If you went to school in USA…

[Princesspuppy]

Sorry for the stupid question. But I am watching 10 things I hate about you and it got me wondering. Do schools in the US really have car parks for the students? And do the rich kids show up in expensive cars?

I would love to hear your experiences!

At the parent night, the principal kind of half joked that they encourage students who think they might want to take Intro to Drama as one of their art credits to get it done early because it gets weird when there are 14 year olds doing scenes with 18 year olds.

I love Legally Blonde but don't understand it - she seems to already be at university, living in her sorority, but then she applies to Harvard and is off to university again. Is she doing the equivalent of a Masters then?

Law school and Medical school follow a 4 year degree. She went to Harvard Law School.

Bloody good point. Ah yes, she is a fashion major at her existing college, so I guess she then applies to Harvard Law to get her law degree. What, like it's hard? 😉

Parent of a US highschooler here!

The school has 2500 students.

The student car park is bigger than the staff car park. The seniors can rent their own parking space and paint it. Definitely some expensive cars, but it's varied.

School is 8.55am - 4.30pm. The school yellow bus stops near the end of our road at 8.10am and returns at 5.10pm.

They do the Pledge of Allegiance daily, and also the Texas Pledge of Allegiance.

There are 8 subjects each semester, the first 4 are A day subjects, 2nd 4 are B day subjects. Mon & Wed are A days, Tues & Thurs are B days, Friday alternates. There are core subjects: math, English, science, language and then elective subjects. Every subject has equal time on the schedule. So, for example, if a student chooses 'orchestra' as an elective it will have as much lesson time as math.

Sorry if this has been asked.

Do they do announcements over the tannoy system?

Do they announce homecoming king and queen over the tannoy system?

Is homecoming king and queen an actual thing?

Do kids just get up and leave whenever the bell goes off? We used to have to wait until teacher had dismissed us when the bell went at my UK school.

Really interesting thread! (I was also today-years-old when I learned what exactly homecoming was..)

@Marsyas

She goes to Harvard Law after getting her undergrad degree. Law, medicine, pharmacy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, SLT, dentistry are all postgrad degrees in the US. You can also do a postgrad teaching qualification for teaching at any level if your undergrad degree isn't education. OT, SLT and PT can involve seven year courses with undergrad plus postgrad degrees awarded by the same university. Midwifery is also a postgrad degree, following the four year nursing degree.

I'm no expert, but DD1 joined a sorority, so I have a little second-hand info.

No, you don't have to join one. If you decide to join one, you have to apply and go through a multiple interview process conducted by current members, where it is decided whether or not you'll fit in. If you make the cut, you pledge. Sometimes there's hazing involved. There's a definite hierarchy among the fraternities/ sororities. DD3 spent several days comforting a friend who was rejected by the sorority she had set her heart on.

As a frat or sorority member, you spend a lot of your time partying, as far as I can tell. You can opt to live in the frat house/ sorority house or stick with university dorms or apartments. Life in the frat/ sorority house can sometimes be a good deal more comfortable than life in the dorms, though it's sometimes more like Animal House. Dorms can be a bit rough too, tbh.

As far as I can see, the main advantage to frats/ sororities is the networking opportunity. Speaking as someone who grew up in Ireland, it all seemed appallingly cliquey and with a strong whiff of the conformity culture of the 1950s - there's a lot of the 'boys will be boys' attitude, and you rarely see a sorority girl with short hair, colourfully dyed hair, lots of tattoos, piercings, or any originality to her style. In fact, there are sororities which are notable for the number of blondes they welcome into their ranks, or young women from very affluent families.

Just anecdotally, from DD3's observation (she didn't join one but had frie ds who did), a lot of sorority women do early childhood education degrees, though there are sororities for women engineers. DD joined a sorority with the reputation of being the Jewish sorority. I don't know how she got in since she's never been Jewish, but heyho.

Later, after sorority girls have graduated, they tend to be the women running the PTO, busting a gut doing fundraising, etc.

I'd forgotten about the pledge! I can still recite it almost 40 yrs later. At Catholic school we said a Lord's Prayer, a Hail Mary and the PoA at the start of the day.

