This year, with the coronavirus limiting national test-center testing, Rock Point school is taking advantage of several opportunities to offer School Day Testing for both the SAT and PSAT. KUDOS to juniors and seniors who spent the morning of October 14th deep in these multiple-choice tests filled with appealing wrong answers! Having the tests at our school alleviated some of the test-taking stress that students usually experience -- no worries about going to the wrong room in a strange school or being late because you got lost. It also offered the opportunity for some before and after test shots like those above ... snapping the pencils after the test released some stress!
Even in a year when nearly all colleges are offering test-optional admissions, we think it’s important for students to have opportunities to get comfortable taking the kind of entrance exams that colleges may require again, and that graduate schools require. While our students most important qualities––compassion, competence, motivation, and many forms of intelligence––will never be measured by test scores, their scores often pleasantly surprise them and are often helpful to them in getting merit scholarships when they get acceptance letters from colleges.
We are confident that our students are prepared for college in many ways when they graduate from Rock Point, if that is where they want to go. Most preparation for college happens in the day-to-day activities of classes, homework, and participating in all aspects of community life, including the evening and weekend residential program. From our scaffolded essay-writing curriculum to leadership opportunities in our theater program, work crew program, dorm program, and community meetings, Rock Point School offers students important ways to ready themselves for the academic and extracurricular aspects of college.
The class of 2021 is also hard at work in Senior Seminar, which offers both group and individual meetings to help them navigate the exploration and college application process. Seniors are working on finalizing their lists of schools and are weighing colleges that fit their interests, preferred areas of study, needs, and location preferences. This year, students have the added challenge of limited college campus visits. Check out this blog for more information on how we think about the college selection process.