Our amazing school is growing, and our eldest cohort is now moving into grade 11 in 2022-2023. The next academic year will see our first graduating students.

High School is a time of great change for students. They grow from being children at the start of puberty in Middle School, into adolescents and by the time they leave school, young adults, college-ready, and on their path to work and life after college.

Your children will go through a lot of changes over the course of the high school years; some of them will be messy, but it’s an exciting time in their lives, as they start to prepare for the next stage of their life, after the security of the school. And that is what we will work towards with both you and your children throughout their High School years.

• We will focus on the skills they need to be successful independent learners.
• We will counsel them on choices for college and work and guide them to make choices that fit their personality and skills.
• We will work with you and your child to navigate the complexities of adolescence and work with students to ensure they make positive choices regarding their lives.
• We will do this together – as the saying goes – “it takes a village to raise a child”

1-What are some of the things you as parents need to know to help you navigate High School with your child?

·       As your child changes physically, they will also change emotionally and socially.

They will start to rely more on the opinion of their friends, rather than you. Therefore, open communication will be vital to keeping relationships healthy.

There will be bumps, but all we can emphasize is that you must talk, talk, talk, even when faced with a brick wall, and let them know you are always willing to listen to their ideas.

• Your child will need to start thinking of possibilities after school – What do they want to study? Where do they want to study? What are the requirements for their universities of choice to ensure they are ready for their chosen majors? What other options are available in their field of interest? We need to do this together!

Start conversations at home about what they think they would like to do and be open to any and all career paths. What was a clear career path for us, is no longer the case, and in the last 20 years, there has been a huge shift in the types of careers college graduates enter? What is important next year is that you start this dialogue and let them think about their options.

2-What is the school’s role?

• We provide students with career and college counseling throughout their high school years, to help them decide their course selections and guide them through the university admissions process.
• We work with students, so they learn their own particular strengths and skills and how to develop in those areas.
• The school provides ongoing college counseling to explain various majors and the college admissions process.
• We encourage your child to broaden their skills outside school – colleges are more and more competitive and look for rounded students, especially if you are applying abroad.
• We encourage sports, community service projects, work or work experience, and engaging in hobbies.
• We will also plan for various activities and community services in school that will enrich the students’ High School experience. We aim to work more on building their characters to be future leaders, entrepreneurs, and successful and ethical citizens.

At school, we will work with you to help this process, but again, students need to seek independent activities outside of school. Encourage your child to commit to whatever activity they choose. They don’t need to be on the national Handball team to be attractive to a university – but they need to have committed to an activity for more than a couple of months to prove they are willing to stick with a major and will be an asset to any university.

3- External college admission exams (SAT or ACT) and AP exams will become a reality.

ALL universities in Egypt require EST, ACT, or SAT scores for college admission; abroad it depends on the country or the individual college. These tests are not a requirement for graduation from school – it is purely used for college admissions – and students sit these exams outside the school in various centers around the country. Students can sit for any test more than one time during Grades 11 or 12.

EST

The Egyptian Ministry of Education and Technical Education conducts the newly developed “Egyptian Scholastic Test” (EST) designed specifically to measure the skills and knowledge acquired by Egyptian students in the American education system in Egypt. It is a computer-based exam that is developed as an alternative or an equivalent test to the SAT or ACT international exams for the purpose of allowing Egyptian students, in the American education system, to qualify for admission to Egyptian higher education institutions. The EST suite of assessments includes EST I and EST II, which are similar in nature to the structure of the SAT suite of assessments. The EST is designed to assess students of American Diploma against common core standards.

All information related to the EST test can be found at https://est.moe.gov.eg/

ACT

Metropolitan School is proud to be the first school in Egypt to acquire the Ministry of Education’s approval as an official testing center for the ACT exam, with the first testing session held in August 2020.

The ACT is an entrance exam used by most colleges and universities to make admissions decisions. The test is computer-based and tests students on English, Reading, Math, and Science, with an optional essay section. Students receive a score report with a composite score out of 36.
The purpose of the ACT test is to measure a high school student’s readiness for college and provide colleges with one common data point that can be used to compare all applicants. The score needed for college admission varies from one university to the next.

Find out more about ACT at https://www.act.org/

SAT

Recent changes to the SAT exam mean that it now focuses on students applying skills that will help them in college – reading factual texts to extract information, writing skills, making connections between ideas, and applying math skills to real-life problems.

The SAT exam is a 3-hour 50 minutes exam (which includes an optional essay section) and is made up of five sections – Reading, Writing, Math (with a calculator), Math (no calculator), and the Essay (optional depending on college requirements).

The test is out of 1600 (without the essay) with the essay score shown separately if the student opts to take it. SAT is currently not available within Egypt and students using SAT scores for college admission in Egypt must be residents outside Egypt at the time they sat for the SAT test.

4-Expectations for High School:

As a parent, you are definitely excited and proud to see your child transition from Middle School to High School, and as a school, we share the same feeling! We are very eager to plan the best for our new High School, whether on the academic or non-academic level.

Grade 9 is the start of High School and paves the way to grades 10,11, and 12. Therefore, it’s very important that both home and school, together, emphasize the importance of taking every year seriously and encourage students to work hard to achieve the highest GPA (grade point average) possible.

During grade 9, we start the college counseling process.  We raise their awareness and educate them in regard to the course choices/tracks that will relate to the future faculties and universities that they aim to join. Students and parents will be guided by the school’s college counselor to help with such decisions for grades 10,11, and 12. The counseling process, workshops, and one-to-one counseling starts in G9. In the 2021-2022 academic year, Metropolitan introduced BridgeU to our High School counseling program. BridgeU is a university and careers guidance platform, which delivers features such as document sending, reference writing, admissions insights, smart university matching, career planning, international destinations, performance insights, and results showcasing. The platform enables students to manage to prepare and carry out university applications, using data, intelligent tools, and task management.

On completing grades 9 to 12, Met students will graduate from Metropolitan School with a high school diploma and a transcript that includes all the credits your child earned and a cumulative GPA for grades 9-12, which is the overall average. Your child will graduate with a high school diploma having a minimum of 24 credits up to 32 credits.

Universities abroad will consider the cumulative GPA for grades 9-12 as a part of their admissions requirements, for that reason, it’s important that our students work hard starting grade 9, as each year’s GPA will count. Within Egypt, only AUC (American University in Cairo), currently, accepts the cumulative GPA for (G9-12). All other universities (private or public) follow the admission process as set by the Supreme Council of Universities in Egypt where they accept 8 qualifying subjects from grades 11 &12 (3 maximum credits from G11, and 5 minimum credits from G12).

Find below the credits/courses that your child can take in either grades 9, 10, or 11, for the academic year 2022-2023:

NB: Students officially exempt by the Ministry of Education from the National program Arabic, Religion, and Arabic Social Studies, will be registered in Arabic as a Foreign Language in lieu of these courses.