RHS Newsletter

February 12, 2008

Dear Raymond High School Families:

The second semester of the school year has started and we continue to move forward despite the continuous snow storms.  We have preliminary course sign ups for the majority of our students for next year and those sign ups will be sent home through the mail for parent review and input.  We are currently working on completing course registrations for some students who did not turn anything in to the guidance office.

Report cards were distributed to students on January 30, 2008 during RAP.  If parents did not receive a report card please contact the guidance department.  Second semester classes have started and we have scheduled a spring open house, March 10, 2008 from 5:30 – 7:30pm, for parents to meet teachers and receive updates on student progress.  Third quarter progress reports will be distributed on February 22, 2008.

The NEASC visitation will be taking place April 13 – 16, 2008.  Sunday April 13, 2008 the visiting committee will be welcomed to our high school with a reception, presentation, and several focused meetings.  The entire high school community is welcome to attend the Sunday afternoon reception.

I would like to remind all parents that Tuesdays and Thursdays we have sustained silent reading for 14 minutes in the morning at the high school.  Ask your kids about the reading and what book they are reading. 

Attention PLATO students; there is now an after school opportunity to work on PLATO from 2:15 – 3:15pm, on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Academic support is available although there is no bus transportation.

Thank you for your continued support.

Regards,

Kirk Beitler

Principal

Senior News:

Attention all Parents of Seniors!  We are collecting pictures for the Senior Slide show from now until early May.  We would like to include pictures from your children through their school years.  We also would like to include a segment where we show their baby pictures as well.  You can send these pictures to Senior Class Co-Advisor, Kristin Ozana.

The final Senior Class Trip payment is due Tuesday, February 19^th, by 2:30pm to Ms. Ozana.  The students each know how much they owe for their final payment.

Important Dates:

Valentine Dance                                                           February 15, 2008

Parent Support Organization Meeting                February 18, 2008

School Board Meeting                                      February 20, 2008

Third Quarter Progress Grades Distributed                    February 22, 2008

Winter Vacation (No School)                                       February 25-29, 2008

POPS Concert                                                             March 6 & 7, 2008

Second Semester Open House 5:30-7:30pm     March 10, 2008

Teacher In-service (No School)                                    March 11, 2008

Reach High Scholars Program

Introductory Meeting

The Reach High Scholars Program held its first meeting on November 27^th under the auspices of the RHS Alumni Association.  The Program’s objective is to inspire and encourage more RHS students with outstanding academic, artistic, athletic and leadership qualifications to aim for one of the over 60 top colleges and universities in the country, including the Ivy League schools like Duke, MIT, Stanford, Amherst and Williams.  About fifteen RHS alumni have graduated from one of these schools over the years. 

The meeting was attended by sixteen interested students, about an equal number of parents and several faculty members and alumni.  The program was led by RHS alumni who have graduated from one of the targeted schools, together with parents of former students who have gone to one of them.

Financial Aid

The first meeting gave considerable emphasis to the financial aid available at these colleges because of their rich endowments.  Although the published price of attending these schools is high, they offer significant aid that, depending on a family’s financial resources, can cover as much as 100% of the cost.  For families with an annual income of less than $200,000, the price at many of these schools is likely to be less than at a state college.  The amount of student loans to be incurred has been substantially reduced and several of the schools have recently eliminated loans completely from their financial aid.    

The Advantages of Attending a Highly Competitive College

At the November meeting, Eric Austrew (RHS ’95, Yale ’99) and Josh French (RHS ’01, Duke ’05) made excellent presentations describing how they prepared to be viable candidates for the great universities where they applied.  They gave a good flavor of the adjustment from small-town NH to campus life amongst a student body and faculty of the “best and brightest.”  Most importantly, they described the many life-changing advantages that came with their wonderful education. 

Ed French, Josh’s father, and Bruce Flower, father of Layne (RHS ’07, Wesleyan ’11) described the perspective of parents helping to decide which colleges to consider, the admissions process and finally choosing one school to attend.

The St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program

The RHS alumni who graduated from highly-competitive colleges and their parents emphasized the importance of the summer Advanced Studies Program (ASP) at St. Paul’s School for students between their junior and senior high school years. They indicated that the program was instrumental in inspiring them to “reach high.”  They learned that many college admissions offices give a high priority to New Hampshire applicants who have attended the program.

Several RHS juniors at the meeting took the message to heart and left with ASP applications that had been made available.  More importantly, it seems that the students who got the message directly, spread it to their classmates quickly.  Although there were only three days remaining before the deadline for ASP applications, a contact by the Reach High Scholars Program to the Director of ASP led to a “flexible” deadline for RHS students. The enthusiasm engendered by our meeting contributed to twelve applications from RHS (compared to four in 2007).  We’re cheering for a high percentage of acceptances! 

Website

The Reach High Scholars Program is in the process of setting up a new web site to give RHS students, parents, faculty and other interested parties convenient access to information about meetings, trips and online resources they may find helpful.  We will advise everyone when the site is ready and will be updating it on a regular basis.

Future Activities

Preparation for Highly-Competitive Colleges 

Eric Austrew and Josh French will be spearheading a program to assist RHS students in preparing for the admission process at the targeted colleges.  Topics to be emphasized will include:

            A.        Importance of advanced placement and honors courses

            B.         Non-academic excellence (sports, art, performing arts)

            C.        Leadership and contributions in the community

D.        Supplemental academic activities (on-line advanced placement courses; summer programs)

            E.         Supplemental sports activities (AAU and club teams)

            F.         Preparing for standardized tests (SAT reasoning, SAT subject tests, ACT)

            G.        Preparing for admissions interviews

College Visits

Several parents and students have indicated an interest in a program of organized visits to some of the 22 highly-competitive colleges and universities that are within a two to three hour drive of Raymond.  Such visits would provide an opportunity to get a flavor of the unique characteristics of each school and to help RHS students decide the ones to which they would like to apply. 

A typical visit would include a group presentation by an admissions officer, a student-led campus tour and the possibility to do such things as talk with students, sit in on a class, eat in the dining hall or attend a sports event.  In some cases, it is possible to visit two nearby schools in one day.

The week of April 28^th, which is a vacation period for RHS, has been tentatively set as a good time for juniors, sophomores and freshmen to start visiting some of these colleges.  Other visits will be organized throughout the year.

To enable us to arrange the logistics of possible trips, interested parents and students are requested to do some preliminary research on the listed schools by visiting the websites of each of the colleges and reviewing materials available in the RHS Guidance Office (Barron’s Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges; U.S. News America’s Best Colleges 2008;  Lovejoy’s College Guide; Peterson’s 440 Colleges for Top Students 2008).

Please send us, by April 1^st, an email to info@reachhighscholars.com, your list, in order of priority, of up to ten of the colleges a student would like to visit.  Parents interested in providing transportation should advise us of the days they would be available and the number of students their vehicle could accommodate.  Naturally, parents would only be expected to drive to schools of interest to their own children.  Our object will be to arrange for the maximum numbers of students to get to the schools in which they are most interested.  (These college visits are not sponsored by Raymond High School or Raymond School District).

Next Meeting

The next meeting of the Reach High Scholars Program will take place at RHS in the Cafeteria at 7:00pm on Tuesday, April 22, 2008, to which all RHS students, parents, faculty and other interested parties are invited.  The focus of the meeting will be the “Future Activities,” described above.

At 6:00pm, the same evening, a condensed presentation will be made of the financial aid and other information that was given at the November 27^th meeting, for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. 

An agenda for the April meeting will be distributed to all RHS students and parents in mid-March.