16, graduating from McNair with the second highest grade point average in his class, is a Jersey City native who will be heading to Rutgers University in New Brunswick in the fall to study behavioral science, credits McNair with giving him solid preparation for a top college.
“I’ve gained a really good background in the sciences and in math,” he said. “But I also think I’ve received a well rounded education from creative writing, English, and history classes too.”
The salutatorian for his class, Patel has spent the past three summers working on a long-term research project that measured the impact of multi-tasking on student test scores. His conclusion? Multi-tasking negatively affects student test scores.
Despite this three-year project Patel said, “I don’t want to go into research and just do studies my whole life. I plan to also study psychology and I want to work with patients after [attending] medical school.”
Patel’s classmate Shanny Li, who will be attending Columbia University in the fall, is another scientifically-gifted McNair student who credits the school with preparing her for higher education.
“We have a lot of [Advanced Placement] classes here, so they really prepare us for college,” she noted. “This really is a college prep high school. So all the classes here give you the foundation you need to do well in college courses.”
Li plans to study electrical engineering at Columbia and will be enrolled the university’s five-year masters degree program. Upon graduation, she plans to use her education to improve internet security.
“Recently, we’ve seen people experience a lot of problems [as a result of] phishing and hacking where all their credit card information gets stolen, or all their personal confidential information is compromised,” she said. “I want to work on ways to improve information systems so that kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”