Application For Senior Commencement Speaker: Fill & Download for Free

They may like the fact you lied under the assumption that you will be an excellent candidate to make a lot of money on Wall Street after you graduate. Once you do, you can make a major donation to the university. Perhaps, you'll donate so much, you'll have a building named after you and possibly invited back to be a commencement speaker. In that speech, you can talk about the dilemma you faced as a high school senior regarding lying about your AP exam score and how you realized that lying and cheating can in fact get you ahead in life...Or you can write a letter to Columbia apologizing for the falsehood about your score in the application, face the possible recision of your offer, learn from your mistakes, take a different path in college, and embark on a career helping others rather than manipulating the financial markets.

Answering for my daughter since I wasn’t accepted by an ivy or top level college but she was.She has always had a love of learning since she was three years old and a student at Montessori. She took to reading and writing at an early age and has always engaged in both inside and outside the classroom. Her love of learning translated into an unweighted GPA of 4.0 since she enrolled in middle school. She taught herself calculus between her sophomore and junior year in high school and by the time she graduated she had six years of math including AP BC Calculus and a year of math at her local university. She graduated with 8 AP courses, two dual enrolled college courses and enrollment in her local university’s gifted student program where she completed four years of English and four years of math in two years.Her school doesn’t have a valedictorian. Instead, it has a senior speaker chosen by the students. She was chosen to give the student speech at commencement for her class.She has a natural leadership ability. When she was a sophomore, she went to Washington on a research trip to examine the role of women in STEM. Upon her return she started a club at her school, Students for Females in STEM. Her club conducted coding events for over 150 families in the community. Her school district didn’t offer a computer science class. So her club taught programming to elementary and middle school students in her district. She arranged for computer science students from the local university to teach a computer science after school program at the high school and eventually persuaded the school district to add computer science to its curriculum. Her high school bestowed a Leadership Award on her that is given each year to the one female who demonstrated leadership above all of the female leaders in her school.She went to the White House as a member of a national coalition promoting computer science education in K-12 schools. She also attended the National Governor Association conference as an advocate for computer science education. She indicated on her college application that she intended to major in computer science and was accepted at Duke, Carnegie-Mellon’s School of Computer Science, the University of Illinois School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science and Northwestern’s School of Engineering along with the Ivy League school she chose to attend.But her driving passion is theater. She had the lead in her high school’s musical theater productions in both her junior and senior year and was nominated for a state award for her performance as Elle in Legally Blonde. Her application essay talked about what she had learned from the theater and how she would continue to pursue it in college. She knew herself well enough to know that she couldn’t be happy at a college or university that didn’t offer her the opportunity to continue acting, even if the opportunity didn’t lead to a theater degree. When asked which historical figure best represented her ideal, she said Heddy Lamar because of her contribution to both the arts and science.So to sum up, she loves learning, is committed to supporting females in STEM, and is passionate about artistic creativity. Not a bad combination.

A great deal has changed in half a century.Fifty years ago, high school students were regarded pretty much as “young adults,” with some immaturity about them, a lack of wisdom, but not as children to be managed, shielded and protected from the world. It was not unusual for boys to come to school in coats and ties and girls to wear hose and heels; indeed, many high schools forbade girls to wear trousers or pants unless it was part of a uniform or costume—such as a band uniform, i.e. Dress codes extended to hair styles, facial hair on boys, even to female makeup in some schools. The aim was not to instill uniformity or conformity but rather to establish an atmosphere of formality and respectability, similar to the adult world.Classes for girls included Home Economics, Typing and Shorthand, and other instruction designed to prepare them for life as adult women, such as it was defined at the time. Boys took courses in woodshop, metal shop, even automotive and appliance repair, for the same reasons. PE classes were strictly separated by gender. There weren’t many organized team sports available for girls—basketball, usually, softball, sometimes, or field hockey, for the most part. Boys played all sports, including baseball. Both genders participated in track and field, however. Varsity sports were pretty much restricted to boys.Open Displays of Affection (ODA) were forbidden on school grounds and certainly inside the buildings, but “steadies” were commonplace. Girls wore their boyfriends’ oversized letter-jackets (letter sweaters in a previous era, usually given only to varsity athletes) and senior rings, often made to fit by adding wound dental floss and then sealed with fingernail polish, as a kind of pre-pre-engagement signal that they were “taken” or at least somewhat committed. (“Lettering” in a sport was a huge deal in the fifties and sixties; by the mid-sixties, letters were also awarded for other extracurricular activities such as music (marching band, choir), chess teams, and dramatics, etc.; when lettering became possible for pep squads and just about everything else, the system was devalued.) It wasn’t uncommon for commencement ceremonies—a huge event with lavish gifts bestowed on graduates—was often followed by a wedding ceremony a few months or a year or so later, with many marrying their high school sweethearts as a matter of course. (Note: Divorce was still stigmatized in the era; a