Penn Young Scholars: A Bigger Masterman?

If you need something to keep your brain busy while washing your hands, counting off all the overachievers you know at Masterman should take you at least two minutes. Along with maxing their schedules out with APs, some Masterman students decide to show colleges their tenacity by taking classes at that level. Many students at Masterman do this through the University of Pennsylvania “Young Scholars” program.

The Young Scholars program (as described by its website) allows “outstanding juniors and seniors attending a local high school” to “pursue [their] discipline beyond the level offered in secondary schools, get a head start on [their] college requirements, or explore a brand-new field that interests [them]. It’s an exciting chance to explore new ideas and experience life in a college classroom.” Although some of its self praise holds up, some attributes of the Young Scholars program are less appealing to its participants.

For students such as Isabella Martorano (11-3), the Young Scholars Program is helping her prepare for what she hopes to be her future career. Martorano is interested in Music Business–something she explains as being similar to managing a musician–and believes that learning about people is crucial for the job. She already does management for Masterman musician Mason McAvoy (12-3). Fortunately for her, she is currently taking an Intro to Sociology (the study of society) class. Martorano describes it as being “people-ology” and “the most humanities a humanity can get.”

While the Young Scholars program advertises giving students the opportunity to earn college credits from the University of Pennsylvania, its website does mention that the credits are given at the teacher’s discretion. Torin Kuehnle (12- 2), who has taken two classes already and is currently in a third, has never received one of these credits. If a student were to be lucky enough to get any, they would only receive one Course Unit (equal to 4 college credit hours). The University of Pennsylvania requires in between 32-36 Course Units for graduation. UPenn’s admissions has a strict no-interview policy, and both an Admission Counselor and the Associate Director of the Office of Admissions refused an interview and any information about if participating in the Young Scholars program increases one's chances of getting into UPenn. Kuehnle said that he partook in the program so his application to UPenn (his first choice at the time) would look better. Despite getting good grades in the two classes he took before applying (Kuehnle received a “B” in both) he did not get into UPenn through their Early Decision application.

Another advertised trait of the Young Scholars program is that the classes are taught by UPenn faculty, staff, and visiting scholars. As pointed out by Kuehnle, one does not need to be an actual professor at UPenn, nor a good teacher at all, to match any of those three criterions. “many of [the teachers] are [teacher’s assistants] and grad students. The only real professor I had was for Stat. I found the teachers to mostly be explaining what was on the slides and answering questions. They never had fun lesson plans or unique ways to teach us.” That being said, one does not need to be a professor to be a good teacher. “I liked my microeconomics teacher the best because he made up the problems himself and would use current real life examples to explain things. The other two teachers were kind of boring and just read the information and gave us textbook homework.”

Both Martorano and Kuehnle learned about the college experience through the program, though it lowered both their perception of the appeal of UPenn’s experience in the process. Martorano describes UPenn as feeling like “big-kid Masterman”, something that has kept her from wanting to go there. Martorano’s class is made up of 25 people (similar to the size of Masterman classes, she noted), and 6 of them are Young Scholars from Masterman, 2 of them are Masterman alumni, and everyone seems “equally as stressed” as they do in Masterman. For Martorano, her experience may not have given her an appeal towards UPenn, but towards college in general it has given her so much of an appeal that she has lost some interest in high school. “I'm a junior but the senioritis hits kinda different. I’m excited to start the next part of my life (which would be college) without feeling like I have to wait as long as I actually do.” Kuehnle said, “I learned a lot and thought Penn’s campus was great. But after the courses I did not think that it was amazing and knew [I] did not think I definitely wanted to go to Penn as my first choice after that.”Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of UPenn’s classes, including its Young Scholars ones, have been moved online. This has taken away from the college experience that Martorano highly enjoyed.

When considering whether or not to take one of these classes, Kuehnle suggests not to worry too much about one’s grade. “Just try to get a B to stay in the program. You are competing against Penn undergrad students who do not have to go to high school or worry about the SAT.” Martorano suggests choosing a class wisely, and to understand its workload and commitment level before going into it.

To all who are reading this, I hope you are doing well. Stay safe and stay strong Masterman.