Gretchen Whitney High

As of the 2008-09 school year, Whitney High school no longer offers AP English Literature. The school will only offer the standard level English for its seniors. The talk among most seniors is that this change was made to protect seniors who are not interested in pushing themselves by taking the hardest level classes available. By getting rid of AP, Whitney has essentially leveled the playing field but at the expense of not pushing the communities most talented students with the most difficult coursework.

Additionally, recent controversy has been stirring among the seniors about "Panel Interviews." During these "interviews," seniors must defend their college lists before a panel of faculty members, generally consisting of one counselor, a principal, and two teachers. During these panel interviews the Principal Hager and Mrs. Logan (counselor) have told numerous students that they should not apply to the most elite private schools and the counselors and principals are unwilling to write the counselor recommendations on behalf of the seniors because they do not want to sully the reputation of Whitney with the best colleges in the nation. Students often emerge from the panel interviews in tears.

I understand the need to advise a student to have a well rounded and safe school list. I also understand that students can be too ambitious. But what I cannot understand is how a school who prides itself on sending 100% of its graduating seniors to 4 year colleges can so blatantly disregard and deride the ambitions of their students. Most of these seniors have spent six years at Whitney, believing that their high school careers will culminate with applications to and acceptances from elite colleges. Most students, probably thanks to their educations, believed in at least trying, even if their chances of being accepted were slim. How can Whitney educate its students for 6 years only to tell them that they can't, shouldn't, or will not be made able to apply to their dream school?

Whitney's reputation was built years ago by better, more caring faculty and staff. If the school continues its current course, it will surely find itself behind other public schools.

Albert, you should have verified with admin the real reason the AP English Literature was cancelled instead of relying on the senior grapevine. Classes will remain open as long as there are enough students to fill a classroom and budget permits it.

The panel interview is a tool that Whitney uses to prep their students for future interviews. The student is notified ahead of when his/her interview and what will transpire. If the student comes out in tears it is because he was ill-prepared. He is expected to defend and discuss the relevance of his schools of choice through his knowledge of admission policies, financial requirements and curriculum as they pertain to his major. The panel supports Whitney’s mission to prepare students for admission to and success at best-match colleges or universities. Certainly not to “blatantly disregard and deride the ambitions of their students” as Andrew put it. The staff and faculty of Whitney do not spend six years building up a student only to tear him apart in a 15-minute interview. The interview offers alternatives based on reality.

Every other student wishes to be accepted to that elite or dream school. The reality is that if the acceptance does not come with an offer of a scholarship and the cost a college education falls on the student and his family, he will look elsewhere were he can get the most out of his dime. Acceptance to a college means Whitney did its job but enrollment is on the student. So, Andrew what was the reality of your source/s?

There is another repercussion that has to be considered here. Acceptance without enrollment in an elite school jeopardizes applications of future students who may have better chances at enrollment. Admissions tend to look at future candidates from the same school with jaundiced eyes. Why waste time in vetting an applicant who may not enroll based on past statistics? The staff of the WHS College Connection has to go in, interface with admissions for damage control to protect future Whitney applicants.

Continuation of previous post.

The staff of the College Connection Center of Whitney HS supported by Whitney Foundation travels to various campuses and sits down with admissions to find out how to effectively package our students for college entrance. Throughout the school year starting with Back to School Night, the Center hosts College Fairs and information session with different colleges and universities to provide both parents and students with college options. It also provides the student with an individual internet-based electronic portfolio valuable in college preparation. The center puts college information sessions, application deadlines and scholarship opportunities at the student’s fingertips via the internet.

Whitney HS has a policy of writing and guarantees each graduating student a maximum of three letters of recommendation sent to schools of his/her choice. If the graduating class size is 120 that translates to 360 letters. I must point out that none of these 360 are form letters. They are all individualized, personalized letters written by the principal, the counselor or a teacher as the case may be.

The staff and faculty of Whitney continue to be vigilant and zealously guard over the success of their students. Whitney HS continues to be the number one high school in California based on API scores and remains among the top nationwide. It has successfully met the demands of the current budget cuts brought about by a suffering economy without sacrificing the integrity of its scholastic programs. It successfully applied for and granted Prop 1D fund to build a multi-media training center that will bring its technology and arts programs into the digital age.

There is one thing sorely missing in the WHS community - involvement from its alumni. So, Albert, here's a challenge for you: can you change this situation? Can you extend two hands and assist your alma mater get ahead of other high schools? Whitney will certainly require a lot of help in the process of building its multi-media center. Maybe in the process, you might find the truth of your statements and allay your fears about the current staff and of Whitney HS falling behind other public schools.

