Free College Course at MassBay Campus

If you or your child haven't made any plans for the summer, the counseling department recently learned of a wonderful opportunity from Elaine Rosenburg of MassBay Community College.  At the end of June, the school will offer a FREE 3-credit college course, Scripting (CS118), for current high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.  Students don’t need to have any prior experience, as the course introduces fundamental programming concepts, as well as teaching how to design and implement platform-independent scripts.  Additionally, students will learn to script for system-administration, database communication, and provide user-interactivity through the use of multimedia resources.  By the end of the course, students will have a concrete understanding of programming in several important scripting contexts.

The class will run on the MassBay Framingham Campus from June 24 – July 11, 2019, Monday – Thursday, 9:00 – 12:30, and students must commit to attending all of the days, as well as completing daily assignments.  To register, students must complete an application at this link.  When the application is received, Ms. Rosenburg will send the applicant a registration packet to enroll officially in the course.  For additional questions or concerns, please contact her at erosenburg@massbay.edu or at 781-239-3161.

"Colleges that Change Lives" Admissions Night

In the wake of the college admissions scandal, it can be challenging to trust one's instincts as a parent.  A mom myself, I always lament, "Should I have signed up my second-grader for the Spanish immersion program in his school?  Is he losing out?"  Parents are often tortured by self-doubt, and although the dilemmas we typically face are less benign than bribery or fraud.  Nevertheless, at our core is what we want most dearly:  to protect our children from a world that oftentimes makes no sense (especially during the college application process), and to give the best opportunities available to provide a happy, successful life for our beloved offspring.  Although this awareness begins at birth, it never ends, and it certainly reaches a crescendo during the high school years.

As such, I'm here to promote an event that may give you hope and a reality-check during the college application process.  When I first started at Hopkinton High in 2006, I was introduced to a book called, Colleges That Change Lives that changed my perspective on choosing a college.  According to author Loren Pope, "you don't have to be an "A" student to have a better-than-Ivy-college experience that will make you a smarter, better and more confident and effective person." He subsequently lists scores of hidden gems that are unrivaled in altering students' lives both intellectually, socially, and philosophically.  Moreover, his forty colleges profiled in the book claim that they are outdoing the Ivies and major universities in producing stellar students.  And, they do it not just among the A students who were admitted, but also those who earned Bs and Cs in high school.

Colleges That Change Lives now offers a national college fair, and their next stop will be in Boston on May 18th, 2019.  If you are interested, please visit their webpage and sign up to register; the event is completely free (parking excluded), and provides detailed information about the unparalleled opportunities that these post-secondary options afford. Additionally, some applicants from HHS often receive academic scholarships from these particular schools, especially when the student is willing to branch out and venture into different states that most Massachusetts residents do not consider.  For a college-bound student seeking curiosity and engagement, coupled with dynamic, caring professors, this event will be right up his/her alley.