Deliberating between SPS and Andover

Prep School Admissions
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Hello CC - as we’re approaching A10, I feel like I’m struggling a little with deciding on the school I’d like to attend.

Out of a few schools I was admitted to for the 2023 prep school admissions cycle - I’ve whittled it down to two, SPS and Andover, for top choice schools I would want to attend this fall. Importantly, I’ll be entering as a sophomore, not a freshman.

I hope to get a few things out of my time in HS. I certainly want to build a strong community around me, and have a chance to shine at the institution I attend. I’m willing to put in the work to excel, but I understand that at these schools, a full A+ report card isn’t possible, and I’m cool with not always meeting my expectations. I want a chance to do well in a range of extracurriculars - not so much sports and the arts as these aren’t really my strengths, but more so speech and debate, and science/mathematics.

After attending revisits, I’ve been able to get a feel of the schools, and uncover both the positive and negative. SPS to me seemed like family, everyone knew each other, and everyone seemed content and happy in classes, in the lunch room, and beyond. Although the campus facilities and student life seemed excellent, I don’t want to undermine the recent scandal it had, with incidents as recent as 2019, and the fact they are exiting their 5 year oversight agreement with the NH attorney general - I’m left wondering about the reverberations of the scandal.

Andover felt drastically different on revisit - people seemed rather tired, un-talkative, and the community was insular (people said ‘hello’ much less to me, for example). A faculty member at Andover in a panel also commented (not word-for-word) “we understand students are going through lots of stress, and now we’re able to diagnose students with the correct medication.” While both of the institutions were liberal (and I’m okay with that!), Andover is a much more liberal institution, and almost every faculty present in panel meetings had a point about diversity, quotas, etc. But at the end of the day, Andover does send around 15% of graduates to HYPSM, compared to around 9% at SPS, and the accountability associated with Phillips Academy assures almost instant credibility.

I had a few questions for CC:

  • Are the effects of the SPS scandal still standing? Would it affect my day-to-day life if I were to attend?
  • Would any school be more favourable in terms of acclimatisation and integration as a new sophomore? I do know that Andover adds more people for G10, which they can do because of the larger school size.
  • This is a smaller part of my decision making but I’m also looking to enter a strong university following my prep school experience. Would Andover better set me up to be a strong college candidate as seen in the higher HYPSM matriculation?
  • The Andover endowment is almost double of SPS’s (to be fair, the student body is also twice as large at Andover), does this show in the day-to-day quality of education and facilities they can provide to students?
  • Athletics isn’t my main strength, and while I’m more than happy to participate, will any school require a higher amount of devotion to sports that may take away from other extracurricular opportunities?
  • Andover is much more liberal than SPS, and while I’m totally in agreement with this stance, I don’t enjoy it becoming a defining feature of the school, as was true in the faculty revisit speeches.
  • I completely understand I’m going to face stress at both SPS and Andover (and at the end of the day, that’s a main reason I applied to prep school), but from the classes I attended, Andover is quite a bit more rigorous, challenging and competitive. Does this create worn out and unhappy students?

Both of the schools are excellent institutions, and have courses and programs that are appealing to me, and are, without doubt, miles ahead of the school I’m in right now. It may come down to a coin flip between SPS and Andover at this point!

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I would advise you not look to matriculation data for any insight. It’s data, not information. There are legacies/double legacies, recruited athletes, donor$, facbrats, etc. among the admits. Unless you can control for this (which you cannot unfortunately bc neither school shares that data) then it won’t be meaningful. As people often say here, colleges and universities admit students, not schools.

Congratulations on having two great choices regardless!

I will say, as a PA parent, that some of the things you cite about PA aren’t off the mark. That said, my kids would “do it again” despite the negatives you observed. So with that said, go with your gut. Re-reading your post, I get the sense that your heart is pulling you in a particular direction (which may or may not align with what your head is telling you). Trust that.

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Either school will set you up well for where you are meant to be, and neither will impede you from the tippiest toppest uni if you are their cup of tea.

With that said, I think you like SPS more.

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My understanding is that Andover’s non-athletic extracurriculars are highly competitive, while some of St. Paul’s (debate, for example) are not as so.

While the SPS scandal to which you referred is perhaps the most prominent, virtually all of the boarding schools have these sorts of things in their past. From what I’ve been told by a person very much in the know, SPS seemed “down” the year or three after the scandal, but now that none of the current students were there when it broke, it’s not part of the current ethos there.

SPS is an incredibly well-funded institution in absolute terms and relative to its student body. Not an issue between the two schools.

SPS is likely a great school, with plenty of very smart students, but easier to shine than at Andover.

Andover’s curriculum reflects what the faculty wants to teach, while SPS has an interesting, integrated humanities/social sciences curriculum that seems to work well and covers more of what one might expect a high school education to cover.

I think you haven’t really addressed what may be the most important distinction between the two schools: Andover is college-lite, with a much bigger student body and less monitoring, while SPS, all-boarding, appears to watch over the students more closely (especially after what happened historically). Which do you and your parent(s) want?

