So I’m Australian, and here in Australia we have schools for gifted children, where admissions are based purely on standardised test results. Near the end of primary school you go to a special place to take a test, and the test is designed to measure logical thinking and mental flexibility rather than academic experience. And if you score highly, you go to a special school with smart students of all different backgrounds.
And I liked Spider-Man Homecoming in large part because Peter Parker goes to a “magnet school”, which I’m told is the American equivalent. And it doesn’t have any dumb jock types; the school bully is a little Indian brat with rich parents. It felt like a more modern take on high school tropes than all the high school movies where nerds wear bow ties that feel like the writer grew up in the 50s.
Anyway, half of My polycule says that magnet schools are all fake and only serve the rich. There’s no way a low income white boy from queens could make it into a gifted school in our world, based purely on academic achievement. I’m aware that the American system is less fair and money plays a much bigger role, but I thought there was at least a chance that a genius kid could beat the system and get into a good school with good grades.
Do magnet schools exist? Is it all just lies by the rich?
Beyond magnet schools, there are private schools that students need to apply for and/or test into. Like magnet schools, there are a wide variety of them and some are crappy and religious, but a lot of others are essentially schools for smart kids that focus on getting them into good colleges (usually called prep schools when this is the main goal).
Some can be very expensive and cost more than many colleges, but because of that you can find ones with a ton of money (sometimes into the billions) that accept students based on their testing and application alone without considering their financial status, called need-blind acceptance (that article only mentions colleges but it applies to these private schools as well). If a student is accepted need-blind and can’t afford tuition the school covers the entire cost. Other schools that aren’t need-blind offer varying levels of financial assistance for students who are accepted.
In terms of sports, prep schools (especially the wealthier ones) tend to have a lot of different ones, even sports that aren’t usually offered in public schools (crew aka rowing is an example). Check out this list of sports from Phillips Academy, for example. College admissions in the US includes looking at “well-rounded” students, so competing in (time-consuming) sports while maintaining academic performance is one way to show your ability to handle time-management, etc. This means you might get kind of jocky type students, but they aren’t really the dumb variety you see portrayed in movies.