News - Upper School
05.21.13
Last month, six more Waterford students were inducted into the Cum Laude Society, a national honor society for secondary school students. Congratulations to:
Jay T Anderson
Tony Liu
Jenny Spaulding
Neil Sahasrabudhe
Dustin Dienhart
Hohyun Lee (not pictured)
Founded in 1906, the Cum Laude Society is dedicated to honoring scholastic achievement in secondary schools. The founders of the society modeled Cum Laude after Phi Beta Kappa and in the years since its founding, Cum Laude has grown to 382 chapters, approximately two dozen of which are located in public schools and the rest in private or independent schools. Membership is predominantly in the United States, but chapters also are located in Canada, England, France, Spain, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
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05.21.13
By Sari Rauscher, Director of College Counseling
We are excited about the college application results of the Waterford School Class of 2013. The 54 Seniors made 404 applications to 162 different colleges across the U.S., and every student has accepted an offer of admission at a high-quality college that is a good fit for them.
The Class of 2013 will attend:
American University
University of Arizona
Austin College
Baylor University
Brigham Young University
BYU-Hawaii
BYU-Idaho
University of British Columbia
University of California-Berkeley
Colorado College
Dartmouth College
Emory University
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06.15.12
Hannah was chosen by her peers in the Class of 2012 to deliver the commencement address. We were impressed by her speech and wanted to share this transcript for anyone who may have missed it.
I know that we each have our gems of senior year, and mine was poetry. Which, I realize, sounds a little silly. A little teen-angsty. But really, it changed my whole year, because what I discovered is that poetry is about truth – not look-you-in-the-face, put-a-shiny-label-on-it truth but dancing-around-the-way-things-feel, trying-to-grasp-some-understanding truth.
W.H. Auden described poetry far better than I can when he wrote, “a poem is a tangle of opposites working towards unity.” Of course that’s true: a poem is a magnolia tree in full bloom, a favorite pair of red stilettos that never fit quite right and that feeling you get before getting off the ski lift for the first time. A poem is getting at the truth with things that aren’t supposed to go together, like, say, poetry and commencement addresses.
Consider this: if you walked into our senior lounge during this school year, you would likely have witnessed: a riveting game of sting pong (welts and all); a group of boys – pale from lack of sun exposure – playing Magic or Super Smash Brothers in the corner; a deep and meaningful conversation about Anthropologie dresses (or reproductive healthcare rights) coming from girls on the couch; and blaring out of the speakers, Sinatra.
A tangle of opposites? Absolutely. A poem? We’re getting there.
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05.22.12
We have recently been lucky to host Sophia, a bright young woman from Austria. She was kind enough to share some thoughts about her experience here at the April Parents’ Association meeting, and later at a faculty meeting. The following is a transcript of her talk.
Hi, my name is Sophia Merl. I am a foreign exchange student from Vienna, Austria and I am a Junior in High School. I arrived here at the 1st of January to stay for 5 months. Before I came here, I skyped with Mr. Winters who wanted to tell me a little bit about Waterford, because it is of course hard to get an impression about the school when you are on a different continent. This also showed me that people really cared for me to come. He asked me what my goals for coming here would be, and I answered that of course my main goal was to improve my English, but also to get to know the American way of life, which includes taking American history and American literature, eating American food, meeting Americans and playing an American sport.
Now that I am here, I can say that Waterford is the best school that I know. There are so many things that are really special for me and I want to point some of them out. The first thing is your students. When I came here they welcomed me as if I had always been one of them. They were so nice and helpful, I became real friends with them. They are extremely talented and smart and it is so nice being around people who are motivated and interested to learn. You get the feeling of being a big family here because everyone knows each other.
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04.18.12
Lately we have received news of many fantastic recognitions for our students in a broad range of fields. We have collected a number of them here, but please forgive us if we have overlooked any — we are bursting at the seams!
Robotics
The Upper School Ravens Robotics team, in only its third year of existence, has twice this season won regional competitions, and thus twice earned an invitation to the World Championship in St. Louis. At the Utah Regional tournament the Ravens faced robots from Utah and 10 other states. As part of the 8th seeded alliance the team pulled off an upset win over the much-favored number 1 alliance and then went on to win the elimination rounds with its two alliance partners. At the Las Vegas Regional competition, the Ravens faced tougher competition and did well throughout the tournament. A highlight was when the top-seeded team (a very experienced team with a long history of success) chose Waterford as their first pick for elimination round alliance partner. Waterford played its part and our alliance went undefeated in the final rounds. To win one regional competition is a great success; to win two is exceptional. The team will be competing among the world’s best April 26-28 in St. Louis. You can watch our exciting upset win at the Utah Regional here (Waterford is blue, “Team 3245”).
Debate
Waterford’s burgeoning Debate team recently completed its season. Thirty-five students participated this year, with twenty-eight entering multiple tournaments in multiple events. Waterford students were recognized for awards or trophies a total of ninety-three times. Our team finished second overall in the Region and fourth overall in the State.
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