Highlights from LREI
May 15th 2025
May 15, 2022
Dear LREI Community,
I hope this message finds you well and able to keep up with all that is happening at LREI this spring. Phew, what a week, and we are just getting started on end of the year events. From the past weekend’s amazing middle school musical Shrek to Monday’s Visibility photo exhibit reception (check out the photos in the lobbies of both buildings), Tuesday’s eleventh grade trip presentations, and tonight’s Young Alumni Reunion, life at LREI is exciting. And, as you know, there is more to come!
Please mark your calendars for our annual College Guidance Panel and Discussion – Wednesday. May 21, 8:45a.m., Sixth Avenue. A group of seniors will join Director of College Guidance Carey Socol and Dana Mackey, Associate Director of College Guidance, for a discussion of LREI’s guidance process and the students’ journeys from LREI to their next experience.
You can find complete lists of where members of LREI’s Class of 2025 have enrolled and where they were accepted here.
To give you a broad overview, here are the highlights of LREI’s college guidance process, in roughly chronological order:
- Working with their advisor and teachers, high school students work to create a transcript that shows an upward trajectory. Seeking the help you need is essential.
- Tenth grade students take the PSAT in the fall and the Pre-ACT in the spring. (Students will take the PSAT again in the fall of eleventh grade.)
- Parents of tenth graders are invited to meet with the guidance staff to ask questions and to get a sense of what is coming up in eleventh grade.
- In January, eleventh grade families meet for the important college process kickoff.
- College class starts and will continue to meet weekly for a full year.
- Students and parents begin to receive weekly reminders from the college office.
- Each student meets with the guidance staff and then each family does the same.
- Many juniors join our in-house test prep class.
- Students begin to research schools, attend online info sessions, and may visit in person.
- Students partner with two teachers who will write recommendations.
- The summer is spent doing something productive and writing college essays.
- Students, now seniors, return to school with much of the work on their essays completed and a nearly finalized list of schools to which to apply.
- Seniors and parents attend a mandatory college process meeting during the second week of school, and the last push to get all applications in on time begins.
By November, students are completing different tasks depending on the schools to which they are applying and the pathways they are following. The office meets with students throughout the winter and into the spring, supporting them as they make final decisions. (The college office is busy all day long, with students coming and going.) Resources offered include a meeting with an outside financial aid advisor to support families as they make these decisions.
This bulleted list doesn’t capture what is truly at the heart of our process. Heading this list is the attention that Carey and Dana give to each student. From their very first college class right up until the day when students announce their final choice, there are countless conversations and reminders. There are too many “held hands” to count and endless moments of students wrestling with the challenges of the process and the realization that they are preparing to leave home, and then finding the wisdom and care they need on the third floor of 40 Charlton. There is great warmth and safety in the college office, matched by high expectations. It is quite something to behold. 
Secondly, this process, this care, and all of the ways that the school creates a community of learners lead to a college application process that works to lessen, rather than increase, the stress that the children are feeling and the sense that they are competing with each other. LREI’s seniors gather with friends to submit applications and sometimes to open emails that will tell them if they have been accepted or not. Students cheer for and console each other. While we know that this is a tense time and can create ripples in relationships, we – adults and students alike – actively work to relieve these stresses.
Please come to our annual discussion of the college process on Wednesday, May 21 at 8:45a.m. in the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria. All are invited to this conversation, though a reminder that it is not a counseling session for families of juniors.
You can keep up with all that is going on in LREI’s college office by following their Instagram account.
We are so proud of the Class of 2025 and so grateful for all that Carey and Dana do.
