Advantages

• Our Middle School Program, beginning in grade 5, offers a stepping stone into a high school program widely recognized as one of the best in the world. In these critical years, students lay the foundations for creativity, critical thinking, and proactive problem solving.
• Our expectations of mastery and excellence span across all disciplines. To accomplish this, we provide a purposefully diverse curriculum. For example, in grades 6–8, students take biology, chemistry, and physics three times a week simultaneously. Logic is required in grade 7 and economics in grade 8, and by grade 8 students will either take Algebra II or higher. Foreign language options expand in middle school as well: students will take Latin in grade 6, but can choose between Latin, Mandarin, French, or Spanish in grades 7–8.
• While AP courses are typically reserved for top performers at other schools, we require 6 AP exams and 7 AP courses across disciplines; students will take an average of 12.3 exams in their tenure. These externally-validated courses are critical in evaluating and commending student performance on the national and international scale.
• Our high school curriculum drives students to become participants in their education and to pursue deeper understanding through opportunities unique to BASIS Curriculum Schools, such as our capstone courses and the Senior Project, which allow students to apply their culmination of content knowledge into a professional or research setting.

Our Subject Expert Teachers are experts in their chosen field (we currently have 44 teachers with advanced degrees on campus teaching different classes), and they use this real-life expertise to inspire students to embrace challenges and understand the application of their learned concepts. We provide our teachers the flexibility to give instruction and assess learning in the ways that fit their passions and their students’ needs. This allows them to foster creativity and support within their classroom.

Senior year is a unique bridge year focused on college readiness and preparation for learning beyond high school. Students are typically done with formal classes and concentrate on specialized capstone courses and the Senior Project, an independent research project emphasizing exploration, practice, and application. Our students also take daily college counseling courses from our in-house college counselors who provide unparalleled direction, advice, and support in college applications, as well as finding the best fit for each student.

We provide many avenues for students to build fundamental life skills like personal accountability, organization, and time management. Teachers hold weekly student hours where students can proactively engage with their coursework and ask questions, we provide extensive sports and clubs offerings to help students explore their interests, and we offer a number of international trips each year to give students global experiences. Our students graduate as well-rounded individuals.

BASIS Independent Silicon Valley students are regularly admitted into some of the most competitive and highly ranked colleges and universities in the world. With students who are outscoring schools across the globe in math, reading, and science according to the OECD Test for Schools, as well as top SAT scores and National AP Scholars results, colleges take notice. We know, though, that college admissions is not just about test scores. We help students learn how to be good citizens and remain true to themselves.