<p>The ensembles meet from 6:45 to 8, twice or three times a week, which can interfere with clubs that run from 6-7, or with you doing anything before the 8 o’clock prep and lower check in.</p>
<p>@boardingjunkie lol nope 
i’m applying though and i know someone who goes to andover. You pretty much get to choose which laguage you want. You start at the beginning of the language you want and cousre placement is by a placement test. There’s Spainish, Chinese,Russian,Japanese,Latin,etc.</p>
<p>@LeoBro You are amazing for starting this thread!!! All of us incoming Exonians are extremely grateful. :x</p>
<p>Anyways… I have yet another question </p>
<p>If you had to give one (or more. I’ll take more) piece of advice to yourself before you came to Exeter for the first time, what would you tell yourself? </p>
<p>@omgjusttellme Haha thanks! When I was coming in as a freshman someone had this thread and I found it so helpful, so I’m trying to help back. </p>
<p>Advice for myself: Join a lot of clubs early, and stick with the ones you enjoy. And I mean really stick to them, not once every few weeks, because you eventually stop going to them. </p>
<p>Additionally, sleep > everything else. I don’t mean to say sleep and bail on other things, but in my first term I tried staying up late to finish all my assignments, without considering all the free time I had throughout the day to work on them, and ended up being pretty sleep deprived. It starts a cycle of being too tired to focus in class, not doing homework efficiently, and going to bed really late. </p>
<p>With that in mind, I was really out there in the beginning, always socializing, relaxing in grill. It got the best of me for a while and I felt stressed because I felt as if I never had enough time. The funny part was that my roommate, who didn’t socialize much, got all his work done in advance and was in bed before 10 every night, up at 6. I’d advise myself to be somewhere in between those two extremes.</p>
<p>Plan for the future. Ask for help from a senior member in the dorm, with an open course catalog, and start looking at what you might want to do so you can have the pre-req’s in place before you get there. I wouldn’t advise this for fall or winter term, but when you’re choosing courses in Spring 2015 start looking ahead.</p>
<p>Join JV/V sports. I got lazy and took the first year gym option in my first term. Almost all of my sport involved friends can attest that over time, your time management improves significantly. This advice would go if you’re not doing too many clubs.</p>
<p>Remember that there are going to be people better than you at some things, and there will be those worse than you. But at prep schools the analogy goes that we’re all big fish in a small pond, so don’t compare yourself to other people. Exeter is already pretty competitive to get into, so don’t look at how well others are doing, always work on improving yourself and you’ll do great! </p>
<p>Hi guys! I just read through this entire thread. I’m an Exeter grad (class of '13!) and I loved it. If y’all have any questions about the school feel free!</p>
<p>@xomikimuffinxo I was looking at the schedules and came across the week 1 and week 2 schedules. What is that? </p>
<p>@xomikimuffinxo Does Exeter run on a Mon-Fri schedule? Or is it a different type of schedule? </p>
<p>@02gloves basically Exeter runs on a two-week schedule. If we start off the school year with Week 1, the next week will be Week 2, then Week 1, then Week 2… etc. It’s a little confusing at first. I don’t know exactly why they do it but I think it’s to even out the classes per week.</p>
<p>@fluffymilk Yes.</p>
I sort of miss the “old” six-day schedule (Saturday classes!) because at least the schedule was the same every week and I had some clue what class I was going to in the morning. I also liked when we had 3 assemblies per week instead of 2. Oh well. Maybe the new principal will bring back Saturday classes.
Feel free to ask any questions about student life (and happiness), the admission process, trustee plans, and classes
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Anyone is free to ask or answer questions in this thread.
Hey, I’m a current student at PEA and i wanted to make a thread about some of the things that you will probably never be told when applying. There is A LOT of effort the school invests in order to maintain their image. I’m truly proud and blessed to be able to attend PEA. However, throughout my time here, the students have voiced varying concerns on the schools admission, admissions, and over all student life. I thought it would be great to share these insights before you apply or make your choice!
