<p>hmmm …
i going into 10th grade actually… so a bit worried about the matriculation at each school…</p>
<p>i really want to go to hotchkiss (esp when one of my friends is there ), but my parents are not really satisfied with hotchkiss’s matrix. (its slightly weaker than PA and L’ville)</p>
<p>L’ville doesnt offer any AP courses? does that mean the students at L’ville dont take the AP exams at all…? ( sry just a bit confused…)</p>
<p>According to many student reviews… andover actually lowers their chances to a good college… by a lot. and its academics could be really really intense…</p>
<p>By the way, does anyone know why Lawrenceville has such a high matrix when its academics arent as challenging as … lets say PA and Hotchkiss…?</p>
<p>Dapple, by “more courses per student”, I mean that PA and THS have, as I recall, more courses available to its students than L’ville on a per capita basis. In this regard, both PA and THS offer one course per 2.4 students. As best I can remember, L’ville offered courses at a ratio greater that 1 course for each 2.4 student so that there are less courses per student at L’ville than at PA or THS. (Don’t worry about “picking apart” my post. If I didn’t make myself clear on a point, I need to do a better job explaining that point.)</p>
<p>Also, if L’ville offers independent studies in German, it needs to do a better job in advising its applicants of such fact. When my son interviewed at L’ville, he asked about its German program, and the interviewer said L’ville didn’t offer German. Also, the interviewer didn’t volunteer that the school would be willing to construct a three year program for my son at no additional cost.</p>
<p>I’m sorry the school didn’t say that. If they didn’t tell you, it’s possible that I’m mixing Lawrenceville up with another school! </p>
<p>In the Lawrenceville viewbook, it said “If scheduling permits, students who have exhausted the academic offerings of a given Lawrenceville department can take courses at Princeton at Lawrenceville’s expense.” I’m hypothesizing that maybe your son could’ve taken German at Princeton University, and maybe this is a reason why so many L’ville kids go to Princeton.</p>
<p>Pressurized, I think that if you’re a great, talented person, colleges will accept you no matter what boarding school you came from. L’ville does have great matriculation (Princeton, Columbia, & UPenn = top 3) but going to a certain school doesn’t come close to guaranteeing you an Ivy college. </p>
<p>And no offense, but I’d say you need a better reason than that to choose Hotchkiss… :P</p>
<p>L’ville doesn’t offer AP courses, that’s all I know…
And to me that’s a good thing. It lowers competition, but if a student really deserves to be placed ahead, there’s Princeton 5 minutes away.</p>
<p>Thanks, Dapple. From my recall and based on the L’ville handbook, it appears that a student may be able to take P’ton courses in a certain field if he had “exhausted” the courses offered at L’ville in that field. Because there were no German courses offered at Lawrenceville, there was no German field to exhaust at this school or any bridge to P’ton. Even if L’ville could have arranged for my son to have taken German at Princeton, I would have to think that such an arrangement would have been disruptive to him and his routine at L’ville. In the end, at least as to the German, it was easier go to a BS with German than to travel to a nearby college to take German.</p>
<p>You guys are all wrong. Lawrenceville’s honors courses ARE AP courses, they are all 500 level/ you take the AP exam at the end of the year. The reason why they are no longer listed as “AP” is because they didn’t want to go through with all the legal stuff when the organization (college board maybe?) changed their policies to label a course as AP. Also, if you really want to take German, then its probably not the school for you since even if you can take it as an independent study it won’t be until at least junior year.</p>
<p>You will find that many top schools do not offer AP(trademark goes here) courses in core courses. In order to have this designation, the school must submit to a curriculum audit by the College Board and many schools don’t want someone else telling them what their curriculum should be. Some find the AP curriculum restrictive and want to avoid any kind of “teaching to the test.” Many, many students take the AP exams, however. A student does NOT need an AP(trademark) course on the transcript to take the AP exam. If you read the course descriptions, many will indicate that students will be prepared to write the AP Physic (or whatever) exam at the completion of the course or that “This course covers most topics included on the AP _____ Exam.”</p>
<p>What makes a course an AP course? Doesn’t the course have to comply with all of the AP requirements, not just the requirement that a student in that course must take the AP exam?</p>
<p>The L’ville 500 courses may be better (or worse) than AP courses, but if they don’t fit the AP requirements and comply with all of that “legal stuff” the AP overseers demand, how can they be AP courses? They may be something like, or even better than, AP courses, but that doesn’t make them AP courses.</p>
<p>Congratulations for being accepted in both schools. You’re an exceptional student! Don’t forget that.</p>
<p>Don’t let US make your decision for you. Don’t count up how many people say Andover and how many people say L’ville and make your decision based on OUR opinions. Go revisit the schools and see which one shouts ‘COME HOME’ to you! It’s the only way you’ll truly know where you’ll be happy.
:)</p>
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