If you were unable to attend our 7th – 9th Grade Information Night, please find the slides posted on the High School Site here.

To summarize, Ben distributed the Frank Bruni book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.” We then spent a little bit of time examining the Advising and College Counseling programs in the high school, and how they change as students progress towards graduation.

The rest of the evening was spent talking about how PDS, parents, and students can work together to create a fun, exploratory and challenging environment for young high school students to discover new ideas, participate in new activities, make new friends and build positive relationships with faculty.

The heavy lifting phase of the college application process begins in 11th grade, and I encouraged families not to overwhelm themselves or their children with college related stress as they are just entering high school. It is a time for them to focus on their academics, learn strong study habits, harness their strengths and work on their challenges.

In case you are curious, the Bruni quote which Ben shared (which I find quite poignant) is “We know that where we go to college will have infinitely less bearing on our fulfillment in life than so much else: the wisdom with which we choose our romantic partners; our interactions with the communities we inhabit; our generosity toward the families that we inherit and the families that make. We know that no college can compete with getting any one of those things right, let alone several or all of them right. Then the admission process comes along, and it shoves all that knowledge to the side.”

(Bruni, Frank. Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. New York: Grand Central, 2015. N. 230. Print.)

 

-Gabe