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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

As someone from the US - does this mean there are places where students are free to go to any high school they wish? Could this result in overcrowding if all the students want to go to the same school?

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I am from Brazil, I don't know how it is in other parts of the country, but there are no restrictions here as far as I know. I heard of people that would study in the school in the other side of the city because it was considered the best school. But there is a limit of how many students a school can accept, so they need to enroll as soon as possible. And I think they need to arrange their own way to get to school, because it's not a route the school bus would make.

Bear in mind that my city has around 100 thousand inhabitants, I don't know if this considered small or medium in US.

100k would be considered small. San Francisco has 800k people, and it is considered small.

San Francisco is considered small? Its a top 20 city in terms of population.

i live there and i think of it as medium sized, but then again i'm from india :) 800k would make the top 100 in india, but certainly not the top 20.

Wow TIL! And I've been living in SF for over 10 years!

City vs metropolitan area confuses many people. A size of a city “feels” like the metropolitan area, but that it often technically many cities up against each other.

I agree, but that's not the case here though. Just SF the city, not "SF Bay Area", is the 17th largest city in the US! SF feels small, both in area and density.

I am from Austria and yes I am free to send my kid to any public school in the country that will have them. I've even had times in my own childhood where I lived in one state, went to school in another and then switched schools twice within a month because I just didn't like the first one I switched to.

I've never heard that we have significant overcrowding issues or somesuch - if anywhere then probably in Vienna, but that's just general capital city capacity woes.

Some US localities allow something similar, and the “school district” may be larger than some countries.

Others are so small and rural that there is only one option, period.

if there is choice (like in my town growing up where there were 5 elementary schools and you could choose to go to any one) there was no guarantee that you'd go to the one you wanted with priority based on various things (distance, popularity etc).

In Boston where there are some VERY good high schools and some meh high schools there is an exam system that may or may not be replaced by something else due to the fact it blatantly favors the wealthier residents.

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