senior thesis
It Will Always Be There
“It’s never going to completely go away. I’ll always be friends with everybody in this group... I just feel like I could call anybody in this group [from the other side of the world] and say, ‘come and get me, I need to get out now.’ And somebody would either get me a plane ticket or they would physically come and get me. They would help me out. If Raj called me tomorrow and said, ‘I have to come back to LA,’ I would say, ‘okay, we’ll get you back to LA.’ And that’s just how it is.”
Background
To understand the social group that arose from an academic program, it is helpful to understand the program itself. This is RHP according to the Letters, Arts, and Sciences website:
“Each year, USC admits a small number of exceptional and highly motivated high school seniors to begin their college careers a year early as part of the Resident Honors Program. Agreements are reached with these students’ high schools that allow their first year of [USC] courses to apply toward the remainder of their high school requirements. At the same time, this course work is applicable toward their undergraduate degree. The program accepts students interested in all majors, but looks particularly for mature individuals who have exhausted the resources of their high school and are ready for the challenges of a university. The typical resident honors student has a cumulative SAT score above 1400 (recentered) and an A- high school GPA.”
Penny Von Helmolt is the program’s director. In recruiting students for RHP, she is “targeting numbers and what they suggest.” The first step is to reach out to students who have done well on the Scholastic Aptitude Test in tenth grade. She considers these to be “fast track” students because “there’s no reason to take the SAT in tenth grade unless you’re a lunatic” -- or are pushing extra-hard to achieve high marks for the “real” SAT in eleventh grade. In August, brochures are sent to the top 4% of these students, about 25,000 high school juniors. Another blanket-mailing takes place in November, to say “you’ve been back in high school for a few months now. Aren’t you bored yet?” From these two mailings, there are 1,500 requests for applications. After the rigorous requirements, about 400 completed applications make it back. About sixty students are selected based on intelligence, independence, curiosity, and maturity.
The RHP class of 1998 was unusually small. A third mailing actually went out in January, extending the deadline to recruit more students. In the end, our class consisted of 37 people: 22 female and 15 male. All were from the United States: ten from California, three from the West Coast, three from the West, eleven from the Midwest, five from the South, and five from the East Coast. RHPers covered eleven different majors from political science to theatre to biomedical engineering, the most popular being undeclared. Most RHPers were sixteen or seventeen years old.
(It must be noted that of the 37 RHPers, only nine were from ethnic minorities (Asian, Indian, and Native American). Additionally, most RHPers came from at least middle-class families (despite USC's lip-service to need-based financial aid). I am uncertain whether this reflects a bias in promotion or selection. However, investigation to racial and socioeconomic demographics of the group is beyond the scope of this project.)
With such a wide variety of students participating in RHP, one would assume a wide variety of reasons for leaving high school a year early. However, the overwhelmingly prevalent reason was “I was tired of my high school and wanted to get out.” This certainly matches the program description, targeting “individuals who have exhausted the resources of their high school.” Some RHPers expressed happiness but boredom with high school, while others expressed outright hatred. Either way, there was little or no regret at missing senior year.
In addition to a willingness to leave high school, RHPers had in common an unusually high level of academic success. Some achieved this through hard work, long hours studying, and a goal-oriented approach. Some breezed through high school without much effort at all, and participated in extracurricular activities out of boredom. Mostly, RHPers found high school moderately easy, and were ready for a new challenge.
Boredom with high school was not the only factor that drove RHPers to college early. Many saw RHP as a way to escape negative situations in their home lives. Some had a love-hate need to leave the nest. One person said, “I love my family but I really needed to get out.” Others were escaping abusive, repressive, or dangerous situations.