<p>Wow… We just received the info pack of Exeter… It really looks amazing and has everything my daughter is interested in. Looking forward to receiving from other schools as well.</p>
<p>One big question we have is regarding the boarding ratios and how this might affect the day schoolers. Our daughter will be a day student, is there a big difference in dynamics? </p>
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Totally depends on the school. At my school, which is roughly 80/20, similar to Exeter, day students are generally well-integrated into the community, and the only difference is where they put their heads at night. Day students are often on-campus through dinner and study period, and on the weekends. A benefit is that they provide boarders an oppy for a place to stay on the shorter breaks.</p>
<p>That sounds great. At our children’s previous school where the ratio was 50/50, boarders and day students had very different experiences and didn’t mingle much. Another reason was that most boarders were ESL students and mostly stuck together. The school didn’t do a very good job at integrating the two communities, which in our opinion was a shortcoming.</p>
<p>At a couple of boarding schools we toured, they said each day student is assigned a dorm, so they have a place on campus where they can unwind if they need to, or even stay overnight on occasion. Can’t recall which schools said that (they’re all starting to run together, lol), but we toured Milton, Dana Hall and Walnut Hill. I’m sure it varies by school.</p>
<p>It does depend on the ratio of boarders/ day students. At Deerfield (not on your list, I know), there are only about 12% day students, so they’re much more integrated than kids I know at schools with a higher percentage of day students: most of my son’s friends are boarders (though not all), and each day student is assigned a dorm, invited for any and all meals, and can sleep over in their dorm as often as they’d like. It seems like some barely go home. And it’s not always clear who’s a day student and who’s a boarder. And, yes, we do sometimes have boarders stay at our house over break, or I’ll drive a bunch of the kids into town for the evening or a movie, which is fun for them. The one down side is that the school doesn’t always think about day students as having outside commitments, so scheduling can be hard-- lots of meetings, practices, rehearsals are at night or on weekends, and sometimes meetings get scheduled or rescheduled at the last minute, which can be challenging for parents of day students. A friend of mine, whose daughter goes to a school with about 40% day students, says the kids are much less integrated there (day kids hang with day kids), and the school kind of clears out on weekends (at least somewhat.). On the plus side, her school is very considerate of day parents in terms of scheduling, and is MUCH better at communicating with them than they seem to be at Deerfield. So you need to look at the ratios at the various schools you’re considering, and realize there are some pros and cons of being a day student at a BS. But I have to say, my son really feels like he has the best of both worlds-- there’s always stuff going on at school if he wants to hang out, but he can get away and be on his own–as well as schedule things outside of school when he wants.</p>
<p>The boarding vs. day issue can also make a difference in the admissions process. For instance, although the admissions office would probably never admit it, it’s harder to get into Milton as a day student than as a boarder. Conversely, at some of the more geographically isolated schools with low day student percentages, it may be somewhat easier to get in as a day student. I know the latter isn’t applicable to your situation, as you’re just looking at schools in the greater Boston area, but I included it just by way of comparison.</p>
<p>This information may be useful to you.</p>
<p>[Fessenden</a> Has Company: A Brief History of Local Prep School Scandals](<a href=“https://www.boston.com/news/education/2014/12/09/fessenden-has-company-brief-history-local-prep-school-scandals/CFr3wJmPE9Vu8YAtMxJJuM/story.html?p1=Topofpage:Carousel_sub_headline]Fessenden”>https://www.boston.com/news/education/2014/12/09/fessenden-has-company-brief-history-local-prep-school-scandals/CFr3wJmPE9Vu8YAtMxJJuM/story.html?p1=Topofpage:Carousel_sub_headline)</p>
<p>:-O </p>
<p>This thread is very informative, thank you CC!</p>
<p><a href=“2014 Clean Official Boarding Decisions and Applicant Stats/Extracurriculars - Prep School Admissions - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1623567-2014-clean-official-boarding-decisions-and-applicant-stats-extracurriculars-p1.html</a></p>
Boston Magazine ran a controversial rating of private schools in Massachusetts last year, so controversial that it was recalculated and eventually pulled down. But as I recall it rated Commonwealth and Roxbury Latin highest, with BB&N, Andover, Winsor and Milton somewhere in the top 10. Commonwealth stands out as having a very different academic environment from the rest (it’s housed in a back bay townhouse and is very urban) and they are very generous with financial aid (something like 2/3rds of their students receive some aid). Given its size, Commonwealth has limited music and performance programs but they are gems. Several world-class musicians graduated from Commonwealth, it certainly has something to do with that. But you really won’t know whether your D will like it without first visiting it. Personally, I would not have my D attend a New England boarding school and be a day student. It’s a totally different experience, and there’s some differentiation between day and boarding students at most schools, especially the ones where the day school is run mostly for the benefit of faculty children. The one where that may not be true is Milton, which draws very good day students from the Boston area. Concord Winsor and BB&N aren’t very diverse; very very preppy and wealthy white kids. BU Academy is an up-and-comer;you should add it to your list. College matriculation is not going to be a differentiator of the schools on this list; at this level, they are all good and it will largely depend on what your D brings to the table.
