DeBakey High School vs Carnegie Vanguard High School (fit in, colleges)

[robindesea]

What high school should my daughter go to?
I heard DeBakey is harder than Carnegie but more prestigious so colleges will immediately recognize students from that school.
But Carnegie is ranked higher.
My daughter doesn't really care about the social aspects, only the academic aspects and would fit in both environments.
She's planning to major in Political Science.

[Meyerland]

I would go with Carnegie. Carnegie is all Vanguard and has very rigorous academics. Since your child is not interested in the medical field, Debakey doesn't seem like a great fit, but maybe I'm wrong.

DEbakey offers 15 AP classes and Carnegie offers 20.

Debakey offers two tracks...regular and AP. Carnegie is AP track only.

I think they both offer 5 different endorsements, with different requirements for each one.

[Texas Ag 93]

I graduated from DeBakey in the 1980s, and I was actually a Political Science major in college as well. I would agree with Meyerland that DeBakey is definitely geared towards people interested in the health careers, but no no means does everyone who goes there go into the health field, let alone do they all become doctors, at least not when I was a student. I had classmates who were gunners that you knew were going to become physicians, others like myself who were interested in health and medicine in the more general sense (I obtained a Master's in Health Administration), and plenty of people who were merely there because their zoned schools were not rigorous enough, but back then, there were few Magnet options. I had classmates who went into Finance, law, business etc.

DeBakey has added a lot of enrichment and extracurriculars since I was there. Back then, there was no music program, no athletics (even club sports) of any kind etc. Those types of things have been wonderful additions.

I think they are both great schools and your daughter should make a decision based on where she thinks might be the best fit for her. Good luck!

[wstaffor]

I would say that CVHS has a reputation as being more academically rigorous and is definitely more prestigious for college placement purposes. If you don't care about the health professions focus at DeBakey, seems like a no brainer to me to choose CVHS.