Stuyvesant High School (pronounced ), commonly referred to among its students as Stuy (pronounced ), is a public college-preparatory, specialized high school in New York City, United States. Operated by the New York City Department of Education, these specialized schools offer tuition-free accelerated academics to city residents. It is one of the most selective public high schools in New York City, New York State, and the United States.
Stuyvesant was established as an all-boys school in the East Village of Manhattan in 1904. An entrance examination was mandated for all applicants starting in 1934, and the school started accepting female students in 1969. Stuyvesant moved to its current location at Battery Park City in 1992 because the student body had become too large to be suitably accommodated in the original campus. The old building now houses several high schools.
Admission to Stuyvesant involves passing the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Every March, the 800 to 850 applicants with the highest SHSAT scores out of the around 30,000 students who apply to Stuyvesant are accepted. The school has a wide range of extracurricular activities, including a theater competition called SING! and two student publications.
Notable alumni include former United States Attorney General Eric Holder, physicists Brian Greene and Lisa Randall, economist Thomas Sowell, mathematician Paul Cohen, chemist Roald Hoffmann, genome researcher Eric Lander, Angel Investor Naval Ravikant, Oscar-winning actor James Cagney, comedian Billy Eichner, and chess grandmaster Robert Hess. Stuyvesant is one of only six secondary schools worldwide that has educated four or more Nobel laureates.
History
Planning
New York City's Superintendent of Schools, William Henry Maxwell, had first written about the need to construct manual trade schools in New York City in 1887. At the time, C. B. J. Snyder was designing many of the city's public school buildings using multiple architectural styles. The first trade school in the city was Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, which opened in 1893. By 1899, Maxwell was advocating for a manual trade school in Manhattan.
In January 1903, Maxwell and Snyder submitted a report to the New York City Board of Education in which they suggested the creation of a trade school in Manhattan. The Board of Education approved the plans in April 1904. They suggested that the school occupy a plot on East 15th Street, west of First Avenue. However, that plot did not yet contain a school building, and so the new trade school was initially housed within PS 47's former building at 225 East 23rd Street. The Board of Education also wrote that the new trade school would be "designated as the Stuyvesant High School, as being reminiscent of the locality." Stuyvesant Square, Stuyvesant Street, and later Stuyvesant Town (which was built in 1947) are all located near the proposed 15th Street school building. All of these locations were named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New Netherland and owner of the area's Stuyvesant Farm. The appellation was selected in order to avoid confusion with Brooklyn's Manual Training High School.
Opening and boys' school
Stuyvesant High School opened in September 1904 as Manhattan's first manual trade school for boys. At the time of its opening, the school consisted of 155 students and 12 teachers.
At first, the school provided a core curriculum of "English, Latin, modern languages, history, mathematics, physics, chemistry, [and] music," as well as a physical education program and a more specialized track of "woodworking, metalworking, mechanical drawing, [and] freehand drawing." However, in June 1908, Maxwell announced that the trade school curriculum would be separated from the core curriculum and a discrete trade school would operate in the Stuyvesant building during the evening. Thereafter, Stuyvesant became renowned for excellence in math and science. In 1909, eighty percent of the school's alumni went to college, compared to other schools, which only sent 25% to 50% of their graduates to college.
By 1919, officials started restricting admission based on scholastic achievement. Stuyvesant implemented a double session plan in 1919 to accommodate the rising number of students: some students would attend in the morning, while others would take classes 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. The examination program, developed with the assistance of Columbia University, was expanded in 1938 to include the newly founded Bronx High School of Science.