Sun Valley High School

I am a former Sun Valley student who recently graduated. The pros of this school are that the renovations make the school's interior appearance above average, there is a lot of technology available to the students, and the guidance office is extremely helpful, well-rounded and informing to students who seek advice. With that said, I have many negatives held about this school as well. Although the diversity cannot directly be fixed by the school district, there is a large lack of it here and it causes the majority of the students to be closed-minded and not aware of events outside of the "Aston community". In addition to this, there is a large amount of technology available but from my experiences this does not enhance the learning abilities. Most of the time the computers run slowly or do not work properly at all; some teachers are encouraged by administration to use new teaching techniques incorporating the technology but the students get easily distracted with computers in front of them and overall I personally have learned much more by using the textbook as the primary source of information and believe that the school should go back to this technique. I was a student at the very top of my class (top 1%), and even so, the rigor at this school does not compare to that at others. There is grade inflation present and my gpa was not equal to students that attend my college from other places.
I hope that this information is useful to a parent who is considering enrolling their child here. I would not recommend this school district and one of my main reasons (besides the lack of rigor, overall low SAT scores due to poor preparation, and less than 1% of the seniors being sent to top universities every year because of this) is because I do not believe that the administration is overly interested in the students. My parents tried to set up meetings with the administration to organize special extracurricular activities for me in order to challenge my abilities, and just setting up these meetings was a hassle. It seems as if the focus is on the "bad" students, and the top students of the school almost go unrecognized.
Overall, this school IS better than those in extremely low income areas and a few others surrounding the Delaware County area. With that said, I still believe this school is below average because there is more emphasis on fixing the "bad" children than helping the smart ones (another example of this was that we were made to take all of our AP exams in past years in uncomfortable folding chairs and tables in the wrestling room of the school - not only was this environment distracting due to its odors, but I believe that I did worse on my exams from the distractions of the bells that rang every 45 minutes and the uncomfortable feeling I had from not being able to take the test in a normal classroom with a desk, but the entire situation frustrated me because when the "state" exam, which is the PSSA, was administered as I was an 11th grader, we came in early, were given breakfast, took the exams in classrooms, had no distractions from bells ringing, and the other grades of students were not permitted to enter the school to prevent extra noise from bothering us. It amazed me how much emphasis was put on this test because it directly effects the school, but when students are required to pay $90 for their AP exams, we are thrown into a room put together the day before where the wrestlers' sweat and are not even given the courtesy of the administration turing off the bells.
I think that Sun Valley needs to evaluate most of their teaching methods. Overall, this school is not the proper fit for a student who demonstrates intelligence and has the ability to succeed. There are not the proper resources here for students to take advantage of that can help them get into the best of the best universities, and therefore I believe that this is the reason that the one or two students that are fortunate get accepted to great colleges each year are forced to take extra steps on their own. I belive that anyone that hears exceptional praise about this place should take a closer look to see that their are too many problems under the surface that need to be fixed.