Message from the President
My new role as president involves three main areas: working on the development of the school’s next five-year strategic plan; external relations of the school with corporations, foundations, universities and community organizations; and ensuring the success of our capital campaign.
AIS has successfully completed every major element in its last strategic plan and, as a result of this work, the school is enjoying great strength and health. This ranges from financial stability through its endowment and balanced budget, to high levels of student achievement in the IB. Overall, the reputation of the school and its graduates’ accomplishments in the twenty years since its founding reflect well on the quality of our program and the quality of our faculty and staff.
With the new administrative structure of headmaster and president, we have the opportunity to dedicate resources to planning for the future while ensuring that the immediate operational needs of the school are met and the day-to-day experience of each student is optimized. All parents can expect to be invited to participate in some way in the development of our next strategic plan.
One of my first projects this past summer and early fall was to visit a variety of colleges and universities to promote AIS and the IB and to understand better the nuances of the admission process for our students. The schools included Oxford, St. Andrews, University of Durham and University of Edinburgh in the UK; and University of Southern California, the Claremont Colleges (Pomona, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Claremont McKenna), Pepperdine, three University of California schools (LA, Santa Cruz and Berkeley) and Stanford.
What did I find? Universally, at each of these top tier schools, the IB is considered as a signal that the students have pursued the most demanding course of study available to high school students anywhere in the world. The admission directors know that IB graduates have developed the self-discipline, the skills, and an inquiring mind with an international perspective which university professors crave in their classes.
However, at schools that accept as few as one in ten applicants, excellent grades, high SAT scores, high predicted IB scores and strong subject-specific SAT scores are baseline expectations. It is what a student adds to these signs of strong intellectual horsepower that makes a big difference. One admission officer described such applicants as “lopsided.” The well-rounded student lacking depth and passion in sustained pursuit of some particular interest need not apply. The schools are looking for intellectual vitality and a level of engagement and curiosity that will enable a student to make a contribution to the university and make full use of the exceptional resources these universities have to offer. The schools are looking for compelling stories from their applicants, something that makes the applicant uniquely him or herself.
At AIS, we have a comprehensive guide to this process, which steers the counselors’ work with each student and family. The partnership of counselor, student and family, working together closely over the course of more than a year, is critical to the success of the college selection process. Further, the net should be cast wide, in fact worldwide, in terms of colleges and universities to consider. An excellent college education and good matches can be found in many excellent schools beyond the handful of schools everyone has heard of.