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  While college planning has its roots in our earliest educational decisions for our children, the actual college search-application-admissions-and-decision activity does not formally begin until the winter of the junior year.
Even as a highly competitive, ambitious college preparatory school, Hopkins believes that there are intrinsic social, educational and maturational issues to be addressed and valued in the high school years, issues and values which (dare we say it?) go beyond the importance of college placement. Focusing too narrowly or rigidly on college admission related issues throughout high school could get in the way of a student’s long-term development, happiness, and success in life.
Having said that, there are indeed, however, college admissions issues of planning and awareness that are important, even in the lives of seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth graders at a school such as Hopkins. The following is a list of events and opportunities of which lower and middle schoolers ought to be aware:
Six Topics for Early College Planning for Students in Grades 7 - 10 and their Parents
Click on the items below for more information.
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Course Selection
Admission officers will tell you that the first and foremost consideration given to an application is that of course content. More than scores, more than grades, it is the student’s decisions concerning what courses to take (and what courses not to take, or to avoid) that puts everything else into perspective. A student gets good grades – but in what courses? A student has excellent ability – but how is that ability used, tested, stretched? It is the courses selected by the students that answer these questions.
A central issue about each year’s school record is: has the student stepped up each year to the next higher level of course work in each of the five major disciplines (English, Foreign Language, History, Science, and Mathematics), and if not, why not? Hand in hand with that issue is: Has the selection of courses reflected the student’s interests and abilities; have the course selections been intelligent choices, and appropriate?
When admission officers look at high school transcripts and course selection, they do so in the context of the specific high school's offerings. Therefore, a student from a school with no Honors or AP courses will not be disadvantaged compared to a student from a school where any student can sign up for as many AP courses as he/she wants. Every transcript that we send is accompanied by a high school profile that describes our curriculum in detail so admission representatives understand that we are not an AP driven school.
The guiding principal in the early years of Hopkins – and throughout the high school years – should be that of taking the most rigorous program of courses appropriate to the student’s ability to be successful and to grow intellectually and personally.
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