Atlantic North High School Description

It should be a public magnet school, similar to Troy, which explains the high concentration of Asians i.e. Japanese on campus.

I picture it as almost factory-like, kind of like MIT/Caltech, or Gunnerkrigg court, only still like a public high school.

And I mentioned in another post about a secret society that Kristi's parents were doing experiments with while working for the school, Transcendence.

It just could be an underlining arc, or an "arc word" that can be used semi-seriously or lampshaded insanely.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging

Sounds good. I brainstormed a couple of things we could consider as part of the school.

It has a university attached to it, or at least closely related, and the high school is like a recruiting prep school. If you graduate the high school, you are guaranteed admission to the college, and if you graduate college, you are guaranteed a job. However, the graduation rate is a bit lower. High school is somewhere around 60% and the college is about 32%.

The school can have different programs for your major, placing less emphasis on the other basic classes. (English, History, etc are taught, but no electives and more science/math classes). Each student also has a class specific to their interests that is led by a mentor who specializes in that area.

Since there are labs with the school, we can have an arc about the students having some sort of mass ailment as a result of guinea pigs for the human trials of an experiment. But, we can also just have the concept of the students being lab rats (HA!) as a constant.

I like the idea of each student having a class specific to their interests with a teacher as a mentor.

If I could request a class for my character, could I have History with Mr. Bornfeld or Physisics with Mr. Jansen. Please

We might have to change names, but otherwise, that's a good idea.

Also, if we're going for an MIT/CalTech feel, I know some interesting & unique features about the campuses that could be used (or not) in the design of ANHS.

Both have large underground steam tunnel complexes where they keep the majority of research labs. At CalTech, all students have access to the tunnels and labs, since they're all given a master key, but at MIT, the students simply learn to pick locks if they want to play in the tunnels (but practically everyone does, so its not any real problem). I think ANHS should have such tunnels, but we may want them to be hidden or "sealed off years ago because they were too dangerous" or "authorized personnel only" so that they can hold the secret reserch. If we want them to have regular labs and students playing in them like at MIT/CalTech, we could also have a secret, deeper section of the tunnels for the hidden labs.

MIT has a nuclear reactor under the center of campus (lots of the major reseach colleges used to, including UCLA and UC Berkeley, but I believe MIT's is the only one that's still in operation). The nuclear reactor at MIT is run by students (with faculty supervision) but the reactor is, like all reactors under very close scrutiny and tight defense. Students of any major can apply for the job and are psychologically screened and trained like personnel at any reactor. I think the campus should have a reactor that gets mentioned a couple times but never really factors into the plot. The "evil people are going to blow up the reactor" plot device is overused (and not to mention physically impossible), so I don't think that should occur, though someone (like Yumi) might think they're going to at some point. Maybe she could confide this conspiracy theory to another SciOly member who will promptly explain to her exactly why a reactor can't explode like a bomb and how stupid any villain would have to be to want to when they get so much power and so many research grants when the reactor's in operation.

Both campuses use a house system were the residences are of mixed classes, with each house having its own personality and traditions. One, for instance might be where all the "jocks" choose to reside (at MIT & CalTech, "jock" means that they know how to play sports, not that the do so), one might be more fancy and old school, one might be modern, one might have a tradition of playing pranks, one might be heavily tied to certain academic clubs, etc. At CalTech students will almost always stay with their house all four years, at MIT, students frequently change between years, but still not as often as they would in a normal residence situation. I don't really think this would factor in too well to ANHS, but we could have dorms of mixed ages at the very least.

We'll also need to decide where ANHS should be. Massachusetts has lots of great Universities, so it would fit in well, but then it might be too obvious an MIT rip off. New York is another state on the Atlantic with lots of good schools, but no real Institutes of Technology and I believe its public school districts are large enough to reasonably have an extensive magnet program. If you want to have ANHS on the Pacific to be ironic (which I actually think could be really funny if we make sure to point it out as an obvious error) California would be the best choice, and would also give us extensive experience with local attractions to draw from. This might be seen as a CalTech rip off as well, though... I think that these states (or any others that could support such a huge research High School/University combination) should be put up for vote on the Facebook page later.

Remember that there's a firetruck on the roof and a cannon that they stole from caltech.

I didn't post hacks because they're temporary, though I know entire lists more hacks if people want to use them for some episode material.

I also have my dad's old book of tips on how to get around MIT, which includes LOTS of math/science/engineering humor if you want to draw from it...it explains why MIT has the world's second largest complex of interconnected tunnels (behind the pentagon and because otherwise engineers might have to be exposed to sunlight), gives fake and abusurd final exams to scare/entertain freshmen, teaches freshmen the MIT drinking song (the drinking age was 18 just a year before my dad became 18), etc.

Generally, if you ever want plain and utter nerdiness in an episode, I can supply it.