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Does the USA have gifted schools or was Spider-Man Homecoming lying?
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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As a low income white boy from Queens myself, I can say with confidence yes they totally exist. I can't speak for the rest of the country but in NYC there are a bunch of public/free magnet schools, that you get into on merit alone. Many years ago I tried to get into Bronx science high school but my grades weren't good enough, so I ended up having to go to a standard NYC public high school.
Yeah, the NYC specialized high schools require middle school students to get a certain score on a standardized test, the SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test), for admission. These specialized high schools get prioirty funding from the city, on account of their high college admissions rate, but I can tell you as someone who went to Stuyvesant that it being a better school is a crock of bullshit.
Most of what I learned at Stuy was how to take tests really well. It is true that Stuyvesant students have a better acceptance rate to colleges and such, but that is not on account of the higher quality education, but instead because of the brand name of Stuy and specialized high schools like it. It's a nonsensical ouroboros. Colleges accept specialized high school alumni because they are better than average. These alumni are better than average because colleges accept them at higher rates.
The way Stuyvesant or Bronx Science or Brooklyn Tech accomplish this is by teaching students how to take tests really well. Tests every week for every subject. Test taking strategies discussed in every class. Test answer analysis based on previous tests in all the AP classes. When I was in high school, it was common sentiment that an SAT score under 2000/2400 was worthless. Nobody cared what you were learning, only what the results were because those results got you into college. High school was seen just as a path to college, which was a path to financial enrichment.
And again, the way you got into these schools was theough a test. Well to do families like mine paid for after school programs that drilled test taking strategies and practice relentlessly. My university educated parents spent all their free time and money teaching me how to test well. As a middle school student, I spent 4 hours a day after school with test prep. This time only increased as a high school student. Again, not really learning the subject matter, but simply test preperation. My background gave me an unbelievable advantage in getting accepted to one of these schools, of which Stuyvesant has the highest score requirement. So yes, one can get into these schools based on merit alone, but background plays an much larger role in the acceptance rates. It is an extension of how the elite private colleges work in the USA.
Aw man I'm gonna rub you in My girlfriend's girlfriend's face
My girlfriend has a fictive Petra Parker headmate who's from a parallel universe and they tried to use her experiences at a shitty public school with cockroaches and asbestos as evidence that poor people can't go to magnet schools. But I'm gonna tell them Petra Parker's memories from a parallel universe don't mean shit against a low income white boy from this universe's Queens!
Keep in mind NYC is a different world than the rest of the country, but yeah I totally knew a bunch of people who were lower income who got accepted to magnet schools. In NYC at least, magnet schools are filled with TONS of lower income smart/gifted students. That part of Spider-Man was totally based on reality.
If you start to bring up parallel universes, there may be a parallel universe where Petra Parker goes to shitty school.
The animated Spider-Man movies has Miles go through an internal crisis where he tries to flunk out of one of these schools. Maybe Petra does the same or maybe chooses/doesn't take the test to get in.
You can also have an alternate world where Petra gets excluded for some reason. Maybe the NYC bankruptcy goes worse and these schools vanish or a mayor puts a fee to them which Petra can't pay for.