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Great points. SPS is less than half the size of PA in terms of total enrollment, among other distinctions.

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Thanks so much for the insight everyone! And I do agree that matriculation isn’t a massive part of the picture, as compared to everything else.

Big-school vs small-school was a big thing that came up when I spoke with AOs, students etc. But since I come from a school of 2500ish, all of these numbers are comparatively small :grinning:, and I (personally) think that this wouldn’t be a distinguishing factor on my success.

And while I feel like SPS would be a better home in general for me just because of the happier and (seemingly) more stable community, it seems like Andover is more widely recognised and better ranked (#1 in almost every ranking).

Andover is more academically rigorous in my opinion and would be able to foster my non-athletic interests better (I’d only be able to do debate for one out of three terms at SPS, but every term at Andover for example), on the flip side though, if I don’t pass trials for the more competitive Andover extracurriculars, I’ll be at a dead end. The over liberalism, and approaches like giving medicine to stressed kids, still bothers me at Andover though.

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I wouldn’t consider at all any perceived reputational or name recognition difference between the 2.

Vast majority of people in the US (and world) has never heard of neither school. The subset of people who know about prep schools, will have heard of both 95% of the time. I am oversimplifying, but not as much as you might think IME. I actually saw a college admissions group the other day and person didn’t know that “prep school” was a HS.

If you think giving meds to HS students for anxiety is rare, you are VERY much mistaken. This is not rare at LPS or private school at least in higher income communities. as a health issue, it is rarely discussed though!.

And the “Extreme” liberalism you perceive may be just regional or your own personal experience. My spouse and I both work at different corporations and pronouns are common practice-- default in signatures on email. We spend lots of time to consider equity in processes for hiring and supervision, etc. :person_shrugging:

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Your observations about Andover are incredibly insightful. My child graduated from there last year. Go with your gut, not statistics or name. Where do you feel like YOU would be most happy?

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That all said, go where you think you will thrive! I know that is hard to discern, sometimes, but your gut on this one may be insightful.

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OP, you may want to peruse this:

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Endowment per student is not higher at Andover, from my memory.
I think you are getting some good advice here. I do think a big difference is the “college light” versus “classic boarding school” culture.
As many have pointed out, I would not split hairs on the college matriculation because you really can’t parse out the impact of other factors such as legacy, athletics, etc. Also: I personally think that the real gift of high school is who you become, not where you go at the end of it. You can go anywhere from anywhere in my experience.
go with your gut – you visited and breathed in the air.
In case you don’t see it – you seem to prefer SPS from where I sit.

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My daughter felt the exact same way you did about Andover on her revisit day on Monday. She just said the students didn’t seem happy to be there. It was her first choice too. She loved Exeter and we visit SPS tomorrow. Sadly Exeter wasn’t very generous with the financial aid.

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@Monkies… sent you a message.

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Spent a good hour going through this, very helpful! Wish SPS did a similar survey.

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Your point that name should not have a big part in the decision is definitely true.

However, Andover’s name is significantly more well known than that of any other boarding school in the world, with the possible exceptions of Exeter, Eton, and Hogwarts. As a personal example, my family and I have known about Andover and Exeter years and years. The only reason we know of St. Paul’s is this forum. Nothing against SPS, but the fact is that those names are more well known than a lot of colleges.

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Fair enough, the 95% overlap of name recognition is probably an exaggeration (I do agree Andover is likely better known though doubt there are polls on this;). I still stand by that the difference is a very very tiny number of people in grand scheme of things. And where you one goes to HS rarely matters once you are adult*. The odds of it mattering in any real way are slim. (I think you probably agree with that).

*You own school’s alumni connections may help at some point. So comparing the “loyalty” of alums between schools may be more of a factor than external name recognition… and still very minor…

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There is no wrong answer here. I agree with previous posters that the big difference is 531 students and 100% boarding, versus 1,149 students and 74% boarding. I know they both seem small to you, but that is a pretty big difference in student body size and it will likely affect how you interact with the school day-to-day.

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For those that matter - college admissions officers - each and every one of them will know SPS.

The people outside of AO’s that don’t know SPS will also be unable to correctly name all Ivy League universities.

Name recognition and college matriculation should not be parameters for choosing a boarding school.

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I agree with the last sentence, and with the fact that people who matter know both. However, the statement about SPS/Ivy Leagues is just untrue. Again, no one we talked to about boarding schools (that wasn’t familiar with BS) knew any schools except for E/A. And they definitely knew all the Ivies. Maybe the dynamic is different on the East Coast, but I’m speaking from experience in other parts of the country and other countries. Anyways, none if this matters, none of the names help much at all anymore.

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Very much concur. Though both smaller than your current school, these are two very differently sized schools. You even observed that everyone at SPS seemed to know one another. That’s actually possible at SPS…certainly within a given year. At PA…much less likely.

Combined with the relative proximities to various kinds of other stuff (civilization, nature), % of boarders/day, etc. I think these things will really impact your experience. Only you can say which is a better fit.

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