Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Smart kids
Huntsville High sends number of students to elite schools.
HUNTSVILLE — A growing number of graduates from this small, rural high school in Madison County are studying at academically exclusive universities alongside students whose backgrounds include prestigious private high schools or math and science preparatory schools.
Four Huntsville High School graduates are attending elite universities — two at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one at Stanford University and one at Northwestern University, according to a tally by school officials.
Two more Huntsville seniors have been accepted to MIT, in Cambridge Mass.
“They led the charge and showed that No. 1, it’s possible, and how to do it,” said Phillip Baker, who teaches advanced courses in chemistry and physics at Huntsville High. “Just because you’re a rural kid in a rural school doesn’t mean you’re disqualified from shooting the moon.”
An average graduating class at Huntsville High consists of about 140 students, Gray said. About 60 percent of its students are from low-income families, but parents have supported the school’s efforts to make classes more challenging in recent years.
“It’s amazing what our kids have done,” Principal Michael Gray said.
Stanford University sophomore Aidan Baker, Phillip Baker’s son, is a 2010 graduate of Huntsville. He said he started one of his college application essays with a story about delivering a calf at 3 a.m.
Jason Doll, a 2009 Huntsville graduate, enjoys telling his classmates at MIT about his life in rural Arkansas, where he lived closer to thousands of chickens than to his nearest neighbor.
A 2008 Huntsville graduate, Claudia Richardson, is one semester away from graduating at MIT and the first in her family to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Richardson chose materials science and engineering as her major and this month starts her third internship with a French company involved with a new energy technology, solid oxide fuel cells.
Baker, Doll and Richard-
son were students in the Advanced Placement program at Huntsville and competed together on academic teams such as Quiz Bowl and Science Bowl.
“I had always been best friends with the smartest kids at school,” Richardson said. “We all inspired each other and challenged each other to do things with our lives we hadn’t seen others do.”
Others in the 2012 graduating class at Huntsville High are following suit.
On Dec. 17, Huntsville seniors Cortni Dick, 18, and Clint Usrey, 17, received electronic acceptance letters from MIT.
“I knew that it had the best engineering program, and I wanted to go to the best school,” Dick said.
Like others who were accepted into highly regarded schools, Dick has competed on academic teams and taken Advanced Placement courses. She’s a member of the Key Club, a service organization for high school students that is affiliated with Kiwanis International, and the National Honor Society. Dick’s parents and teachers encouraged her throughout high school.
“No matter how small of a school you go to, you can do anything you want if you work for it,” Dick said.
A majority of Huntsville graduates pursues higher education, Gray said, whether it’s a technical certificate, the military, a two-year degree, or a four-year degree.
Students began aiming higher, though, with inspiration from Bill Epperson, who teaches advanced history classes and coaches academic competition teams, and with guidance from Baker, Gray said. Epperson and Baker said they help students by reading their college application essays and by writing recommendations.
As part of the Advanced Placement faculty at Huntsville, they aim to offer challenging courses.
“We have a high level of expectation,” Baker said.
Epperson also teaches a class for academic competitions. Almost daily, students split into teams and compete against one another in a game-show format. The questions cover history, government, science, art, music and literature.
Huntsville teams have reached the National Science Bowl competition in two of the past four years, Baker said. Since 1995, the school’s quiz bowl teams have earned nine state championships.
The students said their experiences in Advanced Placement courses and on academic teams helped them prepare for their classes at MIT and Stanford. They also attended academic camps during the summers.
MIT became Richardson’s top choice for college after she attended a six-week program on women in technology at the school the summer after her junior year of high school. The camp introduced her to others her age who shared her interests, she said.
MIT’S fall enrollment of about 4,380 undergraduate students included eight from Arkansas, according to the institute.
“We do not have any kinds of targets for enrolling students from different backgrounds or geography,” said Stu Schmill, MIT dean of admissions. “But we do value the diversity, and it is very important to note that we look for talent from all over and that we are accessible to students from all backgrounds.
“We have very generous financial aid policies and programs that make us affordable for all families, and so we can take bright and talented students from all different backgrounds,” Schmill said. “And we are extremely pleased to have found some truly outstanding young people from Arkansas.”
Doll, 21, is in his junior year at MIT, pursuing a double major in computer science and management science. The Internet inspired him as early as eighth grade to target MIT. That was the first year he had high-speed Internet access at home and realized that the universities answered many of the questions he had.
The first semester at MIT required some adjustment, Doll said. His classes were harder, such as the chemistry class taught by a Nobel Laureate. Doll joked that the only time he’s not studying or working on homework is when he’s sleeping.
“It’s a shock living around so many kids who were the top of their classes,” Doll said.
Phillip Baker said financial aid has cut Stanford tuition of upwards of $50,000 to a fraction of the cost.
For Aidan Baker, the hardest part of going to Stanford, in Palo Alto, Calif., was being accepted, he said. Baker is a sophomore pursuing a degree in economics.
“It’s a long process,” he said. “You can’t just decide your senior year. It’s something that you need to work toward.”