@Calliemomofgirls awwww, what a lovely heartfelt reply.
I too, just want my kid to live in an environment where she can discover herself and her passions, be celebrated for her achievements and allowed to make mistakes, continue to enjoy the thrill of learning, thrive, and find her tribe.
I have absolutely no doubt that she will be challenged at every school where she has applied. Even at the schools on her list with the highest admission rates. She won’t be the smartest kid in the room any more. Maybe that’s why I’m struggling with this question, @Happytimes2001 because I don’t expect my kid to be at the top of the class.
When daughter zoomed with students, she asked every one how much homework per night and what time they typically went to bed. I don’t think that any of them answered more than 3 hours of homework, at least not for Freshmen. I’ll go back and peek at her notes. She did ask at least 3 Andover students. So maybe they’re not being honest, or perhaps they’re just older (they were mostly Jr and Sr) and realize how easy they had it as freshman and don’t remember that it was more than 3 hours.
I’ve also realized that my experience of being graded on the bell curve is probably influencing my thinking about where my child fits within the class. In bell curve grading where your peers land academically and how much studying they’re doing absolutely impacts your own grade. So after the insights from the wonderful posters here, I think that I’m not going to let the academic competition piece figure into my school preference. I’m going to sit back and wait for M10 and then see what hand we are dealt and move from there.
Thank you everyone for your posts. I’m in awe of the time and energy posters are willing to put into this board in order to help parents like me.
I LOVE the idea of being able to live stream into a classroom, although I know that those kids and profs will be on their best behavior so I wonder how realistic it is. If I get to talk to any AOs, I’ll ask about it.
Dang @Calliemomofgirls. I wish I could articulate my thoughts as well as you do. But, I don’t have to, because you seem to do it for me! That was an amazing summation. I particularly like “a law of diminishing marginal utility” and where your child is expected to learn. I think this comment should be locked and put in the “before you post, read this” thread.
In any regard, you are such an asset to this forum.
I would consume at least a grain or two of salt with regard to any info, responses, etc. provided by currents students referred by coaches. They were not selected randomly.
Similarly, I would consume salt whilst zooming into any class to which you were invited. Those teachers/classes were not selected randomly.
They may provide an accurate, true picture of things. They may not. Or, they may not beyond those specific students or those specific teachers. I mean, do those things to the extent they’re made available to you. I’m just not so sure how heavily I’d weigh those things.
For better or worse, CMOG has it right when she says:
As we know, unfortunately this isn’t really done in general, even pre-covid (though at some schools pre-covid you could’ve easily found your way into the dining hall to eat and observe; we did this and were surprised that no one questioned our presence in the least).
Yes. Absolutely. But for us, with no current insiders at the school to talk to it seemed like a good place to start. The kids that daughter zoomed with have been through this exact process, they attend the school, and if she gets an offer would most likely be on the same sports team as her so they can speak to team culture and coaches. It gives us another few data points to add into the decision pot.
She definitely connected better with some students than others. Some were incredibly articulate, and some filled the conversation with “you know” “like” and generally meh responses. In only one case has it significantly changed how daughter views her application to the school (I don’t even know if daughter would accept an offer even if it was the only who offered on her list).
Worst case, she just got significantly better at talking about what she’s looking for and asking questions of strangers over zoom. She was vastly more prepared for the official interviews.
I’d be really really surprised if a Junior/Senior taking a strong course load had 3 hours of homework at any school. My kid’s pretty efficient and isn’t texting while doing homework. It takes far more than 3 hours ( not to mention weekends studying for tests and writing papers). Kiddo always goes to sleep pretty early (isn’t one to stay up til dawn) but is one to go to the library and utilize free blocks.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say they aren’t telling the truth but maybe the match of kids isn’t there.
Freshman it might be 3 hours. But I think that’s an underestimate. Really depends on the kid. If they are taking advanced courses and digging deep, I’d say 3-4. For upper grades it’s more 4-5. And for kids who are taking lots of AP’s can be 4-5 plus weekends. Will vary a lot by kid. Are you talking about kids who are doing well or kids who are doing great? And for most kids, Freshman year is a getting adjusted time so 3 might be correct. After they get their grades they might want to dig deeper or continue as is.
@skieurope
Yes excellent point to highlight – our 3 hour “limit” was for freshman year. (I don’t know anyone who doesn’t spend 3+ hours a night in junior year, for instance.)
That said, one “good” thing about covid has been my ability to see first hand what my DD2’s workload is and how she is approaching it. None of her screen time/game time etc is being included in the 4 hours she calls homework. And, I will say that it’s probably 4 hours a day during the week, and then 4-5 hours total over the weekend, so not 7 days a week. Maybe 20-25 hours a week, which is about twice what the local public high schoolers we know report for Freshman year. We were aiming for 15+/- hours for my DD3 this upcoming cycle in selecting schools.
