<p>My HS sweetheart was a day student. She had a car. Life was good.</p>
<p>ops- Don't get all misty-eyed on us! ;)</p>
<p>Goalie - Your poits are well taken. I would add only that the fact that there were 2 competing cultures was far less of an issue during D's first 2 years at school than her last 2 years (older kids, more freedom, cars) - - and therefore unlikely to be detected during a re-vist day (we visited 3 times before D enrolled).</p>
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<p>I'll tell you why I was so blunt. Because you're complaining that the day students have parents who advocate for their kids (if we go along with the contention that parents signing notes for faked medical conditions in order to have their kids sleep late is being an advocate or something we'd wish for our child).</p>
<p>Yet, for all the complaining about advocacy, you've apparently decided not to do it yourself. And you have the benefit of an experience your other daughters can benefit from. It hadn't occurred to me to pay closer attention to how an administration might be so foolish about dealing with the day and boarder populations. I thank you for calling that to everyone's attention.</p>
<p>But now that you're armed with that knowledge, do you intend to give greater scrutiny to the schools you're looking at? No. You've concocted a bright line rule that (1) puts your daughters into an environment with two cultures, which is what you contend is the source of the problems that concern you; and (2) you're substituting that numerical test for actual direct investigation on your part (which, yes, you can learn more about by getting in touch with parents of boarders...for starters).</p>
<p>If that works for you, great. If it makes your search easier or shorter, great. But I can't see how eliminating a school with 86% boarders or 82% boarders for no other reason than it doesn't have 90% boarders can be considered advocacy for your daughter. And, just because it's something you're using as a shortcut, doesn't make it good advice for others.</p>
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<p>I made some arbitrary cut-off choices myself to make the search manageable. But I would hardly go about recommending my arbitrary cut-offs as rules that others are well-advised to follow. You're misleading others while mistakenly thinking you're addressing a problem that's important to you and will be helpful to your D.</p>
<p>It's a mistake to think that you're going to avoid those problems -- or help your daughter avoid them -- by sticking to a numerical cut-off that eliminates from consideration many perfectly excellent schools where they do address the "competing culture" issue as well as any 90-10 school does. If you're using this rule to help your daughter (as opposed to just making your search manageable), sticking to it is not going to help her...or others. And that's too bad.</p>
<p>Maybe you will reconsider and take a look at the handbooks and talk to people at 80-20 schools in order to find the right school. Maybe not. But before other people buy into the point that 90-10 or better is the automatic answer to anything you've raised as a concern, maybe they'll reconsider. And that would be good.</p>
<p>No point arguing with Dyer. After reading this forum for the last several months, it's clear that he knows everything about everything. Anyone who posts 600 times in 4 months, and each post is paragraphs long, has too much time on his hands and likes to impress people with his "knowledge".</p>
<p>Yes, exactly! </p>
<p>Now that's what I'm talkin' about! Except that you were much more succinct in making my point for me: There's absolutely no logical basis for limiting your BS search to 90% boarder schools which means the best possible rebuttal is to avoid the issue altogether and state the most obvious facts about me (that I post here often and with verbosity) and then toss in a mind-blowing Zen koan. (Can an anonymous person on a message board ever impress other anonymous people?) </p>
<p>I couldn't have made my point any more convincingly than you just did. I'm impressed. I just don't know which one of your CC accounts I should be impressed with.</p>
<p>You weren't blunt - - that was a personal attack. And, you are incorrect in assuming that I failed to advocate for D. I was, as every parent should be, her advocate on many occasions - - sometimes successfully (most notably w/ college counseling) and sometimes not (I was chided for calling in to excuse her from an athletic practice). </p>
<p>As for "the numbers," I still find them valid (though there were certainly posters who felt that I was eliminating great colleges by restricting D's list to schs w/ at least 4% black students). And most families have some day/boarder ratio at which they would draw the line - - and wherever one draws the line someone else can argue that s/he is unfairly or illogically rejecting great schools. So yes, maybe 87% would be ok, but that's just tinkering at the margins. I still say, even w/ a good admin, too many day students = two diff communities = problems.</p>
<p>Dyer, I can assure you that I am not the same person as nyc. Don't flatter yourself and think that someone who disagrees with you has duplicate accounts. There are others on this board who think you are a blowhard.</p>
<p>He-he... Of course there are other people who think that. I'm one of them!</p>
<p>I didn't say -- and don't think -- you are the same as nyc. I said you have multiple accounts. This makes 2 of your 3 posts (under this account) to avoid anything substantive and point out that I post too much and too long for your taste. That's an oddly bitter disposition you've got. I'm sure that you harbor a grudge about something I posted before. The difference is that nyc came right out and called me out for my bad behavior. You've apparently let the other thing fester and eat at you and you need a separate account to make a point -- but then, instead of saying what's been eating at you, you make about the most obvious accusation about me.</p>
