[ESP Announcements] Important Changes to Splash and Spark

[Educational Studies Program]

Greetings from the Educational Studies Program!

Thank you for signing up at <esp.mit.edu>. You are receiving this email
because you wanted to learn more about the programs we run.

We’re announcing a substantial change to our short-term programs, Splash
and Spark.

*Starting in the academic year 2013-2014, Splash will be for students in
grades 9-12, and Spark will be for students in grades 7-8.*

We’re making this change for a number of reasons. The most central is sheer
size: Splash has been growing steadily, and it has outgrown the available
facilities at MIT and the resources of the Educational Studies Program. By
reducing the number of students who attend each program, we will be able to
continue running both programs at the quality they deserve.

Additionally, having a restricted grade range will allow us to focus an
entire weekend on our younger students. By making Spark exclusively for
seventh and eighth graders, we hope to increase the variety of available
classes that are targeted to that age group. We hope that with their own
program, middle school students will find more options available to them,
including a wider range of subject topics and levels of difficulty.

We have made this decision after numerous discussions and much careful
deliberation because we truly believe it will enable us to serve our
students best. We will not make any exceptions to this policy, and we
appreciate your understanding in this matter.

For those of you who will be in high school, Splash will be the weekend
before Thanksgiving, November 23-24, and registration will open in
mid-October. And for those of you who are in middle school, Spark will be
the weekend of March 15-16, and registration will open in mid-February.

As always, if you have any questions about our programs, feel free to
contact us at <esp at mit.edu>. We look forward to seeing you at Splash or
Spark.

Sincerely,
The MIT Educational Studies Program
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