Allderdice High School

Excellent program for gifted students!
--Submitted by a parent

The school is welcoming and offered a wide variety of courses and a wide variety of challenge levels. It has great lab and art facilities.
--Submitted by a parent

Allderdice has great variety. Students can take classes in all different levels of difficulty. The CAS (gifted) program is terrific for gifted students. Students can also take classes at other levels, but they probably won't learn as much. The school is safe despite its reputation for violence, and a student with any level of street smarts will be fine. The school is dirty and in disrepair. Still, it's almost charming how old-school it is, with slate chalkboards and chipping paint. There are a plethora of extracurriculars and there is truly something for everyone to do outside of school. The diversity at Allderdice is truly unique. There is both handfulls of students who go to Ivy League or top ranked universities and a >10% dropout rate. Allderdice gets bad press it doesn't deserve and truly is a great school. Give it a chance and I think you will find it is a good place.
--Submitted by a student

The school has excellent high level classes, and with any serious degree of studiousness and drive students can earn(and many have) acceptance to top level ivy league universities. You get out of it what you put in. It is true that the building itself is in some degree of disrepair and is relatively unclean, there still is the opportunity of a truly great education.
--Submitted by a student

This shcool is one of the worst in the district with executions of violence among the students and a negative enviornment. It's horrible, the students are also very racist.
--Submitted by a parent

This school is all hype, smoke and mirrors. As i figured, the school over-inflates their college attendance numbers to make the academics sound better then they really are. My daughter goes there, against my wishes and exactly as I expected happened. She thought it was really cool and hip. But now it's ime to go to college and she is not prepared. And try to talk to one of the teachers. They just blow you off.
--Submitted by a parent

The best public school in Pittsburgh. The best students go to Ivy League colleges. You can choose to do no work at all and still pass-- or you can take advantage of the highest level classes and earn a place in the best universities. You can excell if you want to, and surround yourself with like-mnded students. I would not be afraid to send my child here and I would save myself from paying for private school. The key is to take the hardest classes.
--Submitted by a former student

I am a new student here at Allderdice. It is fantastic. The teachers and students are really nice, not to mention they really know what they are doing. Excellent education and lots of available activities for everyone.
--Submitted by None None, a student

I do not like the school very much. First of a ll, it gives little vacations, which includes a three day spring break. The health and building of the school can be comparable to that of a prison. In fact the teachers got a memo that stated that the school was the 4th worst in the district, I believe, in terms of health and upkeep. The school population is huge which doesn't make for a happy enviornment. I came from a little private school where all 30 people in my grade knew each other. In Allderdice I'm lucky if one of my friends is in the same class as me. Don't get me wrong, I am not a boneheaad, I was in the top 5th percentile of my 10th grade class of about 400 people, but this school has terrible quality. Students coming from small private schools would have-a-difficult-time adjusting.
--Submitted by a student