<p>You definitely need a hug: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4%5B/url%5D">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4</a></p>
<p>(Oops. I guess I just can't help myself with this prolificacy thing... :) )</p>
<p>Aw, I almost cried when watching that, D'yer. :)</p>
<p>14.3 million others probably agree.</p>
<p>Here's the story behind that video: </p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AdQo1qBy1E%5B/url%5D">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AdQo1qBy1E</a></p>
<p>OK, backing up D'yer here: </p>
<p>He's given me very invaluable information. I'm a little miffed you said that. What, are you guys "Long-Post Haters Inc.: Short is Sweet"? Who cares how long his posts are? Some people on CC have 3,000 posts in a year. Look at me - I have 1,130 and I joined in November. This is also a trivial matter. Is this why you're attacking each other, because of the length of your posts?</p>
<p>I do have to say that your 10 percent rule cuts out every top boarding school except for St. Paul's. Some people might prefer Choate (!), Hotchkiss, L'ville, Exeter, Andover, Groton, Milton, Middlesex, etc. I'm sure everyone on this board would agree with me, because they're all going to the BSes that I mentioned. And what you said about Choate - about kids going to NYC every weekend - what's your basis for that? It's an hour and a half drive and kids who go to L'ville can reach NYC in twice that time (or more). Do you go to Choate? Have you seen these kids drive there?</p>
<p>I'm sure crh08 could back me up on that. And if this "over 10 percent day population" would hurt the school, then why would boarding students love them? There aren't even students from NYC to GO home every weekend - and it would be a three hour trip. Why not spend time with your friends? Even if all the day students left on the weekend, and the kids who live in NYC, a BS student wouldn't really notice the absence. If that's your preference to go home, then do it. If not, you won't really encounter a problem.</p>
<p>Having had two kids go through bs and a third starting in sept, I would like to say that I think it is good for the school dynamics as a bs to have a large percentage (more than 60%) board. I am not aware of any with a 90/10 ratio though except for st Pauls (which is 100% boarders including the facbrats). We eliminated looking at schools that had small boarding pops, and were largly day schools. </p>
<p>This is another reason I like schools with Sat classes, because you know the school won't empty out over the weekend.</p>
<p>The universal concept of "best BS" that's the premise for this thread was silly to begin with. Hugs are more productive.</p>
<p>Hugs in Hollywood for nyc and apologies for the "too bad" comment: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MONTPHr7V1w%5B/url%5D">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MONTPHr7V1w</a></p>
<p>Peace is good.</p>
<p>There are ways other than metrics to judge how the boarding/day ratio works on a campus. Does the school refer to itself as a "day and boarding school" or a "boarding and day school?" How many pages of the student handbook distnguish between the rules for boarding students and the rules for day students? What percentage of the faculty live on campus? Do day students participate in weekend trips and activities? I am at a school that has about a 50-50 split in its upper school but that very much thinks of itself as a boarding school that happens to have day students. It's in a very rural area so the day students tend to come back into school on the weekends because that's were the action is. There's plenty of mixed (boarding/day) friendships and couples. I think the boarding students appreciate having a chance to get away to day students' houses occasionally and the day students like going to a school where the library is open at night and there are school-sponsored trips every weekend. The people it's hardest on is the day parents who may as well have sent their kids to boarding school for as little time as their kids spend at home.</p>
<p>It is quite ignorant to rank high schools. How do you define what is best? Not everyone at Exeter gets admission from Harvard. Many students at Andover end up at third-tier universities. I have seen many graduates of so-called top prep-schools being unemployeed even when they are thirty years old. </p>
<p>Trying to identify which shcool is the best only appeals to students' as well as parents' egos. </p>
<p>You should pick the school in which you feel the most comfortable and learn the most. That is the best school. Your ability, growth, maturity level, learning development get you into your dream college, not the name of your high school.</p>
<p>after having gone through this exercise it is clear that way way too much of this is about ego and parent projecting ivy preps and ivy dreams on to their kids by way of BSs...its clear to me now that we approached this all wrong and that my younger daughter will have a far better go..i am not saying BS are not great just this total obsession with who is top 5 top 10 is a absurd as thinking only an IVY is a path to success...I went to a public college and was FAR MORE Successful than almost ALL of my peers from Ivy leagues in the tech industry..where frankly what you learn on the job is when you shine...school helps but academics do not necessarily turn into great engineers...people need to really get a dose of spirituality in this whole thing--think about it as integrating intellectually, spritually and growing up to become who you are...being in number 1 or number 10 is not going to make that much difference..its what you learn..</p>
<p>1) ANDOVER
2) Exeter
3) Deerfield</p>
<p>The end.
Honestly guys, this is the real deal, if you want to go to boarding school why not aim for the very very best?</p>
<p>Please go away.</p>