That said, I absolutely am willing to believe that other kids might be better prepared academically to move along more quickly than my DD2. (But I feel very confident in believing my DD2 that none of her Andover peers are knocking out their homework routinely in a couple of hours a night. She was one of the few kids who had a roommate while on campus this fall so she knows very well what at least one other freshman was experiencing.). FWIW, DD2 ended up with very good grades first trimester. (But wasn’t gunning for top of the class status at all, and so she wasn’t “over-studying.”)
I also think there are kids who might enjoy that level of homework.
Finally, I will add that because of covid weird scheduling to accommodate for remote learning time zones, there are no study hours this year. Which means it might feel more overwhelming to fit the work into one’s day, when they aren’t plugged into a structure and the momentum of a peloton. This made even more challenging being virtual, where you have to fit in a lot of work while living in a family that still does family things like dinner around a table, or family movie night, or whatever, surrounded by siblings who finished their homework easily before dinner. So those hours feel extra taxing perhaps this year.
I suppose it’s different over Zoom (what isn’t) but at least at the college level the athletes seem to be surprisingly honest about the good, bad and ugly about their programs to prospects. HS is probably not quite the same, but for college they know they will be spending a lot of time together. If they don’t fit in, it’s not in anyone’s interest that they come to that school.
@Happytimes2001 Agree with you here 100%. 3-4 at least for the higher-homeworked schools for freshman year and then more for upperclassman. And I do not think it means they are dawdling. I think it’s just a lot of homework. And while some kids will do it faster, I think it’s naive to assume that our kid will be the one brilliant one who can knock it out significantly more quickly than the others. And if I recall correctly, @Happytimes2001 , you have kiddos who were the didn’t study one bit and got 99% on SSAT types. (Which I mean to say: very naturally inclined to be quick-study, great test-taker types who are probably faster than my kids at homework.)
I can’t remember where exactly I read it, but there have been surveys on homework hours done by Andover and it showed an average of (IIRC) 4.5 hours a night, which was (and this part I do remember) about 40 minutes more per night on average over peer schools. So this isn’t in anyone’s imagination. This is real time that is really required by most kids at a number of schools. Not a bad thing necessarily, but it’s something to consider in the pro/con list. (Again, my DD2 put this in the “pro” list; my DD3 put this in the “con” list.)
(Spoiler: my DD2 may have since changed her tune a little!)
Yes, I think it depends on the kids and the courses taken. My kids have gone for the most rigorous classes possible. This suits them. They are both really dedicated ( not my DNA). I’m the good test taker. LOL. But a lot of time is spent on writing assignments and projects. One kid spends a lot of time on Latin and the other spends a lot of time creating colorful notebooks for Bio. They end up with great grades but not every grade is a good one. There are bumps and lessons learned.
The teachers of high level courses also stretch kids who are doing very well. A history teacher might get the kid to join debate or write a paper for a magazine or help tutor someone and a science teacher might have the kid work on a project with other like minded kids. So the work does add up. Usually this work is outside of classwork but kids build interests which seem to help them discover what they want to study in college.
There are some kids who stay up until 3 AM(or later) to stay in the most rigorous classes. These kids seem to be hyper-focused on GPA and often want to compare notes grades (which my kids won’t do). I can’t say I would support too much studying for my own kids. We’re paying to send them to BS’s so they can have fun and learn. Balance was key in all our decisions. Oldest actually chose current BS over another more famous name. This was done intentionally in order to have time to pursue an interest.
I think I saw a rubric of homework from PA/PEA once and it was a big number. I don’t know how that compares to other schools but I’d imagine it’s about the same. All of these schools have advanced/AP classes and all have overachieving kids so they need to do a lot of work.
Just chiming in to echo the study estimates. Everything y’all are saying about variation by grade/individual/workload/teacher is the same at kiddo’s school.
Kiddo is calibrated to do just enough to get the grade he wants - definitely not an over-studier. He had 2-ish hours per night as a freshman and sophomore, largely because math came easy to him and he should have spent more time on writing than he did. He has friends who did things more thoroughly, and they studied upwards of 4-5 hours.
As a junior he cares more about writing, and math requires more proofs and therefore more time. He is taking all advanced courses, and has 4-5 hours of work per night plus work on weekends. His math teacher doesn’t let him get away with cutting corners. His mis-judging math has been the biggest challenge time-management wise. There is a big difference between 4 hours and five hours of homework. This has been the first year he has had to regularly decide what homework doesn’t get finished on a given night.
Junior year is notoriously brutal, and it has been for kiddo.
I talked to some of his teachers about homework load in the fall when he was remote learning. They professed to being very mindful of the stress the kids were under and adjusted accordingly, but it still seemed pretty rough going.
So would it be a thing to actually ask AO at each school how much homework on average they plan on students having by grade?
