March 15, 2023
Over the last five years, City Academy’s 6th grade graduates had an 87% acceptance rate into independent secondary schools in St. Louis with an average financial award of $23,309. Among the school’s 295 graduates, the most popular secondary schools have been John Burroughs (42), MICDS (38), and Crossroads (33).
In order to achieve these successes, the school starts preparing students for their next steps in fourth grade. “During that year it’s mapped into our curriculum that teachers start having conversations with students about their goals for secondary school,” said Stephanie Dooley, Director of Enrollment Management and Placement.
In fifth grade, City Academy charters buses so that students can visit all the independent secondary schools in St. Louis during the school day. Then in sixth grade, Dooley meets with each family individually to create a plan for the next six months. Each student is required to apply to at least three secondary schools.
City Academy sixth graders also take an entrance exam preparation course after school, taught by 6th Grade Teacher Stephanie Oteng, and go through two rounds of mock interviews, utilizing feedback from their first round of interviews to better advocate for themselves in the secondary school application process.
Another way City Academy aims to set students up for long-term success is through an Economics class that 6th Grade Teacher Kip Warr started teaching this year. The idea behind the class is to give the students a contextual understanding of how choices get made and resources get allocated — and how that affects their daily lives so they can better allocate their own resources, especially time.
“We’re introducing them to concepts that will serve them as they grow older,” Warr said. “I think a lot of what most adults experience as ‘I didn’t know’ was that nobody had introduced them to these concepts when they were young.”