My Boarding School Blog
Archive for the 'featured school' Category
05 17th, 2008 Violence in L.A high school
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fight at a troubled South Los Angeles high school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police officers in riot gear.
The melee, which students said was between rival black and Hispanic gangs and started around noon on Friday, forced the authorities to shut down the school, Locke High, and keep students in their classrooms. After restoring order, they rounded up those involved and separated them, holding Hispanic students in the gymnasium and black students in another room.
Four people were arrested, three students for fighting and one nonstudent on suspicion of possessing a knife, said Susan Cox, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles school district.
Several students were injured and treated at the scene, officials said.
A music teacher, Reggie Smith, told The Los Angeles Times that it was a chaotic scene and difficult to distinguish between those fighting and those trying to avoid the mayhem.
“The kids were crazy, running from place to place, jumping on other kids,” Mr. Smith said. “Some of my kids were crying because they were walking to class with friends and they got jumped.”
Victor Wong, an 18-year-old senior, told The Times that the brawl grew out of a fight two days earlier between two graffiti gangs. He said Hispanic students who were friends of his asked him to participate in a fight planned for Friday that was to pit 10 Hispanic students against 10 black students.
Read the full story here.
read comments (0)12 26th, 2007 Admissions FAQ’s For Dunn School
Q. When do I apply?
A. Applications completed by February 15 will receive priority consideration. If you miss the deadline, you may still apply. We will evaluate applications on a rolling basis after our first round of acceptances. We may still have openings available in late spring or early summer.
Q. How is the application process different for international students?
A. Because Dunn School does not offer ESL, all international students must submit a TOEFL score of 500 or above. We do offer vocabulary and grammatical support for international students in our Non-Native English class. If you need a student visa, we will issue an I-20 form only after a student has been accepted and enrolled. International students that are accepted to Dunn must have a guardian residing in the United States.
Q. When is the application process complete?
A. The Admission committee will only review an application when we have received the following:
>> Your formal application
>> Teacher and personal recommendations
>> Transcript of current and past grades
>> Tour and personal interview
>> Score results from the SSAT or ISEE
Q. What are the SSAT and the ISEE?
A. The SSAT and the ISEE are tests that are widely used by independent schools to assess a candidate’s academic potential. When you take these tests, you will have the opportunity to have the results sent directly to Dunn School. Our school code is 2914 for the SSAT and 051 863 for the ISEE. You can find testing websites for dates and locations in the Admission Resource section.
Q. What is your Learning Skills program?
A. The Learning Skills program accommodates a select group of applicants with minimal, diagnosed language and learning difficulties. Students who qualify for this program meet individually with an LS teacher for fifty minutes four times per week. Instruction includes strategies and skills for coping with and compensating for a learning difference.
Q. How does divorce or separation affect the financial aid application process?
A. The Financial Aid Committee considers the financial resources of both parents and any stepparents. Both the custodial and non-custodial parents are required to complete financial aid applications.
12 26th, 2007 What’s Up With Cate?
Cate School, established in 1910 by Curtis Wolsey Cate, is a four-year, coeducational, college-preparatory boarding school in Carpinteria, California, United States.
In addition to an academic curriculum that features a combined thirty-eight Advanced Placement (AP) offerings and honors courses, all students participate in an extracurricular program that includes athletics, drama, music, dance, community service, and an extensive outdoor program. The class size averages between ten and twelve students.
The student body of 265 students (83 percent are boarders) comes from twenty-three states and thirteen countries and is both academically talented and diverse.
Some Quick Facts:
Cate’s student body is recognized as much for its talent—academic, artistic, and athletic—as it is for its warmth and vitality.
