Scholars Program

The York Prep Scholars Program, an enrichment sequence leading to a York Prep School Degree with Honors Diploma, offers enhanced academic opportunities for our students with a rigorous, exciting, and intellectually stimulating curriculum. The program provides the opportunity, the motivation, and the support for these students to maximize their academic potential.

The Scholars Program fosters genuine intellectual curiosity and cultivates a strong sense of inquisitive thinking. The aim of this program is to allow students to excavate new interests that may be dormant, and to dig deeper to hone their curiosities in a variety of fields and topics. Students are encouraged to take charge of their own learning.

Enrollment in the Scholars Program involves an application process. Requirements for participation in the Scholars Program include an 85 or higher average overall and the successful completion of at least one Honors-level course each year.

All classes are independently taught—once a week—for a semester by members of the faculty who draw on their own particular intellectual passions and specialties both inside and outside of the classroom. In this way, students can discover how a person’s passion for a particular topic can spark someone else’s interest and enrich their love of learning. Past classes have included: “Contemporary Poetry,” “Freud and the Invention of ‘The Mind,’” “Introduction to Italian Renaissance Art,” “Parasitology,” “Inventions of War,” and “Introduction to Modern Political Philosophy.”

During their senior year, students get the opportunity to pursue their own passions and satisfy their interests in a year-long capstone project of original research, in addition to taking one Scholars seminar in the fall and one in the spring. Senior scholars meet periodically with the Senior Research Director for one-on-one sessions to develop these projects. Ultimately, students develop an understanding of how truly integral individual passion can be to learning.

It is the goal of the Scholars Program to instill intellectual independence in students so that, with the given tools, they can be challenged in unique ways. Developing their passions at the high school level will spark a flame to carry with them well into their college years and beyond.