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I would get comments like, you're a slut, you're fat, you're a whore, you're disgusting.

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Bridget is a junior at the Wheatley School on Long Island, New York. 

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It's ranked as one of the top high schools in the entire nation, where everyone graduates and 99 percent of kids go on to college. 

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But like most schools, it has a bullying problem.

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[They] physically abused me, mentally abused me, emotionally abused me. And I will admit it; I had thoughts of suicide in ninth grade.

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360 teamed up with a group of sociologists for a six-month scientific pilot study at the Wheatley School. 

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The goal: find out the prevalence of bullying and understand why it happens.

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The results stunned all of us, but first, how we got them.

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Sociologist Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee designed a pilot study surveying more than 700 kids four separate times during the semester.

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They were asked 28 specific questions, like: Did a student at your school pick on you or do something mean to you? 

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Did you pick on or do something mean to another student at your school? 

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Victims of bullying are never hard to find. It's the bullies themselves who have in the past have been so elusive to researchers. 

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Why are they so aggressive? How do they choose their victims? Our study not only found them, but answered many of those questions.

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I for years bullied a kid and made him feel bad. I feel terrible and I tried to stop myself from bullying.

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Teenagers are all insecure. We compensate by being mean and sizing ourselves up to other teenagers.

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The biggest shock? The study found that bullies, or what the sociologists term aggressors, are often also victims. 

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Dr. Faris says the aggressive behavior is part of what he calls social combat.

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We have found that social status in the school hierarchy really predicts both aggression and victimization. 

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So when kids increase in their status, on average they tend to be... have a higher risk of victimization as well as a higher risk of becoming aggressive.

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You definitely do bully some people and at some stages, like, you do get bullied as well. So, I mean it's definitely, like, both. 

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Some of their experiences are heartbreaking. 

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Josh says his two best friends turned on him in ninth grade to boost their own social status. 

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The abuse got so bad, he contemplated suicide.

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Bridget says she was tormented so much about her weight, she developed an eating disorder.

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It starts to build up and bad things start to happen. 

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Whether you start cutting yourself, you kill yourself, you develop, like, an eating disorder, it's obsessive. It becomes obsessive.

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Despite their tragic stories, you might be surprised to learn that they weren't just ranked as victims.

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In fact, 56 percent of Wheatley students we surveyed were either aggressors, victims or both. 

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The school district takes the issue very seriously, with anti-bullying programs that start in kindergarten and continue through senior year.

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The results of this study in a suburb of New York 

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mirror Faris' original study on this issue administered to thousands of teens in rural North Carolina. 

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The geography, economic and racial demographics couldn't be more different and still...

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The patterns were really strikingly similar. These are quite different communities. 

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What that suggests to us is that these kinds of behaviors arise in a wide range of schools across the country regardless of the particular community makeup.

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Meaning the intensity and causes of bullying at Wheatley are likely the same in high schools across America.