By Carol Cooper
Manhattan Center school building
Taken by Larry Castellanos
Early on Wednesday, March 19th an overflow crowd of potential new freshmen and their parents filled the MCSM auditorium to discover why they should choose the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics over other competitive magnet high schools they qualify to attend. Out of the thousands of New York teens who applied to MCSM, these were the lucky ones who were “matched” to us as the most likely to do well within our particular scholastic culture. But now these clever, curious, ambitious children and their parents must also choose MCSM!!
Elegantly suited-up in MCSM’s patented “Dress for Success” manner, Principal David Jimenez and Assistant Principal Michael Salek picked up microphones at the front of the auditorium that morning to inform these potential freshman about the advantages of attending Manhattan Center. Principal Jimenez provided bilingual translation for those who needed it. A visual power-point lecture helped Vice Principal Salek explain the many academically-oriented clubs, programs, and corporate partnerships MCSM has to offer. He explained how parents and teachers can communicate via the school website and how students can avail themselves of the free health services, SAT tutoring, and summer programs MCSM facilitates. But most importantly this presentation underscored the main purpose of MCSM and their dedicated staff, which is to help students prepare to enter the college and career of their choice. This would include the process of finding the grants, scholarships or loans needed to pay for such ambitious goals.
If you think MCSM is a pretty special high school, you are not alone. In 2013, the New York Daily News and the New York Post respectively ranked us at #28 and #23 among the top schools in the entire city. Last year the magazine U.S. News and World Report (famous for ranking high schools and colleges nationally each year), placed Manhattan Center for Science and Math at number 117 out of thousands of selective magnet schools around the country.
When you consider that the only New York magnet school that made it into the top ten on that list was The Brooklyn Latin School with its tiny student body of only 336; and that the only New York high school with more than 1000 students that ranked in the Top 20 was Bronx High School of Science (but not Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech!) makes you realize what impact small classroom size and having English as a student’s first language can make on these statistics. Also relevant to high national rankings is whether or not a parent checks the official permission box to allow their child’s academic performance to be counted. Principal Jimenez stressed, in English and Spanish, to the parents of all the “matched” students the importance of checking that permission box when it comes in the mail.
If you are already a student here, you know that MCSM looks for smart, highly motivated students, who are willing and able to take a certain amount of positive control over their own learning experience. Teachers, principals, and guidance counselors not only provide a supportive environment for classroom learning, they also encourage teens to research and take advantage of a wealth of enrichment programs and extracurricular activities that increase each student’s chances of gaining admission to their preferred college or career-track program.
However, school administrators make it clear that students cannot be passive about these opportunities, waiting for applications, scholarships and awards to drop like magic golden apples into their laps. If you don’t ask counselors for help, they won’t know you need it. If you don’t show up for the various in-house and external program recruitment sessions which the school sets up and announces, then recruiters will think you are not sufficiently motivated. Each year, competition for paid internships, summer jobs, and scholarships of all kinds is stiff. Not only are talented MCSM students competing against each other for such rewards, but they are also usually being measured against kids from every other school in the city, the state, or the even the nation.
Part of how MCSM prepares its students to win the prizes they compete for, is by treating them like responsible adults. As we know, adults are expected to be self-motivated. Adults should be willing to do their own research. As promising young adults, MCSM students are advised to be honest to themselves about their own strengths and weaknesses, and not to be afraid to ask teachers, parents and peers for help or advice when they need it.
MCSM does not expect its students to be perfect from day-one. But the school definitely wants each future graduate to maximize his or her own raw potential. MCSM wants its students to dream big, because it believes it has the tools to help you become whatever you wish to be. Every year one or more MCSM graduate is accepted by Yale, MIT, Princeton, St. John’s, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, the various SUNY branches and all the CUNY branches. Last year’s senior class collectively won nearly $3 million dollars in college funding, and five MCSM graduates were granted prestigious Gates Millennium scholarships, which pay all college costs from tuition to dorms and books. The large number of students who have graduated from MCSM to subsequently enter the universities and careers of their choice tells you the real goal of an MCSM education–and that goal is not only about good grades. Being a good student is as much about having the desire to improve (and enough courage to keep trying), as it is about getting a perfect score on a test. Many outside observers believe the advantage MCSM has over various other schools is that it promotes good character as well as good grades.
Ultimately, the MCSM advantage is how it values the potential of its students and how it strives to help teachers work in synergistic partnership with students to develop that potential.