Admission
> Inquiries received yearly for admission: 2,000
> Interviews conducted yearly for admission: 450
> Applications submitted yearly for admission: 450
> New students enrolled yearly: 75-80
> General median SSAT total percentile of new students: 80th
Student Body
> Total students: 265 (220 boarders / 45 day)
> Boarding students from outside California: 43%
> Boarding students from abroad: 19%
> Students of color: 41%
> Students who receive need-based financial aid: Almost 30%
> Financial aid allocated for 2006/2007: $2,000,000
> Foreign Nations represented in student body (by home address): England, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Macau, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand
> States represented in student body (by home address): AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, ID, IL, LA, MA, MD, MT, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, TX, UT, VA, WA
12 20th, 2007 A Prayer for Owen Meany
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend’s mom with a baseball and believes–accurately–that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom.
John Irving’s novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O’Connor’s work.
Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen’s orphaned best friend), the rough comedy.
The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school’s marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it’s all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, “fun with a purpose.” When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn’t cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred.
The book’s countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy–from Vietnam to the Contras.
To read more reviews about the book, please click here.
To know more about the author, please click here.
12 20th, 2007 You Can Be Like Them (Notable Phillips Academy Alumni)
Phillips Academy (also known as Phillips Andover or P.A. or simply Andover) is a co-educational University preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. The school is located in Andover, Massachusetts, north of Boston.
Phillips Academy is the oldest continuously running incorporated boarding school in the United States, established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr. Phillips Academy’s endowment stood around $670 million on June 30, 2006, the third-highest of any American secondary school.
The academy traditionally educated its students for Yale (and to a lesser extent, Harvard and Amherst), but students now matriculate to a wide range of colleges and universities.
Among other notable alumni, Andover has educated two American Presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, four Medal of Honor recipients, inventor Samuel Morse, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The Phillipian, the school’s student-run newspaper, is the oldest secondary school newspaper in the US. Likewise, the Philomathean Society is the oldest high school debate society in the nation, established in 1825.
12 20th, 2007 Boarding School Setting: Dead Poets Society
Probably one of the most influential films about the boarding school industry is Dead Poets Society.
Dead Poets Society is an 1989 Academy Award-winning film directed by Peter Weir. Set in 1959 at a conservative and autocratic boys prep school, it tells the story of an English professor who inspires his students to change their lives of conformity through his teaching of poetry and literature.
The story is set at the fictional Welton Academy in Vermont and was filmed at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware. The script was written based on the author’s life at Montgomery Bell Academy, an all boys preparatory school in Nashville, Tennessee. A novelization by Nancy H. Kleinbaum (ISBN 0553282980) based on the movie’s script has also been published.
Whether you consider the movie a commentary, entertainment or reality, it certainly made an impact. If you are curious about how boarding schools are portrayed around that time, it is recommended that you get hold of film’s copy.
11 8th, 2007 Featured School: Colorado Rocky Mountain School
Founded in 1953, Colorado Rocky Mountain School is a co-educational boarding and day school located in Carbondale, Colorado. It is a school oriented towards preparing students for college. Colorado Rocky Mountain focuses not only on indoor class intructions, but outdoor educational activities as well. All students are required to spend a minimum of 11 days in the American Southwest’s mountains, deserts, and canyons. The wilderness trips are meant to instruct students with values like teamwork, environmental sustainability, physical fitness, and adventure. The school has two backpacking trips per year, one in the fall and one in the spring.
For more info, click here.
11 7th, 2007 Featured School: Blair Academy, New Jersey
Blair Academy is a secondary school with a special emphasis on preparation for college. It is especially geared towards students who are eager for personal achievement through an experience that is both broad and challenging. Blair is family-oriented boarding school where values and character are an integral part of the search for personal excellence.
For more info, click here.
11 7th, 2007 Featured School: The Harker School
The Harker School is a private co-educational institution located in San Jose, California. Founded in 1893, it is composed of academic departments, namely English, Mathematics, Science, Computer Science, Languages, History/Social Science, Performing Arts, Fine Arts, and Communication Studies.
Students are required to complete the following as part of their course: eight semesters of English; six semesters of semesters; four semesters of history, including world history, United States history, and a semester of Ethics; six semesters of sciences, which includes classes in physics, chemistry, and biology; six semesters of foreign language; two semesters of computer science; two semesters of fine arts ; six seasons of physical education; and one semester of either public speaking, debate, or acting.
For more info, click here.