Or would they just tell me ‘it depends’ because it varies on the kid, honors classes, exam time etc?
My 2 cents: there are no easy classes at these schools and there isn’t an easier track. (Sure, some classes are harder than others though). But often there isn’t an appreciable difference between "regular " classes and AP/honors. E.g. 11th grade English at Hotchkiss, which all students are required to take is also AP English literature (not officially designated now, since Hotchkiss has stopped offering APs).
Just to chime in for those who have Juniors or below-- DS used very little homework time as a freshman and spent most of his study hours doing other things. Sophomore year he took the max number of classes available and homework took a little bit more time. Junior year, the advanced classes filled his schedule and he really started having to use his free period and study hours to the maximum to maintain his grades and stay afloat.
Senior year, there were so many classes he wanted to take (advanced, special interest classes) that he got special permission from the Academics Dean to fill his schedule. No free block at all - Seven advanced courses. I can tell you he is more than using his study hours to keep up with the work and at times has dropped a few of his juggled balls. Meanwhile, his other senior friends took the minimum they needed to and are having fun during ample free time.
So, I think some of it depends on the choices made by the student for which classes they are taking and how many. DS has plenty of classmates that are taking the minimum required and have plenty of free time. He has others that must have the highest grade in the class and they stay up all night, no matter what the course load.
I think freshman year should be what one looks at to really gauge the academic environment/expectation, because after that it really is up to the student and how they craft their schedules.
Well it does depend. My oldest spent less time In 9th grade. There was a transition and lots going on outside of school. By Jan, my kid realized it was going to take a ceratin amount of work to get top grades. Like another poster above, little time was spent on math ( an easy subject) and more was spent on other subjects.
My kids have found that the amount of work required to get a solid grade is 2-3 hours a night. But to be in the top tier of students in advanced/honors/AP classes takes a lot more.
I don’t think an AO could tell you. It depends on your kid, their focus, the grades they are comfortable getting and their facility in each subject. Your kid might have a subject or two where very little work is required. But the norm is most kids are working in every class.
There are also some teachers who are very difficult. Can be in any subject. These teachers require more than a normal amount of work. Often it’s luck/random. One group of kids gets one teacher and the other group gets the difficult teacher. You can’t switch back and forth. My oldest got a difficult science teacher but got the easier Calc teacher. And subject doesn’t always matter. Chinese might be easier than photography.
I guess I would suggest that not all schools offer that kind of freshman year option that @buuzn03 kid had, and for DD3, I wanted that kind of option. (Which meant most of the schools from DD2’s list last year were not great options for DD3 when she created her list this year.)
In other words: a freshman year like that IS possible at some fantastic, rigorous schools, and that fact surprised (and delighted) me this year.
It may be school dependent, but at ours there absolutely is a difference. The top level classes are full of super smart overachievers so they move very fast and the level of work expected is extremely high. Our kid somehow managed to test into one of these classes. It was struggle from the get go, in spite of ton of work, going to all office hours and a ton of studying he could never get above B level. And it was sucking up way too much of his time. When suggestion was made by the teacher to move down a level (which is still accelerated class just not the top level) he was not happy to hear it but reluctantly did it. What a difference! He managed to get As on pretty much every test with just doing homework, no need to chase office hours or do hours of review for every test. The fact that he was near the top of class curve instead of the bottom made huge difference to the amount of work required to succeed. I know several friends had the same experience. So the correct class placement is a big factor here. But even without that, some classes are known to be killer in terms of work required, there are several STEM classes that are famous for it. True college level work. This is not the case for the regular or even the accelerated classes, which are advanced high school level. And there is level of difficulty, but also how time consuming the class is, huge variation among electives in terms of how much out of class time you have to spend to complete projects, practice etc.
OP asked if the “academic levels” are similar at Andover and Deerfield.
Both are outstanding schools with respect to academics.
An important differentiating factor to consider between or among various prep schools is the school culture.
Andover has a reputation for having a fairly intense academic atmosphere with a substantial workload while Deerfield is well known for a culture focused on both sports and academics.
How will your child respond to a highly competitive academic atmosphere ?
The acronym schools all offer superior academic environments, but some school cultures are more competitive than others.
“It won’t crush her soul when she is not the smartest kid in the room.”
To me, this suggests a lack of familiarity with top dozen or so prep boarding schools. Some students excel in certain areas while just being a typical A student in other areas. There is no one student who is the smartest kid in every room, the class, the grade, or the school as might be found in other high schools.
I find the most impressive results of attending an elite prep boarding school are revealed in the students’ communication skills and in their problem solving skills.
To repeat from my earlier post in this thread: The primary difference between or among elite prep boarding schools is the school culture.
Academically, however, the elite prep boarding schools are similar in the respect that all students will be challenged.
