Aerial View of St. Louis

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This is Ladue Horton Watkins High School. To some it may be just another building, however to me it represents the person I am today and the roots I came from. The city of Ladue is very interesting. It is widely known as "old money" Saint Louis. Home to people like the Busch's of Anheuser Busch and Bob Costas, host of the Olympics. While Ladue is swarming with wealthy people and high end stores, there are also some "normal" middle class people. I am one of them. I attended Ladue High School, a public school. Generally, a place where wealthy people who believe in the public school system send their children. However, Ladue had a very interesting dynamic as by state law, kids from the city had to be bussed in for desegregation purposes. Even though this is no longer state mandated and ended with my grade, those kids continued to attend Ladue all the way until they had their diplomas in their hands. So Ladue doesn't necessarily fit it's given description of the "rich" school 100% of the time. Ladue offered diversity in that sense, which is more than can be said for all the private schools. 

Ladue is the top public school in the state. The coursework is just as rigorous and we send students to the same amont of ivy league schools without the financial burden of an annual $25,000 fee for our educations. Going to such a school taught me time management, organizational skills, and to work hard for what you want. With a 3.8 GPA in high school I was considered a middle of the road student. To say it was competitive would be a drastic understatement. However, I owe a lot to Ladue. It has made me the  confident, actively invovled, go-getter person I am today. I wouldn't change that experience for the world. Not only did I learn about academic rigor but I also learned how to interact with people from all different bakgrounds. All of these skills learned at Ladue are what got me to TCU.