TURKEY

Ulus Jewish Schools Starting the Year with Success Stories

UÖML (Ulus Jewish High School) students who have received grades above the world average in the International AP (Advanced Placement) exams, were honored by American College Board. UÖML´s 2021 graduates have been placed in distinguished universities in Turkey and abroad, once again.
Sibel KONFİNO
Ulus Jewish Schools Starting the Year with Success Stories
UÖML graduates this year, keeping up their success tradition, have been accepted in distinguished universities in Turkey and abroad

Translation by Janet MITRANI

We talked with Funda Kara, the High School Principal of Ulus Jewish High School (UÖML), about the AP program that opens the door to universities abroad.

What is AP?

The AP (Advanced Placement) program administered by the American College Board, is a program enabling high school students to study university-level classes. The students participating in the program and taking AP classes, take the international AP Exams in May. Students who are successful in the exams, can earn some important advantages such as getting accepted in the universities and colleges abroad, get scholarships in some universities in Turkey, or earn college credit and be exempt from their future classes in the universities they will go to.

Ulus Jewish High School became an AP School in 2014. In 2014, when we had returned from a seminar in the United States together with Berta Banana, the Head of Mathematics Department, we talked to our administrators and took our first step eagerly and decidedly with the AP Calculus AB class we opened. At the end of the first year, we were very excited to see that all the students who had taken this class received 5 over 5 in the AP Exam. Throughout the years the number of our AP classes and our success quickly increased. When we evaluate the achievement of our 7 years long AP past, I would like to express that the grade average our school's students got in AP exams is way over both Turkey and the world average.

UÖML is also College Board's Exam Center.

Due to this authorization granted to a limited number of schools in Turkey, our school is hosting many students from different cities and schools during the exams. In Turkey, there aren't many schools offering the AP program. Some schools offer the program but are not exam centers. Ulus Private Jewish High School is known as an AP exam center in every city in Turkey. Last year 67 students from different cities and schools in Turkey, took their AP exams in our school. I believe that our students' being able to take their AP exams in their own schools is a great privilege.

What kind of doors does AP success open for students?

AP success plays an important role in the acceptance process for the universities abroad, in Europe also. In the scope of the programs they want to study at the universities, students who take AP classes and pass are offered acceptances and scholarships from countries such as Netherlands, Italy, Israel, and distinguished universities around the world.

In which subjects and fields there are AP classes available?

In our school, we have an AP program having a broad selection of choices. The classes we offer our students are AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Physics, AP Mechanics, AP Electronics, AP Biology, APChemistry, AP Psychology, AP Studio Art, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, AP Computer, AP World History. Of course, we choose students that will take these classes, as the curriculums of these classes are more detailed than the high school curriculum and they contain harder subjects. For a student to be successful, they first have to be ready. I see AP classes as an opportunity that students with good academic infrastructure, who intend to study, who like challenges, and who like to struggle, should not miss. AP Program is a prestigious and widespread program in the world. Just like they do in the United States, Europe, and Israel, some private universities in Turkey have also started to offer scholarships to successful AP students. 

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