New York City Rivals Share a Desire to Be Tops

Imagine a bustling, urban public high school whose alumni include Nobel Prize winners, government officials, and world-class writers, musicians, actors, scholars—you name it. And the prestige of going there is hardly a thing of the past.

Fewer than 10 percent of the more than 20,000 eighth and ninth graders taking the annual admission test will score above the cutoff point—and once there, the workload doesn't let up. But sleep deprivation can seem a small price to pay (especially when the tuition is free), considering the range and depth of the high-level classes offered. And when these driven students do graduate, they go on to become—well, just look at their alumni role models.

Now, imagine two such schools, and each one believes—knows—it's superior to the other. Think Harvard vs. Yale, Columbia vs. Cornell, and you've got the basic story line of the friendly rivalry between two of New York City's finest, here listed in alphabetical order, lest a fistfight break out immediately: the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School. (This won't help the rivalry: Stuyvesant is No. 31 and Bronx Science No. 58 on the U.S. News Best High Schools list. Bronx Science still lays claim to the larger number of Nobel laureates, however, with distinguished physicists Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg among the school's seven prize winners. Stuyvesant has four.)

[Photo Gallery: Bronx High School of Science]

Even their addresses speak to an uptown-downtown polarity. Bronx Science is a few subway stops north of Yankee Stadium. Stuyvesant sits near Manhattan's lower tip, not far from ground zero.

Nor would anyone confuse one building for the other. Stuyvesant is a 10-story high-rise with escalators, a swimming pool, and picture windows that overlook the Hudson River. Bronx Science, in an urban area with tree-lined streets, is a sprawling, red-brick low-rise without pool or escalator. It does boast a weather station, however, offers a course in forensic science, and is the only high school in the country to house a Holocaust museum and related curriculum.

So, which school is on top? It depends upon whom you ask.

A win-win. "So, how's it going at the city's second-best high school?" Valerie Reidy, principal of Bronx Science, gently teases Stuyvesant Principal Stanley Teitel. His usual comeback, with a wink: "I don't know! You tell me!"

In reality, they consult each other about school issues regularly and readily praise the other's institution. Reidy, who has been at the helm of Bronx Science for nine years and for 22 years before that taught in and then headed its biology department, says that she has a standard reply when potential students or parents ask which school is better. "I say, 'If these are your two choices, how lucky you are! Both schools will provide you with an excellent education.' " Teitel—who joined Stuyvesant as a chemistry and physics teacher in 1983 and has headed the school since 1999—agrees. "Truth is, there is no 'better.' It's the same," he says.

Or at the very least, more similar than not. After all, the same test—the New York City Specialized Science High Schools Admissions Test—determines who gets into Bronx Science and Stuyvesant (as well as a third prestigious high school for the gifted and talented, Brooklyn Technical).

Among these schools, too, there is one size only: large. About 3,200 students attend Stuyvesant; roughly 2,900 go to Bronx Science. If, as many interviewees suggested, more students have put Stuyvesant at the top of their list rather than Bronx Science in recent years—especially since Stuyvesant moved from Manhattan's East Side into its downtown building in 1992—the qualifying admission test scores for both schools generally run within points of one another.