Everybody in the San Francisco Bay Area knows about Lowell High School. Founded in 1856 and the alma mater of Broadway star Carol Channing, scientist Dian Fossey, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Lowell is among California’s highest-ranked public high schools. Up until 2020, eighth graders seeking admission to this academic magnet school needed near-perfect grades and high scores on either the California-administered standardized test or the Lowell entrance exam. When I was admitted to Lowell as an eighth grader, I was ecstatic. It felt like a major achievement. In the end, however, I chose to attend a very different kind of school. My boarding school is just as selective as Lowell (the acceptance rate is in the single digits) but it has less than 250 students — tiny compared to Lowell, which has nearly 3,000. The demographics are different, too. While my school is predominantly white and wealthy (I’m part of a small cohort of Latino students on scholarship), Lowell is 59% As
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