The 300 semifinalists in the 2021 Regeneron Science Talent Search (RSTS) were announced on Jan. 7, and 97 of these brilliant high school seniors, or 32%, attend high schools in New York State, including 23 in New York City.
New York's leading semifinalists are:
| School |
Number |
County |
| Bronx Science |
14 |
Bronx |
| Ossining |
7 |
Westchester |
| Byram Hills |
6 |
Westchester |
| John F. Kennedy & Syosset |
5 each |
Nassau |
Westchester County is located directly north of the Bronx, and Nassau is just east of NYC’s borough of Queens.
High schools in Nassau County have produced a spectacular 35 semifinalists this year, and those in Westchester 27.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is based in Westchester, and it assumed sponsorship of the STS from Intel in 2016,
Not surprisingly, New York’s dictatorial, scientifically-illiterate governor, Andrew Cuomo, could not find time to congratulate these 97 New York semifinalists, their parents and teachers, for capturing nearly one-third of the prestigious contest's 300 awards.
But Cuomo has since last March held almost daily Potemkin Village press conferences, in which he has pusillanimously blamed everyone but himself, for the state’s 36,718 COVID deaths, or 12% of America’s 315,936 fatalities during this epidemic (as of Jan. 7).
Other states whose high schools are top incubators of RSTS semifinalists include:
- California: 38
- New Jersey: 24
- Virginia: 16
- Massachusetts: 14
- North Carolina:12
- Connecticut: 9
- Texas & Pennsylvania: 8 each
- Florida: 7
Other traditional powerhouses whose students performed superbly in 2021 include:
- New Jersey’s Bergen County Academies: 12
- North Carolina School of Science and Math: 10
- Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson HS for Science and Technology: 6
- Greenwich High School, Connecticut: 4
- Montgomery Blair, Maryland: 4
- Hunter College High School, Manhattan: 4
- Jericho High School, Nassau County: 4
- Manhasset High School, Nassau County: 4
- The Wheatley School, Nassau County: 4
- The Harker School, San Jose, California: 4
Overall, 1,760 high school seniors participated, and they hail from 611 high schools in 45 states, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and 10 countries.
One of the greatest advancements in American education during the last four decades is the growth of STEM high schools. In 1988, the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools was founded by 15 high schools, including NYC’s venerable Bronx Science, Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech.
Today, the organization has 91 American high schools.
Unfortunately, another catastrophic failure during NY Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mind-boggling inept, seven-year tenure has been the collapse, with the sole exception of Bronx Science (my alma mater,’67), of the city’s public high schools as leading developers of STS semifinalists.
This year, in addition to Bronx Science’s pre-eminent 14 semifinalists, only Stuyvesant, with one, has a semifinalist.
Manhattan’s elite Hunter College High School is overseen by Hunter College and the City University of New York, and not by De Blasio’s grossly incompetent Department of Education and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza.
Like Gov. Cuomo, De Blasio and Carranza have inexcusably not publicly congratulated the latest Regeneron semifinalists who attend high schools that they supervise.
In an enormous failure, Stuyvesant, which ranks second, after Bronx Science, as a semifinalist producer since Westinghouse Electric established the contest in 1942, has nurtured just 15 semifinalists since 2015.
Bronx Science has cultivated 77 semifinalists in the last seven contests.
Manhattan's Hunter High School has nurtured 29 semifinalists during this period under a first-rate principal, Tony Fisher, who has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago
During this chaotic period, Stuyvesant has had three principals, none of whom is a nationally-renowned educator.
By contrast, until her retirement a few months ago, Bronx Science was ably led for seven years by Jean Donahue, an alumna with a doctorate in biomedical sciences from NYU. Dr. Donahue also taught at the school for 17 years.
NYC’s four other semifinalists this year attend the city’s excellent private schools: Horace Mann, Trinity, Brearley and Packer Collegiate Institute.
Finally, it is truly an educational miracle that this year’s 300 Regeneron semifinalists completed their research projects when most of the nation’s high schools, as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, did not hold full-time, in-person classes.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Report's — More Here.
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