Harley’s Approach to College Counseling
“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.
Each and every year, students at The Harley School participate in HAC Athletics, and their success continues to be impressive, both as students and athletes. Our athletic program is an integral part of Harley, teaching student-athletes invaluable lessons about teamwork, time management, persistence, and competition. Our program allows them to develop physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally as they represent their school on and off the field. They grow, mature, and work hard to be the best teammate they can, while creating lifelong memories with teammates who often remain friends for life. 
Our Upper School is filled with formal and informal opportunities for students to take on leadership roles. Whether following passions or learning new skills, student-driven opportunities take many shapes.
Unlike this class, death is not an elective. Although it is one of two universal human experiences, our culture often ignores, denies, or misconstrues the true nature of death and dying. What happens when we bear witness to this natural process in the cycle of life and develop our ability to be fully present with others when they need us more than ever? It has the potential to change us deeply and fundamentally while shining a brilliant light on the path of our own lives.
This program utilizes environmentally-focused approaches to education and hands-on learning in order to foster the next generation of leaders through a lens of sustainability and problem-solving.
At Harley, our students learn how to evaluate social systems in order to identify complex problems in society through a lens of social justice. They take a hands-on approach to working for a fair, equitable society by researching, exploring and evaluating different perspectives, and offering solutions—both theoretical and practical.
Students may create independent studies with supervising teachers throughout their Upper School experience or, during Grade 12, they can design Capstone projects—intensive collaborations with Harley faculty and off-campus mentors—involving rigorous academic study and culminating in public presentations. 
Last March, Noah Lee ’20 was enjoying his senior year at Harley. Accepted into Yale University, he was feeling relaxed, and looking forward to “senior spring” a time filled with fun and meaningful end-of-year activities like the Oak Tree Ceremony, Honors Assembly, senior skip day, and Commencement, spending some quality time with friends, and focusing on his upcoming senior violin recital. All those plans came to an abrupt stop due to the Covid-19 pandemic shut down. He says it was pretty disappointing, but as we all did, he made the best of it.
Looking forward to starting college in the fall, he received notification from Yale that while they were going to allow the Freshman class to come to campus for the first semester, they planned to go remote for the second. The students had a choice, take a chance coming to campus and experiencing an interruption mid-year, or take a gap year. The students had a two-week window to decide. Noah, planning to go the pre-med route in college, immediately began calling neuroscience labs in the area to see if they had any internships available. If he was going to take a gap year, he wanted it to be a productive one. He found a great match at the University of Rochester and informed Yale that he would see them in the fall of 2021.
His work at the neuroscience lab focuses on chronic pain and how it relates to neural mechanisms and they use Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to measure this. Noah’s job is twofold. He does recruitment, screenings, and subject visits for the lab’s ongoing studies as well as analyzing data in hopes of publishing a paper. He is learning a lot.
The unplanned gap year has been fulfilling workwise and with more time at home, he has been given some extended family time and that’s been nice. He’s also had more time for his music. Noah has been playing the piano since he was four years old and the violin since he was five. He was an active member of the music program at Harley in the string orchestra, participated in the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and has been awarded most recently for his violin playing at the David Hochstein Recital Competition and the Penfield Symphony Orchestra’s Jo Amish Young Artist Competition. He had planned to stop piano lessons after he started college, but due to his gap year, he is excited to have one more year of lessons under his belt.
Noah has also had the chance to come back to Harley to share his experience and help out. As a new student joining Harley his sophomore year, he joined Harley’s biomimicry club run by Betsy Vinton (Upper School Math, 2001 – present) half-way through the year and by his senior year, co-ran the club. The biomimicry club looks for new innovative solutions to solve real-life problems, inspired by nature. His senior year, the club submit a proposal for creating breakwaters inspired by algae to stop erosion and harness the wave energy from the motion of the flexible and durable algae. Normally breakwaters are man-made and solely stop the incoming waves to stop erosion. Their submission made it to the competition finals. Now, his sister, Rebecca ’24, a freshman, is involved in Harley’s biomimicry program and he came to Harley a few weeks ago and joined the class as they put the finishing touches on their final project. Their project is on ways to collect water to stop erosion.
This summer, with Yale on the horizon, Noah says he needs to get reacquainted with studying. He has not been in an actual class for quite some time and he plans to get together with some friends to review calculus and more. Once at Yale, on top of his pre-med neuroscience studies, he is considering a double major or minor in music and will continue taking violin lessons and join the orchestra and chamber music groups. With such resilience and focus, we know that Noah can accomplish anything!