Blair Academy

I am interested if there are any parents/recent graduates from Blair Academy who could share what is going on in that school? Their rating among the best US private high schools in the last two years plummeted from 106 to 146, and now to 167 (Niche.com). Even in NJ, as a boarding school, they lost a spot among the top 10 in the state to several private schools who surpassed them. While Blair Academy has never been one of the academically strongest schools in the country (SSAT hovering around 70%, and SAT around 1330 - which most of the top public high schools exceed easily) this falling trend in ratings/academic performances, accompanied by a major teachers turnover last year and a non-reported SSAT/SAT score (even lower this year?) is really puzzling…
While it is understandable that parents paying $40,000-$60,000 per year for this school will praise/defend their investment, I hope there are those at this forum who would share sincere insight about what is going on in this school under this new leadership… They reported only a 20% acceptance rate (!!) for this year (their only distinguishing attribute by Boarding School Review) that puts them in the same pool of highly-selective academic powerhouses such as Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Academy.
Blair also enrolled much less freshmen this year than usually. Is it a low acceptance rate a new strategy to justify Blair’s steep tuition that is even higher than at the top boarding schools, while overshadowing poor test scores and lackluster matriculation?

I was wondering about this as well! Most of the mid atlantic prep league is all in the top 50 except for Blair.

I am curious which list you looked at that placed them out of the top 50 schools. My son is currently waiting for M10 results and Blair is one of the schools he applied to. I have looked up all the schools he applied to and the lists I found each had Blair in the top 50 list.

We honestly care very little about where a school falls in terms of ranking. What matters most to us is “fit”, and I do think Blair has something special going on on their campus. We know 2 girls who currently attend they love the school. The campus is beautiful and they have recently built a new building that is impressive.

That said, their head appears to be quite young and I think he is fairly new. I don’t know his resume as I have not taken the time to look into it at this point. We are aware that they decreased the size of their freshman class last year and that they boasted a 20% admission rate last year.

If I could take a guess I would think that their low endowment of $85M hurts them significantly. That is much lower than the $200-300M endowments that other Mapl schools have. They may be forced to accept more full pay kids whose academic prowess may not be as high as they would like.

Although I like their location, they sit in the shadow of the high ranking New England schools. Kids who apply to all the usual NE schools probably apply to Blair as a back up. So maybe they lose out on some of those students who get into their choice NE schools.

As far as we are concerned, we liked the atmosphere at Blair, and if my son is accepted I believe it would be a fine choice. I’m not going to say here where Blair ranks on his list, just that we liked it and it would be a good fit for him if he attended there. He did not apply to any NE schools, we focused on Mid Atlantic schools due to where we live and the radius we are willing to drive.

The source came from one of the famous online ranking websites: Niche. In 2018 Best Private High School in America, Blair is ranked as #167. I-)

@knowmore the Niche list you refer to is comparing all private high schools - day and boarding - in the entire country. If you look at the entire list Blair is #167 out of more than 8,000 schools.

While also on the Niche list you may notice that there is a more defined list of 2018 Best Boarding Schools in America, and Blair is #44 out of more than 400 schools.