We have Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech. Will QHSS turn the ‘Big Three’ into the ‘Big Four’?

On February 25th, just last month, the Public Education Panel (PEP) announced the re-siting of Queens High School for the Sciences at York College to building Q497 starting in September of 2026. This move is monumental for QHSS, as students and faculty will now have a dedicated building to call their school. For the past 24 years, 500 students and over 20 teachers have been located on the second floor of a spare science building in the York College campus. The new building will contain all the necessities of a school, a cafeteria, an auditorium, a gymnasium, and of course, more space. 

While this is all fantastic news, it really makes you wonder, why did this change take so long? 

QHSS is the only specialized high school in Queens, and for a lack of reasons. The Bronx contains The Bronx High School of Science and High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Brooklyn has Brooklyn Tech and Brooklyn Latin, Manhattan has Stuyvesant, High School of Math Science and Engineering, and LaGuardia. But little Queens, the biggest borough, has only one, and it accepts a measly 130 students per year. By comparison, Bronx Science accepts 720, Stuyvesant accepts 800, Brooklyn Tech accepts 1400, and Staten Island Tech accepts 360. Out of the 15,732 specialized high school seats in NYC, only 511 or 3.2% of those account towards the needs of Queens.

These numbers become important when you realize that Queens students, approximately 32% of all 8th graders in NYC, wanting a seat at a top school are having to commute hours outside of their borough for an education. Queens also has a history of less than decent utilization of school buildings. According to a Queens High School Data Summary, published by the Department of Education in 2025, Queens has 88 public high schools with a total enrollment of 75,341 students and a capacity of 71,367 students. Queens high schools are around 4,000 students overbooked which also includes the deficit that is given to each and every school. Districts 24, 25, 26, and 28 account for 5,484 students over the limit. 35 school buildings in Queens are actually over-utilized, while 22 are under-utilized. 

This dilemma isn’t just a problem for students, it actually extends into careers also. According to a census by NYC in 2000, Queens ranked the lowest in terms of the percentage of the working population that work in the same borough they reside in which is around 40% out of the 903,088 workers. Queens also takes the crown when it comes to interborough commuting (excluding Manhattan) with 106,271 workers traveling to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Brooklyn in the rear view mirror comes in at 79,356 workers.

Alvin Hu, a former student of Brooklyn Tech, and now a junior at Stuyvesant High School lives in Fresh Meadows, Queens. When asked about his high school application process he states, “in 8th grade, I didn’t think much of Queens High because it never really stood out to me as one of the best special high schools like Stuy, BTech, or Bronx Sci, but I think I put it as top 4 on my list since the location was convenient for me.” Moreover, the problem stems even more from just convenience, he iterates that Brooklyn Tech wasn’t working out because “you’re able to get to know people better and more, in Stuy than in BTech since it has so many students that I was almost never able to see the same faces in other classes.” He also goes on to explain why he transferred from Tech, “I swapped to Stuy because I think it’s much more viable for me in terms of meeting smarter people and transportation.” Alvin exposes two issues about QHSS that really are out of the school’s control, regarding the location and popularity. Not only is the one specialized high school in Queens in a really awkward place such that people don’t feel like commuting here, but it’s also just really underground. Nobody really considers this school even though the U.S News Report has ranked it the #1 school in New York 2 years in a row. 

Queens High School for the Sciences at York College was founded in 2002 alongside a pair of other college affiliated schools, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, and High School of Mathematics Science and Engineering at The City College of New York. Despite QHSS ranking #1 in New York, HSMSE ranking #2 above Stuyvesant, and HSAS ranking #6 above Brooklyn Tech, these three schools are mostly the bottom three when it comes to ranking specialized high schools among 8th graders. Is it because they all have really long names that need to be abbreviated? Or is it simply because students don’t see much success or vision behind these schools? After all, when students don’t get accepted into the ‘big three’ they often resort to selective high schools like Bard, Townsend, or Millenium, but now we are seeing a big shift as QHSS at York College is dropping the York College portion of their title to be more independent. A change that is yet to happen to any other high school in New York City. Could this possibly be enough to push Queens High School for the Sciences into the ‘big leagues’ or will it still remain on the sidelines?

To talk more locally, with the expansion of QHSS to a 700 to 800 student population, are we going to see an improvement in Queens High School education? Random suggestions and promises have been made by politicians in the past, but no real change is actually being planned. According to a QNS article, “In 2022, Adams floated the idea of building a new specialized school in each of the five boroughs, outlining his ambition that the new schools would use ‘different criteria that doesn’t have to only be standardized testing.’” In 2025, Andrew Cuomo made a plea to build a second specialized high school in Queens as a part of his Access, Excellence, and Innovation Education Plan. Prior to the relocation of QHSS, the only sort of advancement we have seen was the implementation of the Specialized High School Institute (SHSI) , a preparatory program for the SHSAT, that got sued in 2007 for having income guidelines that were racially biased according to Gotham Gazette. However, all this did was uncover how Queens education is falling behind because to be a part of the SHSI that prepares under represented students, studentsyou have to live in specific school districts. Of the 15 select districts, 5 of them belong to Queens County out of the 7 we have in total. 

It’s almost as if we know there is an issue, and we are choosing to do nothing about it. That is until the Community Education Council 28 resolution released their decision on relocating QHSS to a new building that can accommodate up to 800 students. The board states “that CEC 28 demands the NYC Department of Education Office of District Planning to report annually on the status of its plans to sharply increase the number of (specialized) high school seats in Queens”

So, are we going to see any future developments in Queens education in the upcoming years? Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, we took a big step towards the goal, and we can only wait and see what initiatives tackle this problem.