Honors for Donahue Academy Students
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Published on Thursday, 15 September 2011 14:40
Two students at the Donahue Academy of Ave Maria are the recipients of recent honors at the national and Florida state level.
Senior Andrew Guernsey (right) has has been named a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist, scoring in the top 1% nationally of all test takers. About 1.5 million students from 22,000 high schools entered the National Merit Scholarship program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test last fall. About 90% of the 16,000 national semi-finalists will advance in the spring to finalist status, competing for more than $34 million in awards, based in part on SAT scores.
Earlier this month, the Florida Realtors Association announced that Mary Traver of Emerson Park, who graduated from Donahue Academy in the spring, was one of just three winners of its statewide essay contest on how realtors benefit the community. "Realtors take empty space and fill it with life," she wrote in her essay, which can be read on the Florida Realtors site here.
Miss Traver currently is doing volunteer work for a year with NET Ministries and will begin her college studies next fall.
Academic recognition for the Donahue Academy continues to grow. The school has announced that for the 14 students who took the SAT test last year, the average score was 1,831, almost 400 points higher than Collier County's average score of 1,444 and almost 300 points higher than the national average of 1,550 and the highest Collier County high school, Barron Collier, which had an average score of 1,557.
"Our academic efforts are targeted well beyond what can be measured by the SAT or any other standardized tests, but such tests can provide a small confirmation of our efforts in a limited area," said Donahue Headmaster Dan Guernsey. "We are pleased by the larger academic culture and successes of our student which transcend the SAT measurements."
Dr. Guernsey said that Donahue is continuing to add programs to improve. This year, he said, the school has added to its curriculum a new SAT preparation program offered by New England Prep Company which he said is "highly successful." Students between the freshman and junior years will receive more than 70 hours of expert instruction, testing and online analysis as they prepare for the exam. he said.
