The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania offers its academically and artistically talented high school students the special opportunity to spend a summer engaged in a learning adventure unavailable to them in their local schools. Each year, thousands of students compete for selection to one of the eight Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence, which are five-week long, full-scholarship, residential programs on college campuses. Selection is competitive and based entirely on the merit of the student's performance in an application.
Attributes and Values
• Merit-based Selection Process: Students are selected solely on the basis of their performance and achievement, demonstrating their readiness for the program.
• Publicly Funded Education: No one is excluded by reason of advantage or disadvantage. It is an economically equal access experience. Anyone who believes he/she is eligible is welcome to apply. Applications are made available in every public and non-public high school in the Commonwealth (nearly 1,000 buildings) and online.
• Competitive Selection Process: Delivers the most committed participants, those who will bring to the table as much as they take away.
• Equality and Diversity: By virtue of the funding and selection processes, Governor’s Schools engage economically, socially and geographically diverse peers who share common goals and interests.
• Intensive Experiences: Governor’s Schools provide a time and place for students to explore in depth and adapt new skills, techniques, critical thinking and creative processes in their fields of interest. No bells interrupt activities and there is no juggling other commitments for the duration of Governor’s School.
• Experiential Learning: Through hands-on experience, students sample the real world in their fields and learn by doing.
• Higher Order Thinking Skills and Creative Problem-Solving: Governor’s School students get an unparalleled intellectual work-out unavailable elsewhere.
• Mentorship: The faculty is selected for expertise, knowledge and a background of practical experience in the professional world of the content area, providing role models for students. Teaching assistants and residential life counselors, many of whom are alumni of the programs, are college and graduate students who are pursuing degrees in the content area.
• Small Group Processing: Low faculty/student ratios assure that no one is left behind as the instructional activities engage new, complex and sophisticated concepts.
• Community: Living and learning together for the duration of the program without absences or interruptions from the outside world, students learn to take down the walls between work and play; they learn to negotiate, embrace and learn from their diversity.
• Collaboration: Governor’s Schools do not rank or grade students. They work together toward a common goal, not compete against one another.
• Safety, Respect and Trust: Students exercise the freedom to take the creative and intellectual risks that advance their skills and vision, without fear of ridicule or failure.
• Leadership: Governor’s Schools help bright, committed youth learn how to share their talents and knowledge to the betterment of others when they return home.
• Worldview: Students leave the Governor’s Schools with the building blocks to creating their own worldviews. They are ready to make decisions about the future. They are valued by colleges and universities everywhere because of their track record of intellectual and personal commitment, maturity and openness of vision.
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