@HMom16 maybe its a boy/girl thing? He probably doesn’t want to hangout with the advisors like they do in some of the girls dorms.
My poor DD advisors/houseparents were all over her! So much so we had to step in and write a letter to the school- I guess it depends on the house. Certain SPS houses are notorious for having stricter house parents- others are way more lenient.
I agree with doschicos though- SPS has many eyes on them…
My kids had at least 6 advisors between them and they do differ in style and engagement. Some are, unfortunately IMO, more laid back than others especially when a kid seems to be doing well and doesn’t seem receptive to dialogue. Some are very engaged. It’s like bosses. They all vary. I wouldn’t judge all of SPS’ advising system by what you’ve experienced thus far.
“Certain SPS houses are notorious for having stricter house parents- others are way more lenient.”
This is very true. The kids tend to know and game where they want to be. Parents tend to like the hands on advisers and many kids like the hands off. 
I would encourage your son to talk to his adviser if he is missing advisee dinners due to a sports commitment. It could and should be pushed back a little to allow all to be there.
Like how some schools have Lowers assigned to Uppers’ - some are paired up with Uppers in dorms. The girls schools have “big sister-little sister” programs. Please describe how this is working at your school.
@Golfgr8 SPS assigns each incoming student a “big sister” or “big brother” in their house. It is usually a senior but can be a junior as well due to numbers. It’s another resource for a student to go to in addition to the prefects in their house.
@Golfgr8 SPS also asigns new 4th & 5th formers “buddies” with a returning classmate-
Students apply during the summer to be a
“buddy” or whatever it’s called… my kid was picked this year- SPS gave her a name, and DD was able to email with her student the week before school started, helped her on move in day, answered questions, they have meal “dates”
( and some of the other new students)… it’s worked out well
Thanks @doschicos and @copperboom ! This is really good information and is something we are looking for in a school.
At St. George’s, my son has a “big brother” who is in his dorm & is also from where we live. He has been really helpful and a great resource. The advisor program seems particularly strong, with meetings once a week with the whole group plus a separate one-on-one meeting, dinners at least every two weeks at the advisor’s house on campus (with her family & dogs) and lots of email contact home in the form of updates & photos etc. As a new 10th grader, my son still doesn’t quite know his way around administratively, and his advisor has been VERY helpful in that area. I definitely feel that the St. George’s advisory system is doing a great job of regular meetings, informal checking in, and communication home.
At Deerfield each advisor has between 8 and 10 students and they have lunch together once per week among other connection points. Most students gravitate to an advisor in the area of potential interest for college. The advisor connects with each student’s teachers as well as dorm parents. Term ending comments come from teachers as well as the advisor. Dorm life wise… feeds with the families are huge like at most schools.
Incoming students, regardless of grade, are paired with an existing student to help with acclimating to BS life. Parents are also paired with veteran parents and help with all aspects of the transition. It’s a great pay it forward activity.
I can’t remember which thread we were using to talk about dress code. I want to give a tip, but I know as fast as I write there will be some parent naysayer.
When I think of old school boarding school, I think of tradition and navy blazers with insignia pocket patches. This is an English boarding school tradition.
In any case, I was so proud my girls would be attending Choate, I bought the patches in the campus store and a couple navy blazers. You can get good sales from Brooks Brothers online, and I think I even bought a couple “throw away” ones at Forever 21, in case they ever got lost or left behind.
In any case, I would have the kids wear them on school break in Los Angeles or for dress-up holidays, more to take pictures than anything else. I took pictures in front of the Kennedy portrait in Admissions. This is a tradition that’s gone by the wayside maybe in the advent of trying to be more inclusive and less formal, but a wonderful tradition that’s gone by the wayside nonetheless.
Choate started having Commencement a couple years ago before all the students left campus, instead of waiting til the underclassmen left campus. The first year, there was no dress code and the kids who attended really looked rag tag. Second year (this year), I noticed all the male underclassmen attending graduation had navy blazers (no insignia), and the girls were all ‘Sunday best.’ They really looked nice, just what the occasion called for.
Any way, I’m all for bringing back the insignia blazers just for fun. If students can’t afford a navy blazer, I’m sure there are funds at the school that would allow each student to have one, just like there is for athletic gear and team spirit wear.
Of course check with your school first if you need to. I think St. George’s ??? may only allow seniors (sixth formers) to purchase a black blazer and sew the insignia on. (I think they wear them for graduation??). Girls there wear white dresses with red ribbon sashes (beautiful!).
In any case, I’m making a pitch or just a suggestion to bring back the blazer. My kids wore them for fun, and I really liked how they looked in this time-honored tradition!!! I wasn’t a seamstress, so I bought the patches online or from the campus store on site and had our local cleaner sew them on for me. Don’t miss out! Gotta have a little fun! At least one (this) parent says so.
Based on two years of recent experience, we would give Phillips Academy Andover D or F in the areas of dorm supervision and their “Team approach,” to student Advising a failure in our case.
FWIW with 323 graduating, here are the schools matriculating three or more students for PA ‘17. Source: their CC office.