Everyone outside the gates of Whitney has an unsolicited opinion about it. Some claim it has "gone down hill", though the API score and average SAT scores say the opposite. Others say it is too much pressure at a young age. But the truth is, Whitney is what the students and parents make of it.
Whitney is an excellent safe school that offers students academic challenges and college preparedness. It is not the school for everyone. Just like Ivy League schools are not for everyone.
Students need to be independent and seek out the many opportunities the school has. If you just want to study and get a 4.0, you are missing out on what Whitney really offers.

Whitney is a great school. But it is not a "college-prep academy" by any means. As an alumni, here is my honest analysis

Whitney High teaches students to work hard for the grade. But there is so much more -

In reality, the college experience is mostly about the classroom environment. Are you surrounded by quality people? Are you having good discussions with your classmates and professors?

In terms of being prepared for college, Whitney did not do much for me.

Since the school is renowned for having self-driven students, college prep is mostly done within the student community. There is a "college center" but it is nothing worth talking about.

Teachers don't know much when it comes to universities and college planning. They try to scare you about college with a much of myths... but, all in all, they don't help much.

However, Whitney redeems itself as a special community of like-minded students and faculty.

Internally, Whitney High is known for being a family - ask any student or alumni. There are a few teachers that help keep the "family" setting of Whitney.

Many newer teachers coming in are not familiar with the "laid back" setting of Whitney and use their authority to destroy this wondrous culture.

The family aspect of Whitney makes student and teacher interaction unique.

If Whitney wants to be more "college-prep" oriented, they should bring back more alumni to talk to seniors.

WHS teachers and college counselors just love to scare the seniors.

Alumni will come by and be real with what college is about.

I attended Whitney back in 1980 in their summer program. Although I enjoyed the classes and marveled at the modern campus, what I honestly remember most about my experience was that I was possibly the only Mexican on campus.

I graduated from Whitney in 1997. I hated it then and couldn't wait to get out. Today, as I progress through my career, I am so glad I went there. Here are Whitney's high and low points, from the perspective of an alumna who did not excel as a Wildcat.

First, the bad. Whitney needs to not be so obsessed with making doctors, lawyers, and engineers out of their students. No one ever talked to me about a career in marketing communications when I was there. Our exposure to the business world was limited to an economics class senior year taught by someone who didn't know a whole lot about the economic landscape of the time. I want Whitney students to be well-rounded, not just masters of memorization.

Now here are the best parts of Whitney. I am, 13 years after graduating, still able to enjoy friendships I made there with both peers and teachers. I liked that none of us were particularly athletic because it gave anyone who wanted a play a chance to participate. I loved that the students had such a heavy hand in planning major school events, and in doing so, were encouraged to be creative, and sometimes even daring. And lastly, although I hated it at the time, I am kind of grateful that we were so competitive academically. No, I didn't go to a top-notch school. I went to Cal State Long Beach (which I would not trade for the world). But because I went to Whitney, I did my part to help make CSULB a more competitive school. How? I set the bar high for myself. And in a world where you are measured against your peers, the bar was set high for others. Today, employers know I went to CSULB and am a high caliber employee. Employers fight to keep me. This elevates CSULB students in the eyes of future employers. But I know that this all started at Whitney and that makes me feel pretty good.

where da white peeps at? n my ninjas????

I've worked with college-bound students for 20+ years, and the "reality/repercussions" Bernie H describes above sound like old-wives' tales debunked by admissions officers from Berkeley to the Ivy League.

Mr. H implies the WHS interview panel predicts whether students will be admitted and also what financial aid offer they will receive, and students should only apply to schools they can both get into and afford to attend. But almost all "elite" universities practice need-blind admissions, and in recent years they have absorbed the tuition for families who earn not more than a low six-figure income, so the cost of college largely boils down to room and board and other expenses students incur by moving out of their parents' homes. These are comparable no matter where a student goes, and each family can set its own priorities when deciding, say, whether a student should pick UCLA so he can come home on weekends, or travel cross-country to pursue an engineering degree at MIT. It is the prerogative of the student, not WHS, to make such decisions, and to be fully informed they should make them only after admissions letters and preliminary financial aid offers are available in the spring of senior year, not in the fall before applications are even filed.

