<p>I have heard that Exeter is math and science, Milton is more liberal arts, SPS is humanities and foreign languages, etc.</p>
<p>I'm new to this boarding school thing, so what I'm asking is, are these "stereotypes" accurate?</p>
<p>Like any stereotype they oversimplify much more comprehensive and nuanced information. Exeter might attract larger numbers of math and science oriented students, anecdotally speaking, but Andover will boast that it has some of the most demanding physics offerings of any U.S. high school. And SPS may get props for humanities and foreign languages, but it's not as if that means that the math offerings are too limited to accommodate the brightest high school math students.</p>
<p>In short, I wouldn't make any decisions that affect my high school career on the basis of stereotypes. You'll still need to boil down less-than-perfect information into generalized decisions, but you should take some control over the information-gathering process and handpick the filters and weighted measures that are used to reach your own simplified "yes, I'll apply there" and "no, I won't apply there" decisions. </p>
<p>You can take that information under advisement as long as you're constantly looking at it with a jaundiced eye and remain ever open to dismissing it as flawed. Buying in to the universally-shared stereotypes -- whether they're about boarding school or anything else -- is to delegate your critical thinking skills to total strangers. And that, in a word, is ignorance.</p>
<p>All three are such amazing schools that we are splitting some very fine hairs here. That said, it does seem that SPS, being smaller and attracting fewer hard core math types, has a less flexible program for those rare students who are exceptionally strong math students by their lofty standards. At Exeter it appears easier for such students to mix and match the math courses that they need to fill in the gaps before diving in to college level math. SPS's humanities and history program is unbelievable. In the future, I suspect many other schools will copy it, if they can find teachers with the ability and commitment.</p>
<p>I think there's a very funny page of lightbulb jokes that run on each of the schools... some stereotypes are more true than others and I feel that academically each school is what you make it of it. It's high school so there's really no need to start considering which has the strongest "department" in this or that. As afan said, it's really just splitting hairs at that level.</p>