ICS' Scholarship Program Explained...

110 students were never so quiet in the ICS Gym as they were on May 12 th , for our annual Scholarship exam. ICS offers four full 4-year scholarships to rising 9 th graders from schools throughout Addis. The scholarships are totally need-blind and based on merit.

The selection process begins with applications from the top students from public and private middle schools around the city. Applicants then take a three-hour exam in reading, writing and mathematics. Teachers work hard to mark all those papers quickly, and the top eight or ten applicants will be invited for interviews with ICS faculty the following weekend. The students' parents are also "interviewed" by current or former scholarship students' parents, to learn about the family and to give them more information about the school and what they might expect by accepting a scholarship. From the pool of interviewees, four students will be selected.

Unlike most "international" schools in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education currently forbids ICS from enrolling Ethiopian students who pay tuition, because we do not follow the Ethiopian national curriculum. The small numbers of Ethiopian students we do enroll are allowed by the Ministry because they have citizenship in other countries, because their parents are in upper management at the school or because they have been learning outside Ethiopia and cannot reenter the Ethiopian school system. ICS's scholarship program allows us to ensure an Ethiopian presence in our high school, with top academic students who add significantly to our classrooms, sports teams, community service clubs and other extracurricular programs. The "Scholarship Club" at ICS is famous for its high level of activity and service to the school and community.

Almost all of our scholarship students go on to win full scholarships at competitive universities in the USA. In recent years our scholarship students have been awarded 4-year scholarships to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Vassar, Davidson, Williams, Yale and Princeton.