<p>I was recently admitted to Andover and would love to hear more about it from current students, as I didn't really see that much on my tour. </p>
<pre><code> How academic, outside of the classroom, do students tend to be? Will I be able to find people who, for fun, do things such as discussing foreign policy and reading books on ridiculously obscure topics?
Along those lines, will there people for a pop-culture ignorant humanities nerd to hang out and play scrabble with?
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<p>Also, although Andover isn't officially a Harkness school, how discussion-centric are the classes? When discussions do occur, how eager are students to participate?</p>
<p>To be totally honest with you, as a current Andover student, I think that you would fit in better at Exeter. We certainly have people with varying interests and activities, but freshman outside of the classroom don’t tend to discuss anything along the lines of foreign policy. That being said, I only know about 80% of the freshman. I’m sure that there are certain students that enjoy more academic extra curricular endeavours.</p>
<p>I disagree with benevolent4them, in that my friends and I frequently discuss academic topics and politics. While some students don’t, there are definitely students who do.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there will be a place for you, there are so many students that there are many different groups, and I’m sure you can find a group that you fit well in.</p>
<p>At Andover, most history and english classes are conducted with the Harkness method, while math and science aren’t as discussion-oriented. In my opinion, this is actually better, as learning math and science through discussion doesn’t make much sense, while english and history have to be learned that way.</p>
<p>Hmm, I’m going to be honest with you in that the class 2012 kind of has a bad reputation. Despite this, I have plenty of friends in that class who are perfectly nice people, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.</p>
<p>It’s true that the class of 2012 has lost more than a few students along the way (mostly discipline issues, no?) but there are plenty of really good kids left—my daughter and her friends, at very least So don’t let the “bad rep” scare you off.</p>
<p>our student guide at andover said they don’t do harkness at andover. we saw oval tables in a few classrooms, but isn’t “harkness” more than just a seating arrangement - i.e. more a matter of what you do with the seating arrangement?</p>
<p>what kinds of “bad kids” are you talking about in the class of 2012?</p>
<p>if there was a disproportionate share of bad kids in the class of 2012, was there a lesson there for admissions people to learn from and use in subsequent admissions?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about the “bad rep” associated with the class you might be entering. We heard the same thing about the class of '09 when my daughter was entering as a new upper. Apparently they’d lost a number of kids to disciplinary issues. We don’t know about those kids, but the class that was still around for upper and senior years was exemplary - easily accepting 20 or so new members into their midst, putting on amazing performances in the arts and athletics, providing a challenging academic environment, setting new records for student participation in class giving, generating college admissions stats unmatched by their competitors, etc. If there were problems to an unusual degree, and I’m not convinced there were, PA seems able to identify and address them to ensure that the overall experience of the class is tremendously positive.</p>
<p>Well we don’t technically call our classes Harkness, but some are conducted just like Exeter’s.
Well I don’t really know that much about it, but a lot of kids in the class of 2012 have been kicked out. And I hope that admissions has learned from this. And Padre is completely right, don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>padre13 and andovergirl, thanks for the response. i’m really not too worried. in fact, one of the things that has stood out to me is that andover seems much more open about everything, including its own “warts,” than many of its peer schools. whereas at many of its peer schools, i sense various degrees of “cover up” of “unpleasant” things, andover (and st. paul’s) seems to be very, very open. i like that a lot. hiding information seems so inconsistent with the kind of open academic inquiry that i want to see featured in my kid’s school.</p>
So don’t let the “bad rep” scare you off.</p>