Carlos Jones

“You do a lot of self-reflection here. ... That leads you to really find yourself.”
Carlos Jones’ Exeter experience has gone exactly as he planned and beyond his wildest dreams at the same time.
While the senior day student from Salisbury, Massachusetts, dove into the science and math classes that so intrigued him as an applicant in middle school, he also discovered a passion for photography he never knew he had. And as he pursued his childhood pastimes of baseball and hockey suiting up for Big Red, he found that talking about sports on his own weekly WPEA radio show was equally rewarding.
He has grown, opening himself to opportunities and loving where they took him.
“I feel like what I thought I knew to be true about myself going in here was a lot different than what I would think it to be now,” he said.
In between Monday morning classes during his last term at the Academy, Jones talked about his path to Exeter and the discoveries he has made here.
“If there's one thing I could say about Exeter, it's yes, the academics are great, yes, you work hard, you learn how to push yourself academically,” he said. “But for me, it's definitely finding yourself and finding what interests you.”
‘Wow, we can do this’
Jones’ knowledge of Exeter as a youngster began and ended with its ice rinks, where he played occasional hockey games. Then he began searching for private school options during eighth grade.
“The whole Harkness idea was something completely new to me. I was like, ‘Wow, that sounds pretty cool,’” he recalled. “The diversity, too. I grew up in a community where it was mostly white folks, and just coming here and being able to hear all different perspectives from people all around the world is something super fascinating to me.”
Still, Jones knows thousands of worthy applicants fail to gain admission to PEA each year. His expectations were modest on the eve of March 10, 2017.
“My mom came into my room, woke me up, and said ‘You got into Exeter,’” he remembers. “And I was like, ‘There's no way.’"
“Then it was later in the day, we [found] out we got the financial aid package. Then it's like, ‘Wow, we can do this.’”