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Harvard-Westlake School

School rating 4 / 5 by

3700 Coldwater Canyon North Hollywood CA 91604 United States
Day
7th to 12th
Gender
Coed

Academic

Harvard-Westlake School review by .

Let's put it this way; University academics are not rigorous at all for me after having graduated from Harvard-Westlake. Harvard-Westlake becomes very difficult starting sophomore year and one of the classes that has taught me the most was my World and Europe II class. This history class, which was essentially an AP European History course (but more difficult), is a notoriously hard class for sophomores. This class taught me how History was more than just facts; it's analyzing the past and being able to write argumentatively about it. Sophomore year English was also very difficult. Something that was very interesting for me was how what we read in English (Romanticism books such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian gray by Oscar Wilde) was based off of phenemomna going on in our History classes. Moreover, this English class taught me how to look at the subtitles of a text and realize how it lead to the bigger themes/meaning of the book. I learned to analyze language in novels through diction, tone, imagery, irony, and many other literary devices. The teachers are Harvard-Westlake are very good; but beware, they grade extremely hard and expect a lot of work out of the typical student. The working environment at Harvard-Westlake is extremely competitive.

College Counseling

I started making a list of colleges with my school's advisor during early junior year.....

Sample insights on college counseling

  • They have contacts at most of the major universities and feel perfectly comfortable picking up the phone and advocating for a student to get accepted somewhere they feel is a good fit for that student. However, these counselors are certainly not magic bullets. They cannot guarantee that a student will get into an Ivy League university...
  • For those wishing to move on to Oxford or Cambridge, the provision is second-to-none. In the months running up to application and interview, every subject faculty offers classes (often run by former Oxbridge tutors) exploring further areas of their subject as well as offering advice on personal statements, interview technique and more...

Admissions - Getting Accepted

I took the ISEE and received a 6 on reading, an 8 on english, a....

Sample insights on admissions

  • For the interview, dress conservatively. Try to be very clean and put together. Also, I was a tour guide for two years and at the end of every tour, we were asked to evaluate the candidate so if you think the tour is not apart of the process, you are very wrong. Ask questions and be interested. Also, tip for the parents: the kids speak on the tour. Do not ask their questions for them...
  • Most younger siblings have an easy time in the admissions process. I can only think of one case of a younger sibling not being admitted. About half of the students who entered with me had come from public schools. The remainder came from private K-6 schools, or had transferred from other New York private schools The Elizabeth Morrow School and St. Bernard were two of the larger feeder schools...

School Life

The school's approach to discipline was way too liberal. They stress the honor code and how to not cheat. However, my year this girl took a Physics C midterm before everyone else took it. This specific girl was accepted to Harvard early, so you'd expect her to not cheat since she's already into college. WRONG. She took the test and told all of her friends the questions/answers before they took it. What happens then when the school found out? The girl gets some silly punishment with a weak honor board and her admissions....

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