by Valerie Idehen
Staff Reporter

Prep for Prep was founded in 1978 by Gary Simons, a public high school teacher in the south Bronx, who identified a need to bridge the gap between the rhetoric of the American dream and its blemished reality. Without Prep for Prep, the Deerfield community would be missing seventeen of its 126 students of color. On average, Prep contributes four or five students of color each year to DA.

Prep for Prep prepares minority students from New York City public schools for independent schools throughout the city and East Coast. Simons began running the program out of his classroom, and it now operates out of two brown-stones on the upper west side of Manhattan. Three-thousand five-hundred gifted students are recruited to take entrance exams, IQ tests, and have interviews as early as the fifth grade. One-hundred fifty are then chosen to attend a rigorous 14-month program that includes class throughout the school year, even Saturdays, as well as everyday over the summer for two summers. Throughout these months, in addition to studying, students prepare applications and are eventually placed into various schools in the city such as Spence, Buckley, Collegiate, Trinity, Nightingale-Bamford, Dalton, Horace Mann, Fieldston, Riverdale, Trevor Day, Stuyvesant and over twenty more.

Prep 9, a division of Prep for Prep, begins working with students in seventh grade with the, aim of sending them to boarding schools. These candidates also take entrance exams, IQ tests, and have interviews. About 60 out of an initial 1000 are chosen each summer after their seventh grade year to begin a fourteen month program preparing them to enter boarding school at ninth grade. This is intended to help bridge the gap between public school and private school education. In addition, each summer Prep 9 students go to a boarding school for two weeks to test boarding school life, and are required to play a sport each day after classes. Both Prep and Prep 9 summer programs have advisory systems of program graduates. Advisors are matched up with students (usually who are matriculating to their school) and have daily advisory groups to discuss life at boarding school.

Prep 9 is part of a consortium that includes Deerfield, Middlesex, Choate, Exeter, Andover, Milton, Lawrenceville, Taft, Hotchkiss and St. Andrew's, in which each school has agreed to admit a minimum amount of program students (specific to each school's size). Prep also works to admit students into non-consortium schools such as Holderness, Westminster, Tabor, St. Paul's, NMH and others. "It has been a gratifying experience to watch our students grow and thrive at Deerfield," said Peter Bordonaro, Executive Director of Prep 9. "They hone their leadership skills in student government, various campus publications, as dormitory proctors, on athletic teams, and in many other extracurricular activities."

Prep distinguishes itself by strategically striving to fulfill its mission, extending its services past admission to schools. The complete program consists of the preparatory component as well as post-placement counseling, leadership development, summer jobs, required Aspects of Leadership seminars over vacation breaks, college trips, local government internship projects, SAT prep courses, college counseling, financial aid seminars, parties, other group bonding activities and alumni giving campaigns. "The program is especially phenomenal because of how diligently it keeps track of and counsels the kids after placement into high school and even college," commented Sheryl Cabral, Deerfield math teacher and former teacher for Prep.

Prep for Prep is characterized by the fact that employees consist of so many alumni. When asked why he chose to return to Prep as an employee, program alum and College Counselor Charles Guerrero responded, "Prep has done so much for me. I feel I am giving back by helping our students maximize their college options." Director of Leadership Development Counseling and Prep alum Joseph Ayala said, "Prep has been a way for me to fulfill many aspirations in my own life and the lives of others."

On a larger scale, Prep for Prep strives to improve American democracy and this country's future. On a much smaller scale, prep students lives are opened to a different life-style and many different cultures as are the lives of those they come into contact with at their schools. But quite simply, for many, Prep for Prep is a way to make a dream become a reality.