Students- Why did you go to the Academy?
Parents- How has the Academy affected your child’s life?
Alumni- What have you been up to?
Friends- How has the Academy contributed to your community?
These letters will be used for lobbying efforts on behalf of Mass Academy.
*If you haven’t done so already please register using the form in the Welcome post, this will allow us to contact you with developments*
I am a student at the Johns Hopkins University and a graduate of the class of 2008 from the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science. As a recent graduate, I can see the vast impact the Academy has made on my life, and am writing to you to highlight the differences between a conventional public school education and the challenge and promise of a selective Math and Science school.
Growing up in a public school system, I have seen one reoccurring hurdle: what to do with the kids who excel? They are talented, they have broad interests, and they are driven. But they cannot do it all by themselves – they cannot teach themselves how to think like a research scientist or analyze like an engineer – without the proper environment. The teachers are the Academy are the most influential and profound educators I have ever met, Johns Hopkins professors included. Mass Academy, on top of providing a rigorous junior-year program (of which it has taken two years in required freshman introductory courses at WPI and Hopkins to fully review), teaches something invaluable: the art of asking and answering your own questions. In an age where engineering and mathematics are becoming increasingly more fundamental to top-ranking careers, programs like the Academy, which do not teach textbook skimming and fact regurgitation but intuitive questioning and analysis, are what students and our community need more of in order to successfully solve the problems presented to us every day.
The Academy offers a surprising number of opportunities even beyond the sciences. 126 hours of community service are required for graduation. Each year, a professional string quartet spends a week in residency at the school. The musicians are respected international professionals who frequently appear with the Boston Symphony and other world-class music ensembles. Keeping with the Academy’s unsaid motto of presenting not just an idea, but an opportunity, one student musician is picked to perform with the group each year. I am a violinist. After performing with the musicians at the Academy, I was offered the opportunity to be a resident artist at the Killington Music Festival, a nationally respected chamber music festival. My experiences there were invaluable; the door of musical opportunity opened up in a way that could have never happened with my previous public high school music program. I was accepted into the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. I am now studying at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, in addition to working toward a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins. I can confidently say that, without Mass Academy, neither of these would have been possible.
In short, the Academy did not teach me calculus, chemistry, or French – a student can pick up a textbook anywhere. What it taught was how to learn, how to think critically, and how to grow into a well-rounded human being.
Please continue funding for the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science. You will be changing and enhancing the lives of our state’s most promising students, tomorrow’s most promising leaders.