Just curious: to those of you with kids who have attended–or do attend-- rigorous boarding schools (and I suppose for the sake of a good comparison have something to compare them to) do you think that Andover, Exeter, Milton, Deerfield, St Pauls and so on are actually harder academically? Or, are they harder because of the added burden of being away from home and time management? Or are the schools giving work that is head and shoulders above that of other schools (public or private) I am not sure what I think. PEA seems to give an obscene amount of homework–is it harder because there is more work or because the work they are doing is more challenging?? I mean being harder because the work is more challenging is more meaningful than just being harder because of the sheer quantity of work. @VegasMom, @skieurope @SevenDad and any others please weigh in.
What a wonderful question! From what I can tell, the answer comes down to the kid and what he/she makes of his/ or her school. One of my kids is flat out brilliant and opted for a school that is great, but not as pressure filled. It is just not who he is. He loves the learning for the sake of the information and thinking. Does not care about the race for Ivy or prestige. Since he does happen to take many higher level courses though, he is still with a very academically oriented peer group. However, these kids really do tend to work with one another rather than compete. My kid would drop out if he was in a higher pressure, ruthlessly academic and super rigorous school. Plain and simple. My other kid is bright but not “gifted bright.” and is a hard charger who I admit (with simultaneous pride and regret) can be cutthroat and seems to thrive in that. IMHO, 99% of the schools in the so-called “top 30” are all fabulous places to get an education. It all depends on the kid and what they make of it.
Compared to our local public high school (which is in the US top 100 according to Niche), BS is significantly more difficult. It isn’t necessarily the amount of work - its the expectation regarding the quality of the work. In high school, my kids learned to analyze, think critically, research, defend an argument with facts, and write at a level far beyond the level of many college graduates. They were well-prepared for their ivy league colleges. In addition, the time management and independent living skills prepared them for the social side of college.
I think the biggest difference is the quantity and quality of writing that is expected. There is plenty of work in good public high schools, but it is a different kind of work. Of course, we can’t really compare schools’ difficulty without looking at assignments side by side that are based on the same material and knowing how much time students have to complete them and what are the competing demands on their time, etc., etc. Difficulty can be very subjective. But I think the consensus is that good prep schools can be pretty hard!
I agree with this and with everything else that was said. The other thing that I will add is that many courses, particularly electives for juniors and seniors are beyond AP level. How many LPS’s offer courses in organic chemistry, quantum physics, and ring theory?
I think one common thread we hear here is that BS students find college a breeze compared to their high school experiences and not just because college is often their fifth rather than first year away from home. Our son has commented on how well-prepared he was for college and how happy he is that he does not struggle academically anywhere near the level of struggle around him. His first year, he roomed with the sal from our best local public who ended up on academic probation for a while. Our son said that so many students are not prepared for the actual level of college rigor and do not have real study skills, just endurance skills from hours of quantity rather than quality homework. Our son’s college GPA is significantly higher than his BS GPA.
I and my daughter both attended a rigourous state public boarding school. I was junior in college before I even blinked at the difficulty compared to HS. My D just graduated so time will tell about college but she writes at a level that I believe is better than many graduate students. The number of papers she wrote combined with teacher feedback was invaluable. Over 80% of teachers have PhDs. The outlier was math teachers who had a master degree in math.
Time management, money management, distance from home, etc. are all conquored at an early age. I’m curious myself about my D’s report after her freshman year of college.
Our local BS has an average SAT of 2010, according to boardingschoolreview.com. Our local IB school, which over the years has been ranked anywhere between #1 and #13 nationally by US News & World Report, has an average SAT of 1830. Both are solid schools, obviously. My SPS kid has several close friends at both places. My close friend has a child at the local BS and another child at SPS. By their accounts, SPS academics are on an entirely diferent level than either of these great local options. The differences are both in quality and quantity. A lot more writing, research- and discussion-based learning, more sophisticated assignments, focus on analytical thinking and creativity, higher standards for grading, etc. You can teach Algebra 2 in a very basic manner, and you can teach it with so much depth, including its practical implications for real-world problem-solving, that it’s essentially a different course.
This is a very good question. I don’t have a good answer. There are many public HS kids near me where the top kids are brilliant. Many of these kids took extremely challenging classes.
