Which high school are you from?
Insider finds out where current De Anza students come from in terms of high school
by James Chen
Walking around campus leads one to believe that De Anza College is one of the most diverse colleges in the state, if not country or world. We have students and instructors from all walks of life, from all sorts of backgrounds, from locations near and far. No one ethnic group represents a majority of students.
Even among the locals, there are no monolithic common backgrounds. Since De Anza recruits students from high schools throughout Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, it has successfully built a campus population representative of the local and diverse Silicon Valley population.
The Foothill-De Anza Community College District’s Institutional Research Office publishes an annual accounting of De Anza College student demographics. The statistics shed a fascinating light upon students’ geographic makeup.
Not surprisingly, there’s a large number of locals. Although a mere 17 recent high school graduates from San Mateo County high schools enrolled during the fall quarter 2006, students from Santa Clara County – the local high schools – came out in force.
Of the roughly 15,000 students that graduated from the public schools of Santa Clara County, a staggering 14 percent of them made their way directly to De Anza. High schools with more than 50 graduates from the class of 2006 who came to De Anza were Fremont (138), Independence (132), Homestead (129), Cupertino (128), Milpitas (127), Monta Vista (123), Silver Creek (89), Oak Grove (85), Piedmont Hills (80), Leland (73), Wilcox (71), Westmont (69), Lynbrook (68), Santa Clara (67), Santa Teresa (63) and Prospect (51). Sixty-five students from private high schools, including 16 from Archbishop Mitty and 11 from Saint Francis, decided that De Anza had just what they needed, bolstering Santa Clara County’s recent high school graduate representation to a solid 2,183 De Anza students.
Although Fremont High won the blue ribbon in the number of graduates coming to De Anza, Cupertino High had the largest percent of its 2006 graduates choose De Anza: 39 percent. That is definitely one demographic of students who don’t need to look far to find a familiar face.
But, wait. Fremont or Cupertino – rivals in a way – did not dominate the campus. Of the nearly three thousand fall 2006 enrollees, it was not the locals that carried the most overall weight.
In a shocking upset, De Anza’s external influence proved to be the overwhelming factor in enrollment. A total of 603 students who stepped onto campus for the first time, came from high schools outside of the local Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, showing, without a doubt, that De Anza’s strength of character is built upon the far-reaching diversity of its student body.
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