Friends Seminary

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Friends Seminary is a private, Quaker school located in downtown Manhattan on 16th Street between 3rd Avenue and Rutherford Place. It enrolls kindergarten through 12th grade students, and its student body numbers between 600 and 650 students, and in 2006 653.

It was founded in 1786 on Pearl Street at a cost of $10,000, and it was first called the Friends Institute. However, some evidence shows that it may have been founded two years earlier, in 1784, in a different location. In 1826 it later moved to a larger campus on Elizabeth Street where the school size expanded. The school again moved in 1860 to its current location, formerly farmland belonging to Peter Stuyvesant, and changed the name to Friends Seminary. In 1925 Friends was the first Private Co-educational school to hire a full time psychologist

Although there is no evidence to back it up, it is generally believed that president Theodore Roosevelt attended the school for a brief time as a young child, despite ailments that kept him at home.

[edit] Current Profile

There are currently 655 students in kindergarten through 12th grades. Tuition costs approximately $30,000. The school is divided into three sections: Kindergarten through 4th grade (Lower School), 5th grade through 8th grade (Middle School) and 9th grade through 12 grade (Upper School).

The school is located in a number of buildings, spread out along 15th and 16th streets. The largest building is the 1963 building, where classes are held for the entire Middle School, most of the Lower School and some of the Upper School. The 1963 building contains a basement level gym, library and media center, a language lab, four science labs, art studios (2D, 3D, and Fiber), a photography dark room, two computer labs, a music room and multiple classrooms for Lower, Middle and Upper School students. The most recent addition to the building was a rooftop play space. The school purchased and renovated a former Masonic Temple on 15th street during 2001 and 2002, with it opening to primarily Upper School students for the Fall semester of 2002. The new building, called "The Annex" incorporates Green technology to create a building with less of an ecological footprint than many other buildings in the city. The state-of-the art building includes labs dedicated to Physics, Biology and Chemistry, as well as three multi-use classrooms. The building houses the offices of the Upper School, as well as a blackbox theatre on the ground floor level. Set and costume storage is located in the basement of this five-story tall building. A student lounge, commonly known as "The Stu," and faculty offices are located on the 2nd floor.

Formerly of Sidwell Friends School, Robert Lauder ("Bo") has been principal of Friends since 2002.

The school mascot is the Owl. The graffiti community at Friends Seminary is truly blossoming into more than just a hobby of the students, but more of a cult-like phenomenon. Μάλάκά.

Friends has developed a reputation as one of the premier Manhattan independent schools. In terms of college matriculation, Friends now rivals traditional Ivy League feeders such as Dalton, Trinity, Collegiate and Brearley. The mean SAT score of a Friends student is nearly 2000, or 1300 on the old scale.

The school is currently undergoing renovations in the main buildings. Some of these renovations include a new facade, stairway, elevator, library, and classrooms.

Friends Seminary has an excellent face tumor research program located in Compton. It is said that Ice Cube teaches a class there, but his rep has not yet confirmed this information.

While, in recent years, Friends has made a concerted effort to compete with other competitive feed schools and send kids off to the Ivies, it has not strayed from many of its quaker values. Students still spend twenty minutes, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, sitting together in silence. Students refer to teachers by their first names, and many students rave about the close relationship between teachers and students.

Of particular note are the various clubs and publications that give color to the Friends Seminary community. Under the leadership of Editor-in-chief Veronica Mittnaught and faculty advisor Donovan Hohn, the school paper, "The Oblivion," has expanded in readership and received rave reviews. Various charitable organizations such as "SAVE" and "Amnesty International" have strong followings in the school. The Daily dippin is the school's sports reporting paper.

Friends Seminary has an outstanding athletic program. JV Boys basketball is coached by Joe Cerulli, they are currently 1-1 in league play. Varsity is coached by the former Fieldston and Oberlin great David Lieber. The Varsity team won the states C division last year. JV basketball may have a future Division 1 star in Daniel Tay, he is being scouted by Oral Roberts, Wichita State, and Southern University.

[edit] Notable alumni

• Caleb Carr
• M. Scott Peck
• Amanda Peet
• Liev Schreiber
• Kyra Sedgwick
• Julia Stiles
• Vera Wang
• Georgia Hubley
• Bart Freundlich
• Adam Yauch [1]
• William Robinson

[edit] External links

• The Friends Seminary Website