Emory Pre-College Program: a summer on a US university campus

Every student takes one noncredit course, chosen from the Pre-College catalogue and taught on campus by Emory instructors. Subject areas run from pre-med, public health and the sciences through AI and computer science, law and politics, writing, the arts and theatre, to psychology and the social sciences. Class meets each weekday morning; laboratory work and co-curricular trips take place in the same block. There is homework, and it can take several hours a day. At the end of the session each student receives a written assessment from the instructor and a Certificate of Completion. Attendance in class and in programme activities is required.

The programme fee covers tuition for the course, the Emory Exploration enrichment sessions, and the excursions and evening activities, including admission tickets, transport and the meal on excursion days. A place in a university residence hall with full board is an option on top of the base fee. Textbooks and materials are bought separately for some courses, and a small number of courses carry a laboratory fee. The application fee is separate and non-refundable; the enrolment deposit is payable on acceptance and counts towards the total.

Students who take the residential option live in Turman Hall or Hamilton Holmes Hall, air-conditioned residence halls on the Atlanta campus. Rooms are shared, and both the hall and the roommate are assigned by Residence Life staff before arrival. Entry to the building is by access card only. Resident Advisors, who are current Emory undergraduates, live in the halls and provide supervision and academic support. There is a communal refrigerator and a laundry room, free of charge. Curfew is eleven at night on weekdays and midnight at weekends. Commuting students live at home in metro Atlanta and travel to campus each day; they may visit the residence halls until curfew.

Residential students eat in the Emory dining halls, and all meals are covered by the residential fee. Commuting students buy their own meals on campus, where several dining options are open, including the DCT dining hall. On excursion days a meal is included for everyone, residential and commuting alike.

Afternoons open with Emory Exploration: College 101 workshops and degree explorations, run with Emory students, faculty and staff from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and the Rollins School of Public Health. After that the day is free for study or for Eagle Excursions into Atlanta, which have taken groups to the World of Coca-Cola, the Georgia Aquarium and to Atlanta Braves and Atlanta United games. Evenings bring activities planned by Residence Life Mentors, from film screenings to group outings. Saturday is a full day out in Atlanta; Sunday is quieter, with optional activities. Commuting students are encouraged to join all of it.

The programme uses the Emory campus in Druid Hills: classrooms, libraries, dining halls and the recreational facilities. Classes are small, averaging fourteen students. Around four hundred students pass through the programme across the sessions, roughly a hundred to a hundred and fifty in each, and about nine in ten of them live in the residence halls.

This is a first taste of living and studying at a research university rather than a summer camp with lessons attached. Students in their tenth or eleventh year of high school take a college-level course alongside peers from across the United States and abroad, eat in the dining halls, and spend evenings and weekends in a supervised university community. Emory is clear that taking part does not guarantee later admission to the university, but the experience of a real course, a written assessment and a certificate is something a student carries into the college application.