TV personality Tyra Banks surprised students at a New York City high school that beat 90 other schools in a nationwide competition to boost attendance rates.

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Banks, a former supermodel promoting her book "Modelland," spoke to 400 students attending a pep rally Wednesday at the High School for Teaching and Professions in the Bedford Park neighborhood of New York's Bronx borough, which has boosted its attendance rate by 4 percent in two weeks as part of the Get Schooled Attendance Challenge, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

Banks told students her favorite class in school was English and that she is on track to graduate from Harvard Business School in 2012.