<p>detrombone: A lot, each other, not so much. For some reason the prep class dates a lot, and I’m sure the lowers do too. Not a lot of preps date lowers though, but lowers date uppers. There’s almost a certain stigma attached to being a prep, but at the same time, 4-year seniors have their own little traditions that the rest of the senior class miss out on. Plus the teachers sort of baby the preps (we get less work).</p>
<p>rad-in-plaid: Honestly? It takes me anywhere from 2-4 hours to do my work. It’s not too bad, especially if you do work during your frees. And again, when you’re a senior, you’ll be thankful that you were a prep. It’s easier to transition, plus you get to take a lot of classes only preps can take. For fall term, preps take Junior Studies instead of English, which basically is like an introduction to the school. Also, preps get to take easier elective classes. Also, like Tomthecat said, it depends on your workload. Exeter’s courses are slightly different than Andover’s but they’re similar. We do have a sports requirement, for preps if you aren’t in a sport you’re in Prep Spaz, which is where you get to try a bunch of different sports. When you’re not a prep, you can take club sports (which is similar to Spaz except you only do one per term instead of two or more). I have a friend who had a really easy Bio teacher last term, her elective was music theory, she already speaks the language she’s taking fluently, plus her math was a 100 level course, so she had almost no work. But I have a slightly harder course load, I’ve got an accelerated language class (2 years in one), 311 math (okay, for some reason the math numbers are really different at andover. I think their Calculus BC is like 595 or something and at Exeter it’s 431, so it’s kind of different but anyways), 200-level Religion, and English and Bio, so I have quite a bit more work than her. Still, I finish my work at around 11. (oh Tomthecat mentioned lights-out. At exeter it’s 11pm for everyone, but nobody enforces it. Some dorms do (my one friend has to turn off his light at 11, and then opens it again later), but most don’t care. For my dorm it basically means that you’ve just got to stop yelling in the hallways and being loud) And it also depends on how fast one works. Oh and at Exeter, you don’t have to take History except for Upper year (American History) and 3 other terms of history. So some people take a year of history prep year, and a year of history upper year, and they don’t take history lower or senior year, so I’m not sure how the Andover schedule-ing works, if they’ve got more/less classes because I heard they have to take History for 3 years? Please dispel this myth if it is wrong! Oh, also, if you are taking private lessons for an instrument, that also takes away time, and ensembles as well. Plus clubs and other extracurriculars, but the great thing about boarding school is that it teaches you how to manage your time so you can do a little bit of everything.</p>
<p>Urbanflop: It’s supposed to be 50 minutes or less, but honestly, how long will it take you read 20 pages and write a one page response? Less than 50 minutes hopefully… Also, I’m not sure who your tour guide was, but I’m not quite sure about that. I guess it depends on the teacher. Especially for Math, because my current math teacher give grades based on test scores (because the teachers don’t check the homework, everyone just puts one problem up on the board, so many people (haha me) don’t do their homework and sort of figure it out the next day on the board) and little for participation. Say your test average is 95, your teacher won’t lower you to 90 because you didn’t speak up in class, but if you’re average was 89, then he/she might raise you up to 90 because of participation. Also, math is really hard to do harkness on (relative to other classes) because at Exeter we don’t have text books, we’ve just got math problems that the teachers make up. You’re supposed to derive the formulas from the problems and not memorize things, which can make things complicated, but it also gives you a better grasp of the concept. In my experience, it depends on the teacher. Nothing as large as 30-50 percent, but participation is important. I think less so for math and science, and more so for humanities. Also, each teacher has little pet peeves and quirks. My last history teacher really wanted students to cite the text, so in his mind, class participation was a lot of text citing, but for my bio teacher, she talked a lot, so it was more as long as you asked questions/answered questions. Wouldn’t that be nice though? If math was 30-50% participation? I would just bs my way to a good grade instead of actually working. ;)</p>
I guess you’re setting a bad example! Did the majority of the ‘group’ get admitted then? Are a large portion of people at HADES CCers?</p>
Things that are specific to Exeter… Hmm… I love how the dorms are of all grades, that way you get the meet students in other years too, but I guess a lot of schools are like that. Oh, here’s one. I love love love the dress code. It doesn’t really affect girls (yeah I’m a girl) but it’s so much fun dressing up.