I've been thinking a lot about school applications recently, probably because I've been doing a lot of school applications recently: Gigi will go to middle school next year. [Ed note: I recognize that this a bit confusing to readers who know her, as she has switched grades here in France, but we expect she'll switch back to her correct grade when we go back to the US. French age cutoffs are different -- through Dec 31 with some born in Jan and Feb, so she's not very young when moved up a grade here but would be back in the U.S.]
Unfortunately, the public, application-free, tuition-free, local middle school is not quite what we want. Partly this is because of the English language. Right now she does about 45 minutes a week in a classroom of mostly French kids, so it's not challenging. But at least it's only 45 minutes per week. Starting in middle school, however, French children are required to take English an hour a day (five days per week since, as you remember, middle schoolers do go to school Wednesday mornings). Recognizing that this would be too much boredom, there's an excellent local private school that has a special program for bilingual children, where they do 10 hours of English per week, all together, in a class with native anglophone teachers who follow a curriculum appropriate for native English speaking countries.
Another reason we want this particular school is that, like the elementary school both girls currently attend, it's just across a bridge and in easy walking distance, whereas most of the city's other bilingual and/or competitive private schools are on the western side of the city. Until Gigi's old enough to ride the metro alone or I can clone myself, walking distance makes it a whole lot easier to get them both to different schools.
I am relieved both that Gigi has been accepted to this hard-to-get-into program and also that the deadlines and responses for this school were earlier than the application deadlines for the other schools we would have considered. It's like getting our first choice in an early action decision. No more applications needed!
At the middle school level, people sending their children to the public school don't need to do any special application process. But what's different here is that for the public high schools -- especially the best ones like Henri IV, Louis le Grand, or Charlemagne -- students need to compete for spots (and, frankly, keep competing in order to stay there). These particular schools are considered every bit as good as the best private schools. They're the elite of the elite, but my friends with older kids are now completing their dossiers, essays, and trying to raise grades for final report cards and exams so that they can earn a spot at a better public high school.
I've also been conducting admissions interviews for Princeton while I'm here. These are the kind of interviews done for applicants who can't make it to campus, and the point is not for me to wield godlike power over their admission status (I wish!) but for me to help round out their application so the university can make a more informed decision. But what's interesting is that applications for French universities and high schools are easier, in the sense that they don't involve interviews and essays, but also more difficult in that they don't consider any factors except the school transcripts and exam scores: not personality, ambition, or extracurriculars. This is one reason French teenagers don't tend to do many things outside of school and homework. There's steep competition to earn top scores in order to get into into the best high school and stay there and graduate at the top so that they can go to the best universities. For most of these grandes écoles ("great schools"), students are first required to complete a post-high-school two-year "prepatory" class. What it prepares them for is additional ridiculously difficult entrance exams that help decide their entrance chances. At university, they are tracked into highly focused studies from the beginning. The concept of "liberal arts" education is, literally, very foreign to the French, and is the main reason the students I interview give me for wanting to study in the States.
For Gigi's middle school application, there were, in fact, essays required and an interview (though in a more typically French fashion, the interview was secondary and only happened after she successfully passed an entrance exam and had been selected for admission). But of course she is young enough that the essays were assigned to me -- not her. Between preschools and private schools in San Francisco, private schools in Paris, and the write-ups on the interviews for Princeton, I feel I have done more than my share of school applications recently. Especially for someone who's not even going to school herself.
Unfortunately, the public, application-free, tuition-free, local middle school is not quite what we want. Partly this is because of the English language. Right now she does about 45 minutes a week in a classroom of mostly French kids, so it's not challenging. But at least it's only 45 minutes per week. Starting in middle school, however, French children are required to take English an hour a day (five days per week since, as you remember, middle schoolers do go to school Wednesday mornings). Recognizing that this would be too much boredom, there's an excellent local private school that has a special program for bilingual children, where they do 10 hours of English per week, all together, in a class with native anglophone teachers who follow a curriculum appropriate for native English speaking countries.
Another reason we want this particular school is that, like the elementary school both girls currently attend, it's just across a bridge and in easy walking distance, whereas most of the city's other bilingual and/or competitive private schools are on the western side of the city. Until Gigi's old enough to ride the metro alone or I can clone myself, walking distance makes it a whole lot easier to get them both to different schools.
I am relieved both that Gigi has been accepted to this hard-to-get-into program and also that the deadlines and responses for this school were earlier than the application deadlines for the other schools we would have considered. It's like getting our first choice in an early action decision. No more applications needed!
I've also been conducting admissions interviews for Princeton while I'm here. These are the kind of interviews done for applicants who can't make it to campus, and the point is not for me to wield godlike power over their admission status (I wish!) but for me to help round out their application so the university can make a more informed decision. But what's interesting is that applications for French universities and high schools are easier, in the sense that they don't involve interviews and essays, but also more difficult in that they don't consider any factors except the school transcripts and exam scores: not personality, ambition, or extracurriculars. This is one reason French teenagers don't tend to do many things outside of school and homework. There's steep competition to earn top scores in order to get into into the best high school and stay there and graduate at the top so that they can go to the best universities. For most of these grandes écoles ("great schools"), students are first required to complete a post-high-school two-year "prepatory" class. What it prepares them for is additional ridiculously difficult entrance exams that help decide their entrance chances. At university, they are tracked into highly focused studies from the beginning. The concept of "liberal arts" education is, literally, very foreign to the French, and is the main reason the students I interview give me for wanting to study in the States.
For Gigi's middle school application, there were, in fact, essays required and an interview (though in a more typically French fashion, the interview was secondary and only happened after she successfully passed an entrance exam and had been selected for admission). But of course she is young enough that the essays were assigned to me -- not her. Between preschools and private schools in San Francisco, private schools in Paris, and the write-ups on the interviews for Princeton, I feel I have done more than my share of school applications recently. Especially for someone who's not even going to school herself.
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