Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504100035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Abby Johnson is living proof that some colleges and universities these days are recruiting gifted students just as intensely as they long have recruited gifted athletes.
The honors student at Salem High School has received a scholarship worth at least $72,000 that will pay her full tuition at the University of Southern California for the next four years.
What makes Johnson's case exceptional is that she's only a high school junior - and that she was home-schooled until three years ago.
Next year, she will be a freshman in a resident honors program at USC in Los Angeles, skipping her senior year at Salem High. She'll be awarded a high school diploma in June 1996 if she's doing satisfactorily in her USC studies.
And Betsy McClearn, coordinator of the International Baccalaureate program at Salem High, has no doubt that Johnson, 16, will do much better than satisfactory work at USC.
"She is intellectually ready" for college, McClearn said. Johnson is enrolled in Salem High's academically rigorous program.
She will be the first Salem High student to skip senior year and accept a major scholarship to go directly to college, although two other students were offered the opportunity.
School administrators in Roanoke and Roanoke County said they have not had any high school juniors who received scholarships and bypassed their senior years.
Dick Kepley, guidance coordinator at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, said that a few years ago, two juniors skipped their senior year and enrolled in college. But they were not sought out by the schools and given scholarships.
Johnson caught USC's attention after she scored 1450 on the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test. The school sent her brochures and other material about its resident honors program.
She then went to California for interviews and meetings with USC administrators before the university accepted her into the honors program and awarded the scholarship. She will be among 60 high school juniors from across the country who will enroll at USC next year.
Abby's mother, Barbara, is excited that her daughter has won the scholarship and will be going to college next year. But she can see another perspective..
"USC is skimming off the top and getting the best students early. But Salem High is a losing a showcase student," the mother said. "I can see the good and the bad."
Johnson was worried that her teachers at Salem High would not be pleased to see her go early. But, she said, they have been supportive of her decision.
She plans to study English literature, but she has a deep interest in the theater and plans to take courses in drama and film. She has acted in school, community and professional productions.
Johnson has attended school only three years, having been home-schooled from kindergarten through the eighth grade. Her mother and father thought she would be more intellectually challenged in home school.
Her mother taught her basic courses, but she had several outside tutors and teachers for piano, art, computers and other classes.
Johnson attended North Cross School as a ninth-grader and transferred to Salem for the 10th grade because of its International Baccalaureate program. She reads extensively, but does not spend hours studying each day.
"Sometimes I feel guilty," she said. "I am around students who work harder than I do."
Johnson, who grew up in Memphis, Tenn., and Texas before moving to the Roanoke Valley three years ago, has a broad range of interests - theater, ballet, piano, ice skating, forensics, gymnastics and guitar. She said she never gets bored.
She has a brother, Caleb, a sophomore at Salem High, who also was home-schooled until he enrolled in the sixth grade at Addison Aerospace Magnet Middle School in Roanoke. Their 4-year-old sister, Susannah, also will be taught at home.
Johnson's father, Craig, is regional property manager for Synder-Hunt, a real estate development company.
She has no anxiety about leaving home and going cross-country to college. "I feel I can do it and I'm looking forward to it."
by CNB