Tufts 14,
UChicago 13
Cornell 10
Harvard 10
UVA 10
NYU 9
UPenn 9
Columbia 8
Princeton 8
UC Berkeley 8
Barnard 7
MIT 7
Yale 7
BC 6
Brown 6
Amherst 5
BC 5
Northeastern 5
UMichigan 5
Williams 5
Duke 4
McGill 4
Stanford 4
USC 4
Dartmouth 3
JHU 3
George Washington 3
St Andrews 3
Washington U St Louis 3
Wesleyan 3
They reported a total of 305 in the list, so 18 are unknown.
What I don’t have is the number of applicants or acceptances to these schools.
^ Not a very impressive list at all imo, considering the reputation of Andover, its selectivity, and the numbers of “hooked” students there.
For a much more impressive list, take a look at a superb public magnet high school like Thomas Jefferson High School (VA), which of course can only take students from a few adjoining counties and which is unlikely to have the numbers of athletic, minority and legacy/development preference kids, since like many magnet schools it only selects for intelligence. Notably, TJHS provides the admit/deny numbers for each college, but the TJHS profile does not contain a true “matriculation” list. Also, keep in mind that TJHS has about 430 students as opposed to Andover’s 323.
https://fcps.tjhsst.edu/coursemgmt/media/300/resource/TJ%20Profile%202016-17%20online.pdf
Really? I consider it an impressive list for Andover. Comparing accepted to matriculated is an unfair and uninformative comparison.
IMHO, Andover’s and the top 5 - 10 so called GLADCHEMMS matriculation lists are getting less and less impressive, and in my own recent experience URMs, recruited athletes and other hooked applicants are the only ones getting into HYPSM.
Nor will you for most schools.
Yes, I recall you having mentioned it once or twice. 
Hopefully this will not devolve into another debate on which schools are “impressive.”
The plural of anecdote is not data, but may I remind everyone that I was not hooked.
That statement doesn’t hold true from my observations. However, even if it did, I don’t limit my definition of impressive to the five schools making up HYPSM.
I don’t really think that those matriculation numbers are “less impressive”. Maybe kids & their families are interested in a broader range of schools - not just the usual suspects.
I’m sure @skieurope you’re one in a million!
“broader range of schools” is code for lower on the USNWR ranking list, and “match” versus “reach” schools.
So, everything not HYSPM is now a match? That’s a high, unrealistic threshold to set.
@SatchelSF thanks for sharing the TJHS stats–they are certainly impressive. A few observations and thoughts:
-
I agree with @doschicos that comparing the college matriculation data between Andover and TJHS is difficult with the information provided. Insofar as matriculation matters to a family (see #3 below), I think it’s notable that nearly 30% (91 of 305 or 323 depending on how you want to look at it) of Andover’s class matriculated to an Ivy or schools with single-digit admittance rates (Stanford, MIT, UChicago and CalTech). ETA: The schools where the other 70% of the kids matriculated are not what I would call shabby and are rather selective themselves in terms of admittance rates, if that sort of thing really matters a lot to you.
-
Regarding hooked athletes, I think there is a BIG difference between being hooked at a boarding school and being hooked for college recruitment. Generally speaking, a selective boarding school is not where you go when you have high potential to be recruited to a top college program. I haven’t found any data about this, but I suspect that not more than a handful or two of the 91 Andover students referenced above were recruited athletes.
-
I think it’s short-sighted to call schools like Andover unimpressive on the basis of things like matriculation data alone. To be sure, there are gobs and gobs of smart and talented kids that do not attend independent schools, let alone highly-selective boarding schools. As an example, my kid could have attended a local public high school that is regularly ranked top 10 or top 20 nationally (depending on which ranking you look at), and which last year had 9% NMF as compared to Andover’s 6%. But for our family there was a lot more that the Andover experience had to offer than the public school despite the public school’s impressive statistics. As has been stated so many times on this forum, college matriculation should not be the primary reason for a kid to go to a selective boarding school for most families. What is impressive for us about Andover (and other boarding schools like Exeter, Deerfield, Suffield, Peddie, NMH and Hotchkiss, just to name the few to which my kid applied), goes far beyond matriculation statistics. Folks considering boarding schools definitely should do their homework regarding things like class size, course offerings, community rules and traditions, extracurricular offerings, location, school size, demographics etc. to figure out which, if any, school offers a better overall experience than their local options for their kid, and how these schools compare with each other for their specific kid.
I wholeheartedly agree, @AppleNotFar. We are looking at the boarding school experience as a big part of the prize, not just the colleges they go to. We used to live on the east coast and associated professional success with going to one of the top colleges and universities. What we have found living out west is that a lot of the people who have done well out here just went to the local state school or small university. It was an eye-opener for us. They are looking for smart and scrappy out here, not Harvard and Yale etc. We still wouldn’t give up the rich experience we had going to schools out east and we would like for our daughter to have the same. But we have certainly learned that professional success, at least in some parts of the US, is not exactly tied to the classic top colleges/universities.