Help need to choose James Ruse or Sydney Boys high school (2 Viewers)

[thetestdude]

An all-round education is far superior than simply just focusing on academics. I learnt so much from my extra-curriculars and some of my best memories from school are from them.

Not only that, but those schools are also still great academically.

 

[laterz laterz]

I would personally prefer SBHS as James Ruse is too academically oriented and doesn't focus on the overall wellbeing of an individual

Apart from that, SBHS is not academically bad at all. It was ranked 5th which is really really high and impressive

 

[YonOra]

Year 7 i couldn't do subtraction, or write.

Wonder why Ruse wouldn't take me??

 

[thetestdude]

Year 7 i couldn't do subtraction, or write.

Wonder why Ruse wouldn't take me??

We need to thonk about it.

 

[YonOra]

We need to thonk about it.
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Been doing that for years.... nothing

 

[HyphoonShah]

My son got offer in SBH and on top of the waiting list for jr for next year. I heard SBH is all round, wide choose of co curricular. jr is academic focus, more nerds. jr is a bit close home would save 30 mins a day on travel. any one has experience in either of these school and please give me some insight to help choose the school.

Just go to the very prestigious sydney technical selective high school- a school for academically gifted and talented boys. It has a good all-round setting for its very prestigious students.

 

[WeiWeiMan]

Just go to the very prestigious sydney technical selective high school- a school for academically gifted and talented boys. It has a good all-round setting for its very prestigious students.

I doubt OP is gonna take your advice

 

[windows64]

Just go to the very prestigious sydney technical selective high school- a school for academically gifted and talented boys. It has a good all-round setting for its very prestigious students.

bit late man

 

[clockiework]

Just go to the very prestigious sydney technical selective high school- a school for academically gifted and talented boys. It has a good all-round setting for its very prestigious students.

as a student who just got admitted to the evermore prestigious sydney tech for yr 9 2026, i can confirm this is extremely based

 

[clockiework]

Just go to the very prestigious sydney technical selective high school- a school for academically gifted and talented boys. It has a good all-round setting for its very prestigious students.

also do u actually go MIT? @HyphoonShah

 

[spiderlemonade]

I don't if this is true but apparently syd boys requires you to play 2-3 hours of sports outside of school weekly
bit late now, i wonder what OP and her son chose

 

[coolcat6778]

I don't if this is true but apparently syd boys requires you to play 2-3 hours of sports outside of school weekly
bit late now, i wonder what OP and her son chose

even in year 12 and 11?

lol do they think they are americans or some shit?

nobody fucking cares you play sports at high school.

 

[spiderlemonade]

even in year 12 and 11?

lol do they think they are americans or some shit?

nobody fucking cares you play sports at high school.

I believe so, it's odd for a selective school to do that but ig it would be good for someone who enjoys sport but also wants an academically focused school

Sport Policy

Sydney Boys High School is an academically selective high school conducted by the NSW Department of Education.

sydneyhigh.school

 

[woo_879]

I go to James Ruse and some of my ex-classmates (from primary school) go to Sydney Boys so I'm just going to say this up front: definitely choose James Ruse if you have that option.

Some of my ex-classmates who ended up going to Sydney Boys are suffering badly not only in terms of academics but also in their physical/emotional/mental wellbeing: a lot of them have to wake up super early every Saturday to attend compulsory extra-school sport sessions (they're required to spend 2-3 hours doing sport each weekend under supervision of school teachers at certain venues) and from I've heard, that is also super expensive. That gives them less time for studying/learning academic content. To put that in context: we were all roughly equal in academic performance in primary school, but now in Year 8, most of them are getting B's and C's for the same subjects that I almost always get A's for (they're scoring in the high 70's and low 80's for their core subjects—English, mathematics and science—but I'm getting mostly high 90's). If you're wondering: this isn't specific to just me and them; this is a general trend between students attending Ruse and Sydney Boys High. Some cynics would suggest this could just be the result of the teachers at Ruse marking their students better, but I hardly think so (HSC results prove that JRAHS is obviously waaaaaay ahead of SBHS).

