<p>andoverwarrior /agreed</p>
<p>wow, those ratings are surprising!</p>
<p>@billie are you attending bs? If so which one and what year. You seem very bitter about HADES school.</p>
<p>Being still a teenager, maybe you don’t know or understand that it is possible to tell if a some children will be “Ivy” material at age 12, even earlier. But understand, all kids that are of this material are not interested in the Ivys. Many kids and parents, especially on this forum are obsessed with the Ivys but not all of us.</p>
<p>As an adult, parent and a college educator I have seen and dealt with many different types of kids in my 20 years of interaction. No disrespect to you but understand you just dont have all the years of experience that may of us have. Take a little time to read and listen and a litle less time attacking.</p>
<p>Saying “typical asians” was an insult to me and I am very far from being asisan.</p>
<p>Your viewpoint is just that, yours. We all have different viewpoints and opinions.</p>
<p>Yes i am going to BS next year I am going to one in Canada. I think Exie is just a very proud father what dad wouldnt say " my 12 year old daughter is IVY league stuff" like come on any parent would say that but honestly thats a joke, and a fat chance. I actualy love HADES schools i think there awesome my favorite one is SPS!!</p>
<p>I think Exie is a mother not a father.</p>
<p>Then she must be a very dominant one!</p>
<p>Woah there, guys! Hold your horses! :)</p>
<p>I think we all understand that rating BSs is a controversial topic here on CC. In my personal opinion, rating BSs is not necessary, nor is it a good idea. But for those of us who insist on rating schools, I have a proposal: Instead of rating each individual school by giving it a number, people could rate schools based on what teir they’re in. All the schools in the first teir are the best, all in the second teir are the next best… Etc. The reason I think this is the way it should be is because each school has a distinct personality, which may appeal to some and not others. By rating schools based on teir, any student could find a school that would be academically challenging for them, as well as a good fit in other ways. For example, Middlesex and Andover are both top teir institutions, but they are very different. Middlesex is small, Andover is large. Middlesex is younger, Andover is older. They each have qualities that the other lacks, but are both top schools. It would be terrible to see a bright student who really needed to go to a small school to reach his/her full potential go to Andover instead of Middlesex just because Andover was rated #1 and Middlesex #2. It would also be sad to see a bright student cooped up in Middlesex when they really needed to attend a larger school like Andover to reach their full potential just because Middlesex was rated #1 and Andover #2. See what I mean?</p>
<p>1
Phillips Exeter Academy</p>
<p>2
Phillips Academy Andover</p>
<p>3
St. Pauls</p>
<p>4
Deerfield Academy</p>
<p>5
Groton School
6
Choate Rosemary Hall</p>
<p>7
Lawrenceville Academy</p>
<p>8
Hotchkiss School</p>
<p>9
Milton Academy</p>
<p>10
Middlesex School </p>
<p>11
Concord Academy</p>
<p>12
St. Mark’s School</p>
<p>13
Taft School</p>
<p>14
Loomis Chaffee</p>
<p>15
Thatcher</p>
<p>16
Cate School</p>
<p>17
St. Andrews</p>
<p>18
Peddie School</p>
<p>19
Mercersburg Academy</p>
<p>20
Emma Williard</p>
<p>21
Woodberry Forest School</p>
<p>22
Episcopal High School</p>
<p>23
Webb school (CA)</p>
<p>24
Miss Porter’s School</p>
<p>25
Blair Academy</p>
<p>26
Westminster School</p>
<p>27
Asheville School</p>
<p>28
Hill School</p>
<p>Sorry about the sloppiness of my earlier post, guys! I wrote it from a blackberry, which didn’t work out so well. :P</p>
<p>I think I managed to get my main point across though. 
Hooray for tier rating! With it, everyone’s happy! People who like rating schools in general are pleased because schools are placed into categories based on their statistical data, and people who say schools should not be rated, but assessed based on their character are content because schools can and will be assessed on a more personal level due to the fact that the concept of assigning a number to a school determining its worth has been diminished. Talk about compromise!</p>
<p><em>EDIT</em>
Wow… I just read what I wrote a minute ago. I really sound like a salesperson advertising a product or something… @_@</p>
<p>This is silly everyone knows how prestigious and grand schools like Exeter, St Pauls, Hotchkiss, Groton etc are. What is the point of ranking them?</p>
<p>And plus it is the learning experience you get that is the point of going to a school, especially an elite prep school.</p>
<p>let’s face it guys, all these schools are 99% likely to be better than the public high schools we attend now…</p>
<p>Stats tell important things about schools, e.g. financial strength (endowment), FA prospect (percentage of student body on FA and FA budget), class size, numbers of course offerings, clubs and sports, admission competitiveness (admit rate) and “popularity” (yield), percentage of graduates ending up in certain types of colleges, etc. They are incapable of telling you the campus feel, the sort of interaction between students and with the faculty, whether YOU will feel comfortable and fulfilled and what YOU will get out of the experience… Are stats useful? You bet. Can you rely totally on them to make decisions on where to apply and where you should go? Absolutely not. </p>
<p>Our human brains are structured the way that they like certainties and order, so some sort of ranking is helpful in that regard. If you want to rank, use a single measurement each time and come up with a list of rankings instead of an overall one, because as “amaturs” we just can’t pull it off and others would question your overall ranking. For example, a ranking based on endowment per student, a ranking of admit rates… etc. By looking at those rankings, you get useful information of a school relative to peer schools. Don’t rank a school as #1 overall or #13 overall. That’s just not convincing - how can you be sure one school is #27 and the other is #28, without some systematic scoring method? You CAN get a sense what “tier” a school belongs to though. For example, GLADCHEMS are considered top tier. Usually that’s all you need to know as for the relative strength of a school rather than whether the school is #2 or #4. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>Yeah, #2 and #4 are NO different on paper. Please stop talking about the “one and only” best BS!
Rankings can be useful in your initial search, let’s say, #4 and #44 are…somewhat different.</p>
<p>Benley’s post above hits the point spot on. The rankings that we naturally want to determine with respect to boarding schools (and lots of other things) do serve a very valuable purpose. That being said, it’s crucial to be careful about how one interprets and utilizes any such rankings. Don’t imbue them with any more meaning than they deserve. On the other hand, draw from them the constructive information they do impart.</p>
<p>In my opinion bump Hotchkiss up above Groton and the list is perfect. But really, the rankings of boarding schools depend on who the person is and what they’re looking for.</p>