divorced person was not well regarded socially, so most of these marriages, for better or worse, tended to last.)Romance was not stymied, no matter what. Proms and other social events such as banquets and mixers were carefully planned and strictly chaperoned. Alcohol was strictly forbidden, although it was often in evidence. Smoking tobacco, while almost always forbidden, was winked at for the most part, with light punishments doled out to caught offenders. “Smoking in the Boys’ Room” was a huge hit song.Indeed the music of the era—rock and roll, country and western—reflected the maturity of high schoolers in the fifties and sixties. Folk music was also popular, indicating a kind of abstract concern for humanity and the world. Love songs, torch songs, laments for secret romances, unequal romance because of economic class or social standing or even reputation, unrequited or unreturned adoration populated the charts, as did a huge array of dance tunes. American Bandstand set a standard for dance and music, and everyone watched it. The .45 rpm record, introduced in 1949, reigned.The schools themselves were wide open to the public. Access was open and easy, and school grounds were almost never fenced off or restricted to anyone. In many communities, high schoolers left campus for lunch. Some went home and some gathered in local drug stores (where there were lunch counters), soda shops, or hamburger joints near the campus that catered to young people. It was an automotive-centered culture; cars, old and new, were the measure of status; automobiles were both modes of transportation and full obsessions, and most every boy knew more about engines, transmissions, and vehicular power, whether he owned or had access to a car or not, than he did about civics or biology. In some states—Texas, i.e.—one only had to be fourteen years old to have a full driving license, so many students had their own cars or drove their parents’ vehicles to school, even though they lived in walking distance. Some were veritable junkers transformed into hotrods and sleek stock racers; some were beat-up and worn-out jalopies; some were sleek new models with all the latest options and features. Speed and power vied with beauty and design for primacy.On the whole, schools were positioned to be neighborhood institutions, substantial symbols of order and progress and greenhouses in which the future fruits of the nation were emerging. Most school buildings were vintage, many dating back to the previous century; there usually was an attached gymnasium, sometimes a swimming pool, an auditorium (capacious enough to hold all of the student body or to double as a civic auditorium, if needed), a baseball and football field nearby, a cafeteria, often, and sometimes a music rehearsal room. Most had little or no air conditioning, although heating was generally common, since school dismissed during the hotter summer months and there was no reason to cool the buildings. Most older schools had large windows that could be opened on warm days in the autumn or spring. The buildings themselves were landmarks, exuding solidarity and tradition, containing trophy cases and award plaques of previous student triumphs; many had full quads or campuses associated with them, and most were weighty, impressive buildings a community could be proud of.Inside many, things hadn’t changed much in a century. Desks were wooden, one-piece affairs, attached in permanent rows, some still with inkwells from a period before ballpoint pens were common; pencil grooves remained even with modernization. Most were etched deeply with pin-knife carved initials and graffiti of various kinds, some profane or obsene. Blackboards were actual blackboards requiring chalk and dusty erasers. Films were views on 16mm projectors. Maps pulled down from roll-up containers. No one had calculators, but learning to use a slide rule was mandatory. Internal doors were high-transomed affairs, windows double-sashed. Other furniture was institutional, hard, and uncomfortable, as were paint colors. Floors were generally hardwood and reeked of wax and linseed oil, and most classrooms were connected to the Principal’s Office by a wired speaker over which would come announcements or possibly a voice leading the “Pledge of Allegiance” every morning. Class starts and ends were signaled by a bell that would ring in the hallways and sometimes on outer walls.On the whole discipline wasn’t a problem in most schools, although its application could be severe. Corporal punishment was usual, mostly by administering a few swats with a wooden paddle, and while this was sometimes abused by excess, it was seldom questioned by parents who tended to take the side of teachers in matters of their children’s behavior. Even so, recalcitrant “juvenile delinquents” or “J.D.s, as they were sometimes called often found themselves frequently subjected to harsher and harsher paddlings, sometimes resulting in serous injury. Girls were also paddled, but not in all schools; often they merely had their hands spanked harshly with a ruler or strap. Teachers were not restricted from laying hands on a violent or disruptive student; suspensions and expulsions were commonly applied for serious offenders to school rules or legal violations. These last punishments often stigmatized a young person in the community and could prevent him or her from finding employment.Grading was tougher than today; there was little forgiveness and no such thing as “grade inflation” or “social promotion.” An A was excellent, and a C was average; a D would get a student through. An F was failure and meant the repeat of a course or summer school; too many Fs usually meant permanent suspension. As a result of this and other things, a much smaller percentage of young people completed high school then than do now. Many dropped out as soon as they turned sixteen, or whatever the minimum age was for leaving without being truant in a given state, to get married or join the army or merely to go to work; eighteen was considered “of age” in many states, although voting privileges had to wait until one was twenty-one; ditto legal purchase of alcohol. Pregnant girls were not allowed to continue in high school, nor were married students of either gender. College-bound students were not in the majority in many areas, and there was little curricular distinction between one group and another, although most schools had, by the end of the 1960s, begun to channel those with college ambitions into more advanced and difficult classes.Indeed, high school