The quality of a boarding school not only depends on how great the academics are, but also on how helpful are the teachers, advisers, and dorm residents. This is a free write column to write about your experience about the quality of the boarding schools. What is your experience, as a student, as to how helpful are your teachers, advisers, and dorm residents? If you are a parent, how helpful are the advisers and dorm residents when you needed them? School boosters, please stay away. Honest, accurate information is welcomed.
At my HADES school, the advisers and dorm residents are not really helpful when I needed help and advice. They are at best indifferent and seem always busy. They seem to not know what’s going on with my campus and academic life until some end of the term reports are due. So how is your experience?
Another observation during this college admissions season: It’s insane how easily Legacy, rich, FP, URM, and Athletes get into Ivy and other top colleges. What is the real value of academic learning in this environment?
@sanguine12 I’m not really sure what you’re looking for. I’m a parent, one child went to a hidden gem bs, one is currently in an acronym bs, another is headed to a small public. Each one of mine went to/is going to the type of school that best suits them as individuals. Choosing to go to bs isn’t/shouldn’t be about what college the student will attend. It’s so much more, and if that is the only goal and focus, I cringe to think of what a miserable 4 years the high school experience will be, regardless of the type of school.
Of course bs isn’t “necessary” for top tier colleges. There are many roads, and the incoming classes of those colleges have representatives from all of them. And when you look at leaders in individual fields, again, they attended a variety of (types of) schools–yes, even those execs from Fortune? Forbes? 500 companies.
It may sound trite, but each individual’s experience truly is what that individual makes of it.
This post sounds like a student disgruntled over his/her college acceptances using some hyperbole to let off some steam in an anonymous place. I am willing to cut some slack given that context and because, removing the hyperbole, there are grains of truth in what is stated.
Teachers ARE often overstretched with their classroom, coaching, and advising duties in addition to tending to their own, often young, families. There often exists a range of experiences from the super engaged teacher/advisor who serves as a mentor and parent in absentia (the ideal scenario painted in schools’ marketing) at one end of the spectrum to the burnt out or overwhelmed teacher/advisor who truly isn’t engaged and is pretty hands off. (and that the schools don’t talk about) I was always somewhat jealous of those families fortunate enough to get the gems of the BS advising world.
It is TRUE that the BS students often getting into the tippy top colleges have a hook - not all, but a solid chunk. I have most often seen athletes (especially crew, lacrosse) and development cases as being the prime beneficiaries, URM to a much lesser extent, and full pay as not being a factor at all. It isn’t a fair, meritocratic process. In my observations over the past 7 years, it has become less meritocratic. These students are quite capable students but not the academic standouts at BS.
To a young person of 17/18, these observations are fresh and may be among their first experiences in dealing with the unfairness in life. My older, more jaded self takes this as no surprise.