I suspect every generation has counterculture/political kids who refuse to say it. Iirc we were told we didn't have to say it but had to stand respectfully while it was being said in home room.

Yes to announcements over the tannoy system. Announcements covered a wide variety of topics.

Homecoming king and queen - yes, an actual thing. Who gets voted king and queen depends on how conformist or alternative the local culture is. It's not always the quarterback of the football team and the best looking cheerleader, not by a long shot.

Yes, kids get up and leave. They might have a long trek to their next classroom. My DCs sometimes had to get from the ground floor at the southernmost end of the school to the fourth floor at the northernmost classroom in the passing period. Being late to your next class wasn't an option. Teachers who didn't pay attention to the clock were rare. Most finished their classes on time so students could bolt as soon as the bell chimed.

Legally Blonde (one of my favorite movies of all time) is not actually all that far-fetched. I have a good friend who majored in textiles and fashion as an undergraduate, worked in the field for a few years, and then went to one of the top law schools in the country. She is a taxation and estate planning specialist these days.

Yes, kids get up and leave. They might have a long trek to their next classroom.

I went to a split site comprehensive where it was a good 15 minutes between the sites - we'd still have got a bollocking if we'd left on the bell before the teacher told us to go. It was common to lose your entire mid-morning or mid-afternoon break to trekking between sites. Always envied American schools on TV where they just got up and left - some of our teachers were faffers or loved the sound of their own voices so would go on and on after the bell.

It was a private Lutheran! The most conservative branch of Lutheran too. I would say the local private catholic high school was almost identical in its views.

It was 25yrs ago & in that branch of the Lutheran faith, nothing has changed.

My school had homecoming Queen but no king - there was a homecoming court of 5 girls and their escorts.

Prom had a king, a court and their escorts. Each school does it a bit differently. When we were juniors we arranged prom for the seniors. It’s like a parting gift. We fundraised for it etc. everyone pitched in for homecoming though.

Is there a difference between grammar school and elementary school? And middle school and junior high?

But can you leave before then? Like high school drop out?

You can drop out but you can also graduate early if you have the requisite credits. It’s not uncommon at all.

Academically talented people are often allowed to skip grades or to accelerate by taking extra courses. It's not uncommon at all for academically gifted younger teenagers to graduate from high school early.

For people who haven't graduated, the mandatory age of having to stay in school varies from state to state and generally ranges from 16 to 18.

There is excellent provision for acceleration in US High schools (I'm only familiar with schools in my State so it may vary slightly from area to area).
DS had taken all the AP Math classes and exams available by the end of 11th Grade so then moved on to University level classes offered within his school such as Multivariable Calculus. The same with his foreign language, took the AP exam then moved on to University level classes during 12th Grade.
Some schools offer the University classes on their own campus, others partner with local University and students can split their time between the two sites or take them online.

Yup I have a kid who did college level maths for her last two years of high school. Many kids at her school graduated with at least a year’s worth of college credits through a partnership they ran with the local university.

My daughter is in a sorority but it’s not a very traditional one. She’s lived in the sorority house for 3 years and tbh it’s a lot like a regular dorm other than having some nice extras like a lot of music instruments including a grand piano, and a big shared kitchen.

A lot of the fraternities at her college in particular are closing down because of things like hazing and drink spiking and sexual harassment - things they thought they could contribute to get away with, but college generally is clamping down significantly. I think it’s quite different in the south though.

DD and her best friend got themselves voted Homecoming King and Queen as a joke. They are the least “Homecoming King/Queen” types I could imagine. I’ve never been quite so astonished in my life as I was when she sent through the photos.

The only kids I know of who graduated early weren't academic high flyers. Two had been accepted into dance schools, and one was accepted into a university that only rejects about 3% of applicants, having attained the minimum number of credits required by the state and local district.

The local HS offers university level STEM courses for the very gifted (there are a few kids who take calculus in freshman year). It would be most unusual to find a teenager who is capable of university level work in all the rest of the core subjects needed for university - English, humanities, mfl, sciences - so students tend to stay in high school and do the necessary growing up and developing their all-round intellectual muscles before hitting university.

Is car insurance for young drivers as expensive as the U.K. ? How do they afford to insure all these young drivers in fancy cars?