However I do hear routinely from parents at my sons BS that the kids say that college is a breeze.
No doubt the content between public HS and BS is the same. But BS kids seem to learn things differently and more thoroughly.
One of the big differences between BS and Public High School is that each teacher has far fewer students. This means that each student can be challenged to the full extent of his or her abilities. The brilliant kid in LPS is unlikely to get a tutorial in a level of math the school does not offer, for example, or he may be an exception rather than have a cohort of gifted classmates. (That’s the benefit of not having to find all of your students within driving distance of your school.) PEA is known for its math program, so I would guess nobody gets to cruise there!
The biggest difference we noticed was the emphasis on writing. If a teacher at BS teaches three sections of a class with 12 students in each one, he will have the time to grade 10-20 page papers on a regular basis. A public school teacher who teaches four or five sections of a class with 25 to 30 students in each simply does not have the time. A friend who had twins, one at BS, one at LPS, observed that at her LPS, teachers avoided any kind of assessment (including papers) that might be perceived as subjective because they got so much backlash from parents complaining about grades. This makes it hard to teach and refine a certain kind of skill needed to do well in college. BS kids get pretty good at knocking out writing assignments but they still take time.
Plenty of LPS assign tons of work to separate the wheat from the chaff, so quantity could, in some cases, be greater at LPS.
With that said, all of the kids I have talked to who went to BS (and not just the acronym ones) found the transition to college to be an easy one. Most had better grades than they had had at BS.
We rarely get to see our children’s schoolwork, but our son recently sent home a long history paper for his dad to give a once-over. We are both tough critics, even of - or especially of - our own children, but we agreed that the writing was probably better than either of us could produce. Based on the grade the paper received, I believe the teacher for this AP course is (quite appropriately) holding students not just to a college standard, but a good college standard. This doesn’t apply to all classes, obviously, but it’s an example.
@center I believe the biggest difference that we have seen in academic rigor between PEA and 2 very good LPS (our daughter attended) have little to do we content and more to do with expectations of students. All of our kids have similar IQ’s so I am comparing our 3 kids experiences who have/will graduate from PEA to our daughter who attended PEA for 2 years and then attended LPS.
PEA academic success relies heavily on students coming to class prepared to interact with peers on a variety of subjects. Students must interact regardless of their mood, lack of sleep, disinterest in the topic etc… The ability to show up to class everyday and voice your thoughts, opinions and impressions is vital to your success at PEA. This is challenging for lots of teenagers (and quite frankly adults as well.) If one struggles with content discussed in class, they must be proactive enough to visit teachers during office hours, go to peer tutoring or find a study group. It isn’t enough to go home and reread a chapter in the textbook. These 2 points did not apply to our daughters success at LPS. She could literally zone out all of class, read her text book and ace her tests.
As far as college success goes. Again I think it depends on where your child ends up attending college. Our daughter who left PEA is a much better writer than her brother who graduated from PEA. He is a math/ science kid. He struggled like crazy his freshman year at engineering school. He had to learn how to sit in a lecture hall and actually pay attention. Our daughter has a 3.9 GPA after her sophmore year at a highly ranked university.
He had to learn how to sit in a lecture hall and actually pay attention.
@vegas1 That is an interesting observation that I hadn’t thought about.
^ That’s an interesting concept of how to adapt from an active learning environment to a chalk and talk one.
Ha! I remember my own days of adjusting to college from boarding school. I didn’t have many large lecture classes, fortunately, but in one, I did have a professor tell me, “Excellent point, DosChicos, but please raise your hand next time!” 
:">
“chalk and talk” – I’ll have to remember that turn of phrase @MAandMEmom
Yes, especially as compared to our local schools, but in a word, yes.
BS is significantly more challenging academically than local HS. Essentially the experience (at PEA) was nearly the equivalent to college where every student was an honors student and the faculty had the highest of expectations, but starting at 14 years old.
@CaliPops it’s a term used very frequently in higher ed.
How @vegas1 describes it resonates exactly with my understanding of AppleKid’s experience at BS this first year.
And I worry that a primarily “chalk and talk” college might not work so great come fall of 2020; I think it will be something AppleKid needs to carefully consider–just not yet
My own two definitely opted out of the “chalk and talk” college experience, going for something at very much the other end of the spectrum. Zero regrets.