The US Department of Education just announced the winners of the 2019 Blue Ribbon Awards, and Jersey City’s Infinity Institute was recognized in the category of Exemplary High Performing Schools!
The school’s application revealed some information about the school. Of its 293 students, 193 (66%) are eligible for free/reduced-price meals. 97% of graduates enrolled in a 4-year college or university, and the remaining 3% enrolled in a community college. The staff includes 2 Administrators, 17 classroom teachers, 4 resource teachers, and 2 counselors.
The racial breakdown of students is as follows:
- 29% Asian
- 24% Hispanic or Latino
- 24% White
- 21% Black or African American
The breakdown is largely representative of Jersey City’s population, and is the result of the admissions process that is describe in Infinity Institute’s Blue Ribbon application, quoted here:
“As a magnet school, Infinity Institute facilitates an acceptance process for both the middle and high school grades. At the middle school level, students apply for admission as current 5th – 7th graders. While at the high school level, students must be enrolled as current 8th or 9th graders at the time of their application. The high school admissions process begins annually, in the fall. Applications are distributed to the district’s public and charter elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and non-public schools located in Jersey City. Interested students are required to complete and submit an application to their school counselors. All completed applications must include student residence information, grades for the past two years in five core subjects (reading, writing, math, social studies, and science), recommendations from three teachers and one administrator, attendance record from the current year, Preliminary SAT 8/9 (PSAT 8/9) scores, and extracurricular activities. For each admissions criterion, the students receive points. The points are tabulated electronically to determine each student’s total overall score. The total maximum points that can be obtained are 100. Once the scores have been tabulated, all applicants in the databases are grouped into four subgroups based on their reported ethnicity: Hispanic, White, African-American, and Other (Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American). In each subgroup, the applicants’ total scores are ranked from highest to lowest. Since the school seeks to enroll a hundred new students each year, the committee offers acceptance to the top 20 applicants of each ethnicity subgroup (80 students). Once 80 accepted students have been identified in each subgroup, the remaining applicants from the four subgroups are placed in one group and ranked from highest to lowest based on their application score. The final 20 accepted students are the top 20 applicants in this heterogeneous group. If an accepted student declines the invitation to enroll, the committee then invites the next student on the heterogeneous list to enroll. At the middle school level, the admissions
process begins in early winter each school year and is very similar to the high school process.”
For more information about Infinity Institute, take a look at Jersey City Ed’s Infinity Institute school profile.
