My DS16 goes to one of those schools. Top number of National Merit for the area, made top 100 in one of those top rated schools lists again this year. Five kids made it to the national level of Math Olympiad.
There are good things to the school & bad. The stress is incredible for the kids who are in all the top honors classes. The school has insanely high expectations of the top kids. The grade curve is crazy. It's hard to get those top grades that will help you get into the top schools, unless you do little other than study. I know kids who got B's in honors/AP classes yet got 5's on all the AP tests. In order to make the school look good they limit who can take the AP classes.
On the other hand DS does has some great teachers. (But unfortunately not all.) Many of those teachers really teach the kids something useful. There is a good cohort of gifted kids at the school and DS has been able to find friends. The school has been surprisingly helpful about putting together a 504 for my son and seem to understand about 2E, and has been very sensitive to anxiety/depression issues. The school is extremely culturally diverse.
We could do worse but we could do better.
LOL to the list of "Gunn/Monta Vista/Cupertino High??" Is Paly no longer the top of that list? I find this amusing but remember Silicon Valley isn't the only place to find top schools with high expectations our of our teens.
