Harvard-Westlake is one of the premier secondary schools in the United States. Considered by almost all to be second only to
Exeter Academy, students are among the best and the brighest on the west coast. With average
SAT scores of 1400, it's no wonder. They also compete impressivley in athletics and the performing and visual arts. Their Water Polo and Girl's Volleyball teams are the best in the state, and it is a rare year when all the other teams don't win atleast
CIF (the southern Californian regional championship). Grades run about 270 to 300 students. All students take AP courses, with the top 10% of the class usually involved in more than 10 by the time they graduate.
The top destinations for graduating seniors last year were
University of Pennsylvania (over 40 students),
NYU (specifically Tisch), UC
Berkeley (50 students) and
Stanford (25 students). The school averages double the national acceptance rate for almost all universites.
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Ok, now that the party line is out of the way...
I've gone to HW since 7th grade, and all of what's above is true. It really is a cool place to go, and you simply can't beat the student body for intelligence and diversity. There are all kinds of people there, but you can be assured that whoever you start talking to will have something intelligent to say. The school is a real bubble though. Going outside of it is always a little strange.