@bigred101 What are some of the things that we will never be told when we apply? What is your insight? How is student life and happiness? How does the admissions process work? What are trustee plans? How are classes?
What is anything else I need to know about Exeter?
Sorry for the abundance of questions. I love Exeter and want to know a lot about it!
Can an exeter student or faculty comment on the accuracy of the student survey published last year?
I heard that life of Exeter students are sometimes bad, sleep only 3-4 hours per night, too much competition in class to get good grades, not sure if that’s true. Can you give some insights?
Exeter parent here. My D has loved Exeter and would choose to do it again in a heartbeat.
BUT, she had to get on top of her time management. The biggest problem is procrastination - there are lots of interesting peers to hang around with, and a busy social life can mean homework gets started late, next day you’re tired, etc. She found that starting homework earlier, and using free periods during the day for homework, kept things in much better balance. There is a minimum of 4 hours of homework a day, more time is needed before tests and papers. So using free periods plus 7-10 pm school nights for homework leaves lots of time for SLEEP and lots of free time on weekends (except for those thankfully infrequent “crunch” times when long papers are due, or the 2 weeks before holiday break when classes try to get a lot in all at once).
An abundance of possibilities extends to extra-curriculars. For a students with diverse interests, it was easy to get over-extended with language clubs, debate, sports, science clubs, etc etc etc. Hard to do, but by lower year you must focus on 1 or 2 extracurriculars out of many wonderful choices in order not to be overwhelmed by time commitments.
She has never found students to be competitive (after the first prep week), because there are so many phenomenal students that you quickly realize there is no point in competing with them on their turf….for example the best math student in the world was in her math class. He finds math effortless. How do you compete with that? Instead, work to find out what you’re really good at, and cultivate that. (he was great for homework help, by the way). Similar story for athletics, music. Exeter admits each student because they have a unique talent to bring to the class.
Staying in the same dorm for 4 years makes a very large place much more like a family. Dorm friends have been the best, from upperclassmen helping preps to all kinds of homework help, birthday parties, with great house parent staff and pets!
Teachers are open, honest, caring and absolutely dedicated. Over the 4 years there have been 1 or 2 she did not find easy to work with, the rest have been stellar. Close relationship with advisor has also been wonderful, if there is a concern with a teacher, the advisor can help.
Her friends are from Vietnam, Africa, Alaska, and Main Line Philly, to start. It is a very diverse student population and half receive very substantial financial aid (Exeter is completely free to families making less than 75K, including transportation, books and computer).
Just a bit more on what makes Exeter unique….Harkness
Yes, it really makes a huge impact. Each class has 12 or less students and they sit around an oval table. In math for example, each students goes up to the boards which surround the table, finds a spot, and puts up one homework problem. Then they all talk about the problems. Different ways to solve, challenging points, usually the teacher says little except to explain confusing parts. The kids teach each other. Yes, the students are that good, and YOU HAVE TO COME TO CLASS HAVING DONE THE HOMEWORK OR YOU WILL LOOK LIKE A FOOL. Apply the same idea to readings in English and History, and science lab write ups. Language typically involves more teacher input, but students do dialogues, sing, etc as a group.
Frankly, in this setting, tests don’t seem to be a big part of the work. Daily work, however, is apparent for all to see.
If you need help, classmates often help, there is peer tutoring (walk in hours), teachers live in the dorms and often help students with questions in the evening, or more formal tutoring if it is needed (rarely).
Thank you @2prepMom for your insight!
Hello, I’ve been looking for a place to ask an Exeter-specific question!
I am currently a freshman, and I am enrolled in Calculus BC. I expect I may get a 5 on the AP exam. I hear that incoming Exeter students have to take transition math courses to start out? What I fear is getting stuck in one of these math classes doing easy work, when I could be learning new things in, say, Linear Algebra. Where do you think I would be placed?
Thanks!