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The students came by subway and skateboard, a river of eighth graders pouring into Stuyvesant High School to take part in the entrance exams for New York City’s specialized high schools.They chatted and laughed or waited in nervous silence.
Similar scenes could be found Saturday and yesterday in five schools, as at least 23 000 students took the highly competitive entrance exams for 3000 slots at six of the seven specialized schools.
Some students went in nervous and came out confident(有信心的).And some went in cocky and came out looking defeated.Some anxious parents waited in their cars as their children took the 150-minute test.Others kissed their kids goodbye and went shopping.
Some students had taken expensive courses to prepare for the test; others just rolled out of bed and showed up.Some were an hour earlier; others arrived, rushing, their parents shouting:“Hurry!Hurry!Hurry!” with minutes to spare.
One latecomer was Damon Hardjowirogo, 13, an eighth grader at Simon Baruch Middle School on East 21st Street.He had ridden his skateboard to Stuyvesant Saturday morning and shown up at 8∶20 a. m. for the 9 a. m. test.(Students were advised to arrive at 7∶30 a. m.)Rather than wait at the end of the line, he found an opening and cut in.
“No one was paying attention,” Damon said, laughing.
Ryan Patterson, 13, got an earlier start yesterday morning.Hoping to get into Stuyvesant or Bronx Science, she said, she began preparing for the exam this summer and didn’t stop until her mother forced her to put away her books and go to bed on Saturday night.
“She woke me up at 4∶30 this morning,” said Ryan’s mother.“She didn’t want to wait.She was excited.I was the one complaining because I had to get up.”
As the lines flowed into school, parents hugged and kissed their kids goodbye while police officers barked into bullhorns:“We have 3300 students and 3300 parents.Parents, please go home!”?
When the tests ended, a gust of students burst from the school.Waiting parents clapped, and the students flipped open their mobile phones(forbidden during the tests), looked around the crowds for their families and just delighted that they were done.