Mr. H also implies if too many WHS students are admitted but fail to enroll, then "elite" universities will blame WHS faculty and penalize future applicants by admitting fewer students. But this is not how admissions committees operate. The myth of quotas was discredited by Jeanne Fetter Chu, former dean at Stanford, in her memoir _Questions and Admissions_, and by other admissions directors in public interviews. Colleges look at each applicant as an individual, not each high school as a group. It's true that schools worry about "yield" and want more admitted applicants to enroll, but they don't do this by engineering an admit class guaranteed to have a high yield (otherwise, they could just lower their standards a bit and say: "Why waste time admitting applicants with perfect SAT scores and GPAs when we know they'll pick Harvard over us?"). And it's true that admissions committees are familiar with each high school and know if its grades are inflated and its recommendation letters are believable, but no admissions officer would look upon WHS with a "jaundiced eye" for recommending students who are admissible academically but who might not enroll for financial reasons. Colleges are liberal-minded and want to enroll classes with a good socioeconomic mix. If a school likes an applicant enough to admit him, they'll go out of their way to encourage that student to enroll, including offering generous financial aid if his situation warrants it.

No WHS senior should apologize to future applicants for applying to several competitive schools but of course deciding to enroll in only one. It's not as if WHS has a monopoly on goodwill with colleges and has to ration it out to the most-deserving seniors.

(continued from previous post)

I'm not sure what kind of "damage control" Mr. H is describing, but if WHS counselors have to tell their counterparts on college admissions committees, "Sorry, I know we lobbied hard for you to admit John Lee but he decided to go to Yale [or UCI, or Cerritos College]"...well, that's an unavoidable part of every counselor's job, and it's not a bad thing. (If there really are back-door negotiations and WHS applicants are admitted because of counselor "connections," that would be truly unfair and I wouldn't want my child to gain admission to any college based on that.)

Finally, Mr. H stresses how WHS "builds up" students and "effectively packages" them for college admissions during senior year. This seems to be the mindset of parents who are familiar with college admissions in other countries: be a good boy in grade school, test into a top-ranked high school, study hard and get into a name-brand college, perform each step in the prescribed formula, and soon you'll be a doctor or lawyer and make your parents proud. This is why every Asian phone directory lists high school rankings in its opening section, and why every immigrant family that moves to So Cal wants a house in Cerritos.

But admissions officers aren't interested in "packaging": they want an honest picture of the whole student, not students who follow formulas. Even UCSD, which has one of the most formulaic admissions policies, told my students: "Don't try to get X points by winning the science fair or Y points by volunteering at the hospital...just do what you do, and do your best, and then apply and we'll see if UCSD is a good fit for you." And at "elite" private schools, admissions committees look for "intellectual vitality" and "the ability to contribute a fresh experience to the campus": students who are unique, who are self-driven rather than pressured by parents or teachers, who are talented academically but have also "gone deep" in pursuits beyond the classroom, and who aren't obsessed about college admissions. And that isn't something that can be "packaged" come senior year or even "built up" by the high school at all, really. If anything, what WHS does is provide a good foundation, the fertile soil in which students have the opportunity to grow to their fullest potential.

Don't get me wrong. WHS is a special place and I applaud its faculty helping so many students realize their dreams. As Mr. Smilde said, WHS is an "ivory tower" where students can pursue their studies without being distracted by the harsher realities of the outside world. But eventually every alumnus has to face those realities, and probably the first lesson he will learn is that life is a fitful journey that involves trial and error, twists and turns...and there won't always be someone there to hold your hand and tell you what to do next.

AP English at Whitney may have been a good reason why my daughter Melody Gee is now a 2010 winner of the Perugia Press Book Prize. This book is available at the Cerritos Library titled "Each Crumbling House."

I didn't go to Whitney. I went to one of the lowest ranked schools on the list, but I've accomplished more in my life than probably 90% of the Whitney graduates, who I assume have done great things with their lives. It's not where you start off, but what you do from there that counts.

The good things about Whitney is the networking and the like minded people that surround you and help keep you grounded(away from trouble). It has a laid back atmosphere and a friendly close knit community of students. It is almost like a college frat or club. Alumni like to keep in touch for years and often choose the same career paths. Even if you're not a great student, the atmosphere and the people at Whitney makes you sharper than the average students at other schools. I was a terrible student and went to a community college after Whitney then transferred to a four year, and it's hard to explain, but I saw the difference Whitney made in my work ethic, attitude, and drive compared to other students.

Academically, Whitney didn't have a great or unique curriculum. They just took the smartest students from all the other schools and put them in one school. However, their English classes were very enjoyable and had me reading a lot. I probably read about 50 novels, short stories, and plays. It was something that I realized wasn't prevalent in other high schools or even colleges.