I went to a public high school in a relatively rich city with a good school district. It was one you had to test into by taking 2 entrance examinations and it had students from all over the county (and in close parts of other counties). Suffice it to say, it wasn't your typical American high school. While there were definitely groups of students, most everyone was relatively high achieving and you could tell everyone was going to a university after graduating. My time actually spent in the school was mostly spent doing classwork, but I also spent time talking to friends, hanging out after classes, and participating in various clubs/activities.

Since my school was a fairly focused on academics, we didn't have cliques based on "jocks" or "nerds" or "goths" like you might see in movies. Rather, our groups were a bit looser and were based around common interests and personalities. Although you had the rare occasion of a person with a foot in two groups at once, for the most part, people just stuck with their friends. My friends and I were really close; we spent a lot of time together at each others' houses, playing soccer or basketball and watching movies/TV. We didn't really party or go out with girls a lot and we tended to disdain those who did. We also kind of looked down on those who were totally buried in their studies. We didn't drink at all or do drugs, but rather we ended up "chilling" a lot and just talking and joking. One thing that we did that was considered slightly weird and juvenile was having "sleepovers" during which we talked, watched movies, played sports, played video games, and sat around a fire. We didn't talk that much about doing this because there was a stigma of doing that at that age. Honestly, I don't expect this to be the standard American high school experience, because my school was different from most public schools, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were.