Three other towns/school systems to consider that are equally as strong academically as Lincoln/Sudbury, Concord/Carlisle, Wellesley, and Dover/Sherborn: Acton, Boxboro, and Harvard. Home prices, while not cheap, are slightly lower than Concord or Lincoln. These towns are farther from Boston, so the commute time to the city is longer. All of them are on the Route 2 corridor west of Lincoln and Concord.
There’s more ethnic diversity in the Acton/Boxboro school system than say Concord or Lincoln, which some see as a plus. Harvard is a small town (population 5800) so it offers much smaller classes. A typical graduating class in Harvard is in the neighborhood of 90-120 students.
Here is a PDF of the Boston Magazine article on the best schools in the state. As I said, the magazine retracted the rankings after they had to go through several radical corrections and reader squawking, so the attached list is the old, incorrect one. By my recollection, Austin Prep was one of the schools dropped from the top 10 after uncovering some incorrect data. And Commonwealth and Roxbury Latin swapped places. Go to the Boston Magazine website if you want to read the accompanying articles.
http://waylandenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/boston-magazine-best-schools-list.pdf
I would say the ranking is more important if you are looking for a school more prone to diversity. IT ranks Phillips as #1 and Roxbury Latin as 11th yet many schools not as high on he list of matriculation to IVYs show up before because Roxbury Latin received a C+ for diversity. But what is nice about the list is they give you a list of schools from which you cant go wrong.
Then this “ranking” is a diversity first and foremost ranking moderately influenced by academics. Compared to boarding schools and as good as Phillips is among boarding schools – top 3 and many would argue first among equals – Roxbury is in a class by itself academically evaluating on college placement and outgoing SAT scores. The SAT #'s as published by each school for 2014: Phillips 2016; Roxbury 2250. If you compare the college placement, Roxbury is also materially and significantly higher. Add to that the fact that placement #'s into top colleges for Phillips is partly attributed to athletic recruiting (aggressive) and a PG year; Roxbury has neither.
P.S. Don’t misunderstand me…Phillips is a fantastic school. 
I went to Andover as a day student, but I envy my daughter for her experience at Commonwealth. There’s no comparison in facilities, of course, and the Ivy placement is a bit higher at Andover. But the culture and quality of teaching is really remarkable at Commonwealth. If you’re the right kid. When I was her age, I might have been a bit too tightly wound to take advantage of all of it.
Also, going back to your question of day student at boarding school: the experience varies a lot, by school and by kid.
Phillips was more or less 80:20, and while students were assigned to dorms and residential clusters, it was easy to feel left out. It was worse for me because I was moving to town just as I started school, so I didn’t even know the local Andover kids. Milton sounded like a better deal at 50:50, but when we looked there for our daughter, it seemed that all the day students left in two rounds of buses at the end of the afternoon and weren’t there for dinner-- which was an important bonding experience. Also, you have a lot of day students moving up from middle school, so a 9th grade day student may have to fight to find a peer group. One of the big factors is that Milton takes kids who have long commutes from a wide radius. And driving there is a real pain from pretty much any other place in the area. Andover (and probably Exeter and a few others) will restrict non-boarding options to the nearest towns.
Anyway, there are a lot of good choices around. Just remember that they are all very different. Some kids will do fine in all of them, and others will flame out in a particular culture. We have neighbors whose twins started out early at BB&N. They both ended up transferring-- one to Winsor and one to Commonwealth. My daughter looked at a whole raft of private schools. She got into Winsor and BUA and decided after not too much fuss that Commonwealth was the place for her. I liked a lot about Winsor but she hated it. One of her classmates went there-- I think her father would have killed her if she’d said no. It’s a very high-status place in parts of Boston.
She might have gone to BUA if the arts department had been bigger (there’s been some new construction, I hear), but I was getting a real allergic reaction to the administration there. I was very happy indeed when she decided to go to Commonwealth instead.
Concord and BB&N were seen by her as OK but not compelling options. As luck would have it, they wait-listed her. Funny how that works.
Part of all this depended on the commute. If you’re moving after you hear about acceptances, that changes things. But if you’re parked in a particular town it can have a real impact on what is worth considering. These schools dish out a lot of work, and a long daily commute can add to everyone’s stress.
Another thing to think about-- because the Ivy matriculation rate is easy to calculate and compare, it gets a lot of unhealthy attention. I know of one school where there literally were faculty meetings held to discuss ways of making their kids more attractive to Ivies. Not good colleges, not good fits for their students, but Ivies. So people would share gossip about the admissions at Penn and Cornell, et al. Forget Chicago and Cal Tech! Some kids want to do that, and others will sleep-walk past that whole problem, but it’s a bit bizarre.
Another school I know of was similarly impressed by its placement stats-- the down side was that they tended to be best for the upper third of their class. Y’know-- the ones who’d make them look good in the rankings. The bottom tiers were often left to fend for themselves, and I’ve heard some real crazy stories about that.
Anyway, check the culture, and make sure that the parents won’t ruin what can otherwise be a great place.