Welcome to Hostile Takeover High

On a Saturday morning in Manhattan later this month, thousands of nervous eighth graders will parade quietly down Chambers Street near the Hudson River. Clutching No. 2 pencils, they’ll flow over a pedestrian bridge spanning a highway and into a modern 10-story building to take an exam that will determine the course of their lives. For many of these children, most of whom are 13 years old, it will be the continuation of a trajectory that began with their births in faraway countries or immigrant homes, followed by years of perfecting a new language and getting grade levels ahead in math, all so that on this morning they might win admission to what is arguably the best public secondary school in the nation: Stuyvesant High School.

Of the approximately 30,000 children who’ll sweat through the ordeal here and at other test sites in the five boroughs, 97 percent won’t make the grade. For the 800 or so who make it into the Stuy class of 2022, an entirely new rat race awaits, as they grub grades, run for student government, write musicals, and seek cancer cures, all in hopes of winning the next reward: acceptance to the world’s most elite universities. About a quarter will get into the Ivy League. Harvard alone, skimming off the top, will take 20 or more of their classmates, if past numbers hold, making Stuyvesant one of the biggest single sources of freshmen at America’s oldest university.