| I am a parent of a rising junior at a W school. I am curious about whether your MCPS high school offers any sort of help with college essay writing, either junior or senior year. If so, do all students prepare a version of the personal statement in Language Arts class, or do students get support in another forum, such as a school writing center? |
| I think some of the high schools work with seniors on essay writing on the day of the PSAT, where students sign up to work one-on-one with teachers or teacher assistants while students in other grade levels are taking the test. |
I believe this happened in the spring of junior year. |
| Our W school does not. |
| Hopefully your school has a Writer's Center. I know at least our W school does (Whitman). They will help your child, although this is not a situation where they will do the work. But it's a free resource that many do not know about or take advantage of. Also, at least some of the English teachers do this as a class assignment in Spring of Junior year. It may not be THE essay in the end, but it's meant to serve as the basis. That can be hugely helpful because it gets over the hump of coming up with a topic. |
| Yes, our high school does the college essay project in the spring of junior year to make sure incoming seniors are up and running with their essays before the school year begins. I think this is a good idea and something that should be done at all high schools. Even junior year AP English classes would have time to do this after the AP exam, which usually happens by early May, I think. |
| Some do, some don't. Some Magnet programs do in their seminar classes in senior year. I don't know about all of them though. |