Graduates Say Best High Schools Set Foundation for Success

Dedication, passion and an entrepreneurial spirit are a few of the traits that graduates say they built during their time at a U.S. News Best High School.

While high school may have ended more than a decade ago for these engineers, entrepreneurs and educators, they say those values still guide what they do.

"The sky was the limit in terms of how much I could grow and develop, and I was in this environment in which I didn't feel complacent at all," says Bryan Guido Hassin, founder and CEO of Smart Office Energy Solutions in Houston, which creates products that help companies save energy.

Hassin graduated in 1997 from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., ranked fourth nationally by U.S. News.

Entry into the school is based off residency, course work and testing requirements. Its curriculum emphasizes science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Hassin says he didn't like the atmosphere of the traditional school he attended for seventh and eighth grades, but in high school he found like-minded peers with similar ambitions.

"There was more mutual respect between the faculty and the students," he says. "I think that really just created a not only better learning environment, but a sense of empowerment."

That sense has served him well during his career as an entrepreneur, he says. "It's a career of identifying problems or challenges that we face as a society, but feeling empowered to do something about it," he says.

Principal Evan Glazer says the school still tries to support students' intellectual curiosity and build their problem-solving skills, among others.

"I think all of those skills and values help students explore new areas of study that have yet to be invented," he says.

[Check out the U.S. News Best STEM High Schools rankings.]

A passion for computer science is what drew Fred Wulff to another top-ranked high school, the School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas. It took the No. 1 spot in the 2014 U.S. News Best High Schools national rankings.

Wulff, who graduated in 2004, says the school's four-year computer science program allowed him to pursue his passion in-depth, which prepared him well for college. He went on to get undergraduate and graduate computer science degrees from Stanford University.

"It was a much easier transition for me than most of my friends, even the ones that had come from pretty good schools," the San Francisco resident says. He is now an engineering manager at Dropbox, a file hosting service.

When he had exhausted the available computer science courses, the school created an independent study class, Wulff says. When he and his peers wanted to compete in a robotics competition, his chemistry teacher helped the team get off the ground, despite not having a background in mechanical engineering herself, he says.

"They really went above and beyond for things that students were passionate about," he says.

The freedom to focus early and independently on topics that interested him, Wulff says, prepared him to help create a startup later in life. He cofounded Verbling, a digital language learning company.

[Decide if a STEM high school is right for your child.]

Some graduates of the Best High Schools have ended up back on campus -- including Luke Shorty, who got his diploma from the Maine School for Science and Mathematics in 1998 and is now its executive director.

Students at the school in Limestone, Maine, have the? opportunity to learn and live with students who share their passion for science and math, Shorty says. The public boarding school, ranked 14th nationally among the 2014 U.S. News Best High Schools, is five miles from the Canadian border in northern Maine.

Shorty is not the only graduate to return. Engineering instructor Jennifer Brophy graduated in 1997.

Brophy says that many students who attend may have felt like outcasts at their former school. "Then they get here and they blossom because they are finally in a community of their peers," she says.

In addition to developing lifelong friendships, she says, she built a strong? work ethic during her time at the school, which translated into adulthood. Brophy also runs an ecological engineering firm and a sporting camp in northern Maine.

[Learn how high school classes can offer college benefits.]

Both first spent years working elsewhere. Brophy earned an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and a master's degree in environmental engineering, and worked for nearly a decade as an engineer at a natural resources consulting firm in the Washington, D.C., area. Shorty studied film before earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in math. He then worked as a math teacher at a high school in southern Maine.

They both say that their experience at the Maine School for Science and Mathematics and their belief in its philosophy is what drew them back -- as well as, Shorty says, a desire to contribute to the community that was such an important early influence.

"I realized, 'My goodness look at all these people that have similar interests to me, are passionate, are dedicated, are excited about math and science and life in general,' and I wanted to give back," he says.

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