At the suggestion of @skieurope I’m starting this thread.
IYO, name the top 3 rigorous academic boarding schools in order of rigor and brief descriptions of why. This thread is not intended to discuss the social scene, recent rank, sports, etc. Just academic rigor and the support that goes with it. NOTE: We may be coming from a slightly different place than some. Our DS is very mathy/STEM-y, and over the past admission cycle we asked many a question about advanced class availability and the like from anyone and everyone: admissions, current STEM kids, alumni, etc. Apologies in advance if anyone finds this thread offensive. I promise it is not my intent… I’m just curious about this amazing forum’s opinions.
I’ll start:
Exeter- from knowing a dozen or so families/students there, they really seem to pile on the work, pressure, and expectation. It seems to be ‘sink or swim’, even when kids reach out for help. It’s scary (to me, anyway).
Andover- same thing… missing social events to study, sink or swim, hard to get support, and a true college atmosphere (according to families we know).
A toss up: Choate Lawrenceville Groton Milton- Cannot justify this, just have a feeling after studying the course catalogs, talking to families both past and present, as well as interviewing at these schools.
I think day schools may be less stressful. Do you really need a BS? We need to think out of the box on this.
We’ve had a positive experience at a day school where the kid comes home in the evening and has time to decompress without getting caught up in how hard the peers are working. Maybe it’s just busy work. It varies by kid. I’ve had my academically strong kid tell me that the weekly work load at home is 10 hours at his day school in 11th and 12th. Clearly this won’t be the case if he were at a BS. He watched TV with us, listened to music and went to bed at 10.30.
I think you have to define what rigor means first. To me it is volume of work + level of work needed to attain an A + expectations for engagement in the community (mandated after school activity). The sink or swim aspect is separate for me.
Hands down number one is Groton. Exeter may be rigorous but it simply does not match groton for the grind. Number two would be Exeter/Deerfield. Number three Andover/Choate.
Milton doesn’t even factor into this list. It’s a fine school but it is not on the same level of academic intensity. It also has a broader mix of kids in terms of academic ability which helps to keep the rigor in check (something I wish I had thought of before my kids went to boarding school).
Regarding Exeter, the school has been referred to as a “prison” reflecting the high levels of stress and extraordinary amount of required study time but “prison” may also be a reference to some of the institutionalized looking high rise dorms ( Wheelwright, Merrill, Langdell, Soule, Hoyt)
Does rigor mean level of course offered and teacher’s expectations, or student’s’ experience and feelings? I think they are different.
You can be in a school without a lot of high level courses and still feel pressured and exhausted. You can also be in a school with all kinds of fancy offerings and still have a relatively easy time.
In the same school, you can have kids spending 5 hours a day on homework while some others spending 3 on the same homework and get the same results.
Many times it’s expectations vs reality. It’s how efficient a kid can be. Or something else that varies by person. Not about the school or its offerings.
I’m surprised that you talked to a dozen Exeter families and all said life is hard and there is little help. I’m sure there are families with different opinions.
Boarding school is as hard as you make it for yourself. There is a floor that may vary, but no matter what school you’re at, the ceiling is pretty much endless.
I only have experience with one, so I can’t comment on any others. Choate was rigorous—in the best way. It stretched our son to his limits and he ate it up.
This is true of any school. What I am curious about is whether the BS structure itself just the fact that kids live in close proximity with each other, create any extra stress as they tend to compare themselves with each other more often?
I won’t be helpful in offering a rank as I only have direct experience with 2 schools. What’s the definition of rigor…Is it what is required to survive, or is it what is required to excel? I assume the OP means the latter, but it is a question worth asking.
I would like to echo the sentiments shared by @confusedaboutFA. Many BS, including some that most folks would not rank in their top 3 (or top 10 for that matter) absolutely have the course offerings and the teachers to challenge any student. I know my D’s school does. I’ve sat in on some classes with impressive teachers and even more impressive students. No wall flowers or wilting violets in there.
Our son found the academics at Choate to be quite challenging but never once did he not have the support he needed to succeed there. Help was always available in the form of one-on-one time with teachers and advisors, group study sessions, peer tutoring, access to every kind of health care, etc.
I really hate the term “sink or swim” as I don’t think any of the boarding schools fit how people here are defining that phrase. I read that many lump Choate in that dichotomy, but the school was very hands-on freshman year, teaching students what type of help was available, how to get that help, and to understand that seeking help was a measure of strength, not weakness. Self-advocacy developed organically over time as students learned through example how to flex their independence muscles. Choate did not expect teenagers to arrive on campus fully formed. Instead, it taught them early how to participate in the Choate community both in and and out of the classroom and what the expectations were for using the self-advocacy skills they would eventually acquire. Basically, the school gave them the tools to swim so they wouldn’t sink. It was never an either/or proposition.
