April 2, 2009
Dear LREI Families,
Welcome back. I hope that you had a relaxing Spring Break, whether here in NYC or away. It was such a pleasure to welcome your children back to school on Monday and to see how relaxed and rested they were. We are expecting great things from them in the months to come.
So here it is, the first day of April (I am writing this note on Wednesday so that the blog gets out on time) and as advertised we are having April showers. Whether or not these sprinkles bring May flowers remains to be seen. However, one thing that is definitely growing and blooming is our college list. Over the past couple of weeks, and continuing for a few weeks more, our seniors are, and will be, receiving affirmation of four years of hard work and success. The acceptances received this month are the culmination of a college process that lasts for over two years. Working with our college counselor, Amy Shapiro, students identify their interests, investigate options, plan their application process and get to work. Juniors spend two trimesters in a class devoted to the college process and seniors spend considerable time during the first half of their twelfth grade year moving ever closer to the day when they will decide where they will spend the next four years.
Our seniors apply to a wide variety of schools and make choices based on academic interests, distance from home and financial concerns to name but a few of a tremendous number of variables. Some students choose to apply to small liberal arts schools similar to the high school where they spent the past four years, colleges such as Bard, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Gettysburg, Williams, Vassar, Hamilton and Occidental. Other students apply to schools that match their specific interests-the Art Institute of Chicago, Polytechnic University of NYU and Rochester Institute of Technology. Foreign universities call out to some students with their promise of cultural challenges along with the academic ones. This year, these schools include, St. Andrew’s in Scotland, Montreal’s McGill University and American University in Paris. Still other students decide that they need larger universities, public and private, in New York and beyond—NYU, SUNY New Paltz, Georgetown, Boston University, the University of Indiana at Bloomington, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Duke, Harvard, Brown and Cornell. Each of the schools named here has accepted at least one member of our twelfth grade. This list is quite incomplete and does not represent our pride in each senior. I look forward to sending home an initial acceptance list very soon and a complete list of acceptances in the next few weeks. You will be thrilled when you see the complete list. I know you join me in congratulating the members of the class of 2009. Seniors, we are so proud of you!
One final note, at the same time that we are celebrating the seniors’ successes, the juniors are preparing to leave on their first group college visit tomorrow morning. The process begins again.
Best,
Phil