curricula were changing by the end of the sixties. Calculus replaced trigonometry as the class to take after geometry; lab sciences became more complex and technical; foreign language requirements modified (Latin or Greek had been dropped in the early fifties; “romance” languages continued to be required for a long time.) “Senior English” or “Senior History” were electives offered for college-bound students. The common thing to say was that history was “coached,” as so often coaches were assigned to teach these survey classes. This began to change in the early seventies, and by the late eighties, the requisite qualifying collegiate degree to teach, the B.Ed. was either phased out or completely cut from most college programs. It had never been a substantial degree, in any case; evolved as a result of a wide-spread state requirement that teachers be “certified,” it had never offered much of substance, and it displaced academic area courses that teachers increasingly needed to keep up with expanding knowledge, particularly in science and technology.Students in the sixties, though, were given solid foundations in mathematics, science, history and geography, literature, English language and grammar, civics, and usually had a good deal of exposure to some form of the fine arts. The focus was on the high school diploma, not on some kind of college-preparatory instruction. There were no AP Courses or college-credit courses, although some students did sign up for correspondence courses with nearby universities; they completed their work by mail and received college credit for it.Many, though, were channeled into “professional schools” such as dedicated, private schools that taught accounting and business practices, skilled labor instruction in such fields as welding, appliance repair, plumbing, electrical work, all providing a certificate at the end of about a year of specialized instruction. Nursing and other technical medical fields had programs of their own and usually were attached to “teaching hospitals,” not to colleges or universities except, perhaps, through loose association. On-campus career counselling was not very effective, with many large high schools having but one counsellor of questionable credentialing on staff, often a teacher of some subject who for one reason or another was deemed incompetent to conduct a class. Most schools functioned with only a single chief administrator, the Principal (usually a man), with Vice-Principals only occurring in particularly large, urban schools.In most of America, athletes ruled in high school. Football and basketball players emerged as the principal stars of the schools, although they competed in popularity against those youths who had more political ambitions on student councils and similar clubs of governance. Popularity was the main measure of success. Cliques and clubs, even fraternal organizations were common, some of them with darker intentions than were obvious. Bullying was common, and it was viewed as an ordinary part of high school experience, traumatic and tormenting as it often was. There were always social divisions based on socio-economic class and, after integration, race, and, as sexual awareness became more and more evident in popular culture, sexual orientation. Few kids, though, entirely escaped some form of torment, either social, emotional, or physical during their high school years. If it didn’t escalate or develop into serious physicality, though, most adults regarded it was just one of life’s lessons it was important to learn.For most of that generation and certainly for the previous generation, a high school diploma had great value both vocationally and socially. The words, “High School Diploma Required” was a familiar line in any classified advertisement for any sort of professional or skilled work employment, and many people said with pride that they were “High school graduates.” It was a rare thing to find in the nineteenth century; and for the first four decades of the twentieth, it remained somewhat special to say, “high school graduate” of someone. Images of high school students in the 1950s and 1960s depicted them as young men and women, not as children. Interestingly the word “teenager” was coined in this era; it was not known previously. In a nation where an eighth-grade education had been pretty much the American average at the end of the 1930s, the post-World War II generation elevated the status of high school in the 1940s through the 1970s to a high regard, something that would, in the 1980s, be more typical of the status enjoyed by undergraduate college students, then in the 1990s and forward by graduate students and those in professional schools for medicine or law, for example. For much of the nation’s history, though, high school was regarded as a kind of “finishing school,” a place where the young were prepared both intellectually and emotionally to be fully responsible adults.Today’s high school students are principally seen as oversized children, delicate and sensitive, in need of social and parental guidance, of protection and shielding from the grimier aspects of real life. The openness of campuses is gone, and the looseness of regulations regarding behavior, dress, appearance has encouraged a galvanizing of childhood through late adolescence. Many high school graduates don’t have driving licenses, let alone their own cars; most have never held a genuine job, even part time; few have much real-life experience to draw on as they emerge from public school. The mythology today is that high schoolers have no sense of personal responsibility, are hormone-raging embryos incapable of adult feelings and sensibilities, responding only to primary urges and emotionally charged reactions that are usually unwise. Much of the adult society in America deny that their teenaged charges have emotional depth or good sense when it comes to sex, drugs, crime or any sense of how to make their way in the world, let alone hold a job and have responsibility even for themselves. There might be some veracity in that, given that any group of individuals tends to rise no higher than the expectations society puts on them. But the more objective reality is that many of these young people if not most of them are capable of making more mature judgements and commonsense decisions than they are given credit for. The almost manic desire in American society to keep them in the role of dependent children in need of nurturing and guidance is somewhat perverse and may, in the long-run, be counter-productive.