I recently had the shocker that many of my son's High School Freshman friends and their (well-educated and fluent) parents interpreted "New Student" to be... gosh, I still don't really know. New to this District? Anyway, they felt "new student orientation" wasn't for them. Some argued, some were just confused by the term. A friend on the School Board relayed having the same conversations.
So, here's the story on the word "new":
So, for the record: in the United States, "New Student" means new to the school, the class, the teacher.
The opposite of "new" is "been there, done that." If you haven't been there and done that, such as taken classes as a High School Student in a specific school, then you're new.
If you have studied trumpet for 10 years, but you are now joining a group class, you are a "new student." More specifically, you are an "experienced new student." But you are new.
If instead of joining a class, you are simply changing instructors, you have a "new instructor," and you are the instructor's "new student." The instructor may have been teaching for 50 years, but still she is your new instructor.
Note a bias TOWARDS newness: if you buy a used car, and someone asks, "Hey, is that new?" many people would NOT say, "No, it's used," but instead would say, "Well, it's new to me!" (Now if the new-to-me car owner had a relationship to the previous owner, he might say, "It's Bert's old car! He got a new Prius.")
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