There's a lot of peer competition at Ruse (mostly between the Korean students, I'll venture to say, and not the Chinese as per conventional wisdom) so the pressure to do well is much higher at Ruse. I often hear students going 'So-and-so top student only got 39/40 for the maths test and I got 40, ahahahah!' and of course this might seem shameful/insulting to that top student, but it's naturally part of life at Ruse. They'll go on to study harder, do better, …, and that's how it works here. On the other hand, SBHS now allows students who did not sit the Selective Test or did not successfully pass the test to gain admission to SBHS to enter if they live close enough. So your son's class at SBHS might be made up of 70% academically gifted students and 30% not-so-gifted students ;p. He might get the impression that he's doing really well in comparison to his close friends/peers, when he's not doing well at all in fact.

I should probably also mention that getting enough sleep is very important for high school students, and saving 30 minutes a day in travel is usually a make-or-break factor in academic performance for younger high school students. At least at Ruse, the students who spend 2-4 hours a day on travel (not joking) are miles behind those who spend <1 hour in academic performance because they're drained of energy, enthusiasm to study when they get home, etc. except for the ones who go to tutoring endlessly. Most of these students also don't get time to finish assignments. One of my classmates at Ruse started his half-yearly assignment on the train and finished when he got to school. (You can probably imagine how well that turned out.)

James Ruse is definitely the best option out of the two schools, academic-wise. I'm not sure your son would actually enjoy going to an 'all-rounded' school, and if he does, make sure to buy life insurance for him. I'm not even joking when I say that the physical sport training regime at Sydney Boys is ridiculously tough and would probably take a toll on your son's wellbeing. Sport is the almighty god of SBHS. Although, even at James Ruse, sport is by far the most time-consuming subject (9-10 periods for sport, only 8-9 for maths and English per fortnight), it has much less of a priority and one can easily score an A by just doing well in PE theory (i.e. stuff like drug education, nutrition, etc.) and utterly failing actual physical sport. Theory accounts for about 90% of the final report mark in sport, so one could literally get zero in the physical component and still get an A if they tried hard enough in theory + assignments (about 80~85-ish is the cut-off mark for an A). At SBHS, sport is taken very seriously, and it's much easier to get a fail and letters sent home. Extra-curricular activities aren't so much of a priority at Ruse either, but students are expected to have a very decent grasp of musical concepts and should be able to play one instrument (already when they start Year 7, not learn as they go through to Year 8) but music as a compulsory subject is dropped in Year 8. Agriculture and agriculture-related activities are prominent at Ruse. Agriculture as a subject is compulsory until and all through Year 10, and it's by far the hardest subject (for me and many other students). It's quite common for Ruse students to get a mark in agriculture of about 10-20 points below their other subjects, and agriculture is the most commonly failed subject here (a surprising number of students get less than 50% for their agriculture half-yearlies and yearlies, which means a retest). But unless you prefer getting your bones broken playing rugby to memorising the names of common sheep breeds, James Ruse is obviously the superior school. Full stop.

lmao i wouldn't say this now, ruse has dropped...

 

[woo_879]

sydney boys too, but still

 

[coolcat6778]

lmao i wouldn't say this now, ruse has dropped...

Ruse still outperforms NSBS and SB in subjects like Math Extension 2, 1 chem, biology and physics though.

I don't think it's fair to factor in accel of stupid ass useless subjects to skew the statistics in NSB and SB's favour(Information processes and technology)

 

[woo_879]

Ruse still outperforms NSBS in subjects like Math Extension 2, 1 chem, biology and physics though.

nsbs is north Sydney boys right? I mean I didn’t bring nsbs into this, but even so, they still improved whilst ruse dropped: it’s not something deniable. ruse has always been a math + sci school so it’s not surprising. Nsbs capitalises on other subjects as well and that’s why it’s first. Not to mention the number of people getting atars of 99 and above have decreased by a noticeable margin in ruse so if thats not a decline in performance by James ruse then I’m not sure what to call it

 

[woo_879]

and the main point was that ruse is not number one in all of the subjects you’ve mentioned. There are always other schools, and yes whilst they are high in all these subjects the portions of students attaining these high marks or band 6a have definitely decreased except for4u maths/3u maths

 

[woo_879]

I’m not sure what’s to attribute to this but I definitely know it has decreased

Ruse still outperforms NSBS and SB in subjects like Math Extension 2, 1 chem, biology and physics though.

I don't think it's fair to factor in accel of stupid ass useless subjects to skew the statistics in NSB and SB's favour(Information processes and technology)
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lol what schools is that?

 

[woo_879]

I’m from jr and there are jr kids who take Accel subjects too which I counted in and they do get band 6, some cases state rank; it’s mainly for software design and technology, pdhpe and ag