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Harker School

School rating 4 / 5 by

500 Saratoga Avenue San Jose CA 95129 United States
Day
K to 12th
Gender
Coed

Academic

Harker School review by .

In my experience, Harker's academics proved to be greatly prestigious and worthy. The class sizes range from 15 to 20 students--small enough classes to be able to have a close teacher-student relationship. A majority of the members of the faculty show respect for the students as well as a true desire to help the students gain knowledge in their respective subject matters. Although there is a heavy work load for most classes, they ultimately aid actually learning the material in the long run. Moreover, they do not seem to emphasize only exams. Rather, exams are given only in the most necessary manner.

College Counseling

College counseling seems to be one of the biggest aspects that distinguish Harker from other....

Sample insights on college counseling

  • They have contacts at most of the major universities and feel perfectly comfortable picking up the phone and advocating for a student to get accepted somewhere they feel is a good fit for that student. However, these counselors are certainly not magic bullets. They cannot guarantee that a student will get into an Ivy League university...
  • For those wishing to move on to Oxford or Cambridge, the provision is second-to-none. In the months running up to application and interview, every subject faculty offers classes (often run by former Oxbridge tutors) exploring further areas of their subject as well as offering advice on personal statements, interview technique and more...

Admissions - Getting Accepted

Based on my personal experience and what I have heard from students around my age,....

Sample insights on admissions

  • For the interview, dress conservatively. Try to be very clean and put together. Also, I was a tour guide for two years and at the end of every tour, we were asked to evaluate the candidate so if you think the tour is not apart of the process, you are very wrong. Ask questions and be interested. Also, tip for the parents: the kids speak on the tour. Do not ask their questions for them...
  • Most younger siblings have an easy time in the admissions process. I can only think of one case of a younger sibling not being admitted. About half of the students who entered with me had come from public schools. The remainder came from private K-6 schools, or had transferred from other New York private schools The Elizabeth Morrow School and St. Bernard were two of the larger feeder schools...

School Life

There is no housing on campus. The school cafeteria/dining is definitely superb and better than most other high schools. There are a variety of foods daily prepared by the most elite cooks. Sometimes, there are even specialties cooked with delicacies, such as lobster and shrimp. The food does almost as good as college dining. The facilities are all mostly modern and newly built, but there was a shortage of large classrooms sometimes. There are renovations going on currently though to fix the shortage of classrooms however. There is not much neighborhood crimes except....

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