Portledge School in Locust Valley exhorts its students to “Explore, Create and Excel.” Senior Carley Tsiames has taken that motto very much to heart.
Tsiames has been recognized as an advanced placement scholar with honor by the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program for her successful performance on AP exams last spring. Only 20 percent of more than 2.1 million students worldwide who take AP exams perform at a high enough level to earn an AP Scholar award.
Tsiames qualified for her AP Scholar with Honor award by earning an average score of at least 3.25 on all her AP exams and scores of three or higher on four or more of these exams.
Advanced Placement courses provide motivated students with the opportunity to take rigorous college-level classes while still in high school to earn college credits, advanced placement, and to stand out in the college admissions process. Portledge Director of College Counseling Elisabeth Mooney describes Tsiames as, “one of the coolest kids on the planet – whip smart but very low key.”
Tsiames is striking in person; thoughtful and self-effacing, but clearly determined. This year she has chosen to take AP physics, AP calculus AB and AP English and may well earn a designation of AP Scholar with Distinction before she graduates from Portledge.
A combination of strengths in math, science and English, reflected by a recent commendation for achievement on her PSATs, makes Tsiames an exceptionally well-rounded student as she enters college next fall.
As if that weren’t enough, Tsiames is also a talented artist who honed her skill during summers at Snow Farm. She will graduate from Portledge as an art scholar in a specialized program offered to students who can manage the art requirement on top of a full course load. When asked what all this means for her college prospects, Tsiames manages to deflect the question in her understated way. She said would like to continue on to a liberal arts college on the East coast because she enjoys the close student-teacher relationships at Portledge.