It is true that different schools have different expectations and use various methods to ensure their student are successful in their programs, but they self-select upfront for the types of students they believe will thrive in their communities. I think M10 results reveal this curating and, most of the time, they get this right. Boarding schools carefully select for their cultures/methods and some applicants who seem to be a perfect match for a school on paper may not align in other ways with the fit the school is looking for because, yes, “fit” goes both ways.
Again, I only have experience with one school, and I have a child who was probably ready for any type of rigor and independence at a young age. He chose one of the hardest ways to get through college, too. That’s just who he is—afraid of nothing, ready for anything. I think he and his BS made the right match.
Agree Exeter is considered rigorous. This school sent some of their students to the highest level competitions in math. That’s a solid indicator of their STEM capacity.
Andover is Exeter’s rivalry so it must be nearly the same level of rigor. I know students who graduated from Andover and later went to T5 universities, they considered T5 workload to be nothing compared to Andover.
Groton course catalog shows their courses can be as rigorous as needed.
These are just my opinions. There is no real measurement on how “rigorous” a school is.
My child is a freshman (prep) at Exeter. It is extremely rigorous and the teacher’s expectations are very high. They have over 450 courses offered so you can find any class at the level you need.
He is also a two sport varsity athlete as a freshman and plays a JV sport as well.
He has enough time to compete at the highest levels (in one sport he is at the national team level) and get very good grades. He finds that there is a lot of support if you seek it out but they expect you to come knowing how to self advocate and ask for help. He absolutely loves the school and finds his peers to be very helpful. He averages 3-4 hours of homework a night. He definitely skips social functions on Friday nights to study but goes out with friends on Saturday nights. He came in with very strong time management skills because of his involvement in sports. He has had to miss quite a few days of schools for national competitions in his sport and the school has been very supportive.
He has very close friends at Andover and Choate and Exeter seems to be more rigorous than those two schools from what he tells me. However, Exeter seems to have more support systems in place than Andover but less than Choate.
The math and language classes seem to be particularly difficult and my son is a very strong math student.
I agree with confusedaboutFA’s statement. Boarding school can be as hard as you make it for yourself. And it is a “lazy” student who counts on their teacher to make it challenging for them.
Plus the schools teach much more than meets the eye. The academics are key of course, but so much of adolescent development happens outside of the classroom. Besides I suspect that my definition of rigorous might be different than some. I think of rigorous courses as those which broaden the mind and push students to look beyond easy and obvious answers. A course is challenging not necessarily because it requires grinding or endless hours of homework, but because the syllabus demands original thought and creative problem-solving.
A rigorous school is one that has the following qualities in my mind:
teaches kids to stretch themselves
pushes its students to think differently and try out new ideas
encourages kids to take risks and experiment fearlessly (even when those experiments may result in imperfect results)
nurtures students’ listening skills
pushes kids to let go of perfectionism
discourages grade-grubbing, competitiveness, and arrogance
fosters resilience in the face of adversity as well as empathy and compassion
helps kids get comfortable with the fact that some questions don’t have right or wrong answers.
teaches kids how to collaborate successfully and genuinely (rather than allowing one kid to shoulder the burden of the work in order to get).
finds a way to meet the needs of all of their students (including those who have been well-prepared/groomed by their middle schools and those who come from weak middle schools)
I know that the point of this thread is to rank schools and I don’t really know what to do with that exercise. But I know most of the schools that have been mentioned here quite well. They are great schools, but I don’t consider any of them to be much more or much less rigorous than the others. Come on. Their cultures may be different, but they all do essentially the same thing.
They all preselect their student bodies by choosing very bright and (mostly) well-prepared kids after those children undergo a pretty intense admissions process that is designed to pick the students that are the best fit for each particular school culture. Then the schools put those kids in excellent facilities and in classrooms with tiny teacher:student ratios. The schools spend 60K+ per year educating each child while reserving the right to throw out any kid who is a discipline problem. Of course most of their students can succeed in extremely “rigorous” classes and most of their graduates reach very high levels of achievement. Their “rigor” is not remarkable. It would be remarkable if their graduates didn’t succeed with that set up.
I’d say the HADES schools…they’re referred to by that because ii’s their overall reputations with academic rigor being a part of that. I’d add Choate, Groton and Lawrenceville to the mix. But it’s really hard to compare schools unless you’ve had children attend several of these schools. I’ve never heard Milton included in this mix but that’s not to say it’s not a great school.
The original common acronym was GLADCHEMMS. HADES was invented by a teenager here years ago that unfortunately stuck but is not recognized officially anywhere.
We try to avoid all of those meaningless acronyms here and have had several threads, like this one and this one, to discourage their use.
Certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone or any school or feed into something. And it’s impossible to arbitrarily and accurately “rank” schools even if you’re niche schools because everyone is looking for something unique with finding the best fit. That said a lot of the schools referred to are historically known for academic rigor which is a factor the OP is considering.