Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences

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The Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, nicknamed "The Ag", is a magnet high school created in 1985 by the Chicago Public Schools as a unique, experimental high school devoted to teaching agricultural science to urban students. The school is located on a 72-acre campus, 30 acres of which are dedicated to a working farm (it was built on the site of the last farm to survive within the Chicago city limits), and the students commute from all across the city to CHSAS. The students benefit from hands-on experience and summer interships, and many do go on to attend universities and major in Agricultural disciplines. The school was founded, in part, to increase the number of minorities in agricultural careers^{[citation needed]}. It is located in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood at 3857 W. 111th Street.^[1]

CHSAS has an annual enrollment cap of 600 students mandated by the Chicago Board of Education. Students are selected to attend the CHSAS via a lottery that annually selects about 150 students out of over 1000 applications for the entering freshman class. Sixty-one percent of the students are African American, 27% are Caucasian, 12% are Hispanic, and <1% are Pacific Islander/Asian. Graduating seniors in 2004 received a total of over $1 million dollars in scholarship awards to further their education beyond high school. For the years 2002 through 2004 inclusive, more than 90% of seniors took the ACT and their aggregate average score was at or above the national ACT average. During these same years, students also scored at or above district and state averages in standardized reading and math examinations. The drop out rate is around 6% (well below the city average) and 83.4% of the ninth grade cohort graduated.