Just another question for pre-season athletes and parents. The email they gave me provided me with only a little bit of information, and I have to ask, on the first day of pre-season, when does it start and what will I need to bring?
As I’m scrolling through CC I see lots of people who are very qualified (national swimming champions, international piano competition winners, and science olympiad winners), yet they get rejected. If I pick a random kid out of Exeter, will he/she have won this award and that championship? (Basically what I’m trying to say is, is everyone at Exeter a child prodigy?)
• Are purses allowed? I mean in the classroom, lunch room, etc.
• How many courses can you choose? And how many for each class?
• Whats a good dorm? I’ve heard of Amen being full of swimmers, or one being full of jocks but what is it like now 2019? What dorm has the friendliest people, what dorm is more relaxed, what dorm has people into creative or more academic stuff.
• What brands do people wear?
• Do you have free time? What amount of homework is there?
Those are all for now but will update when I have more. Thanks for reading this 
@eekeek far from it. The differentiating factors that I have seen in most kids at PEA over the years has not been awards or titles. Instead it has been self confidence, work technical and a love of learning. These qualities will help you in whatever passion you pursue- not just awards and titles.
• Are purses allowed? I mean in the classroom, lunch room, etc.
Yes- but most kids just use backpacks.
• How many courses can you choose? And how many for each class?
6 courses a trimester- usually Math, English, science, language, pe/sports and an elective
• Whats a good dorm? I’ve heard of Amen being full of swimmers, or one being full of jocks but what is it like now 2019? What dorm has the friendliest people, what dorm is more relaxed, what dorm has people into creative or more academic stuff.
Really all dorms have a wide variety of kids with varied interests. My daughter who just graduated, when asked if she could go back and choose a dorm now- would pick McConnell.
• What brands do people wear?
All- whatever your style is.
• Do you have free time? What amount of homework is there?
Yes, if you manage your time well. Homework amount depends on the class/level.
@eekeek Don’t worry! Exeter is not exclusively made up of geniuses and child prodigies! Everyone at Exeter is a human. People get in for different reasons, and for some it’s because they’ve gotten loads of accolades and awards and are ridiculously talented in one or two areas, but for a lot of people it’s that they’re just smart kids with interesting perspectives or a wide variety of things that they’re pretty good at.
@wildflower2019 Purses are allowed. You can take 5 courses plus gym/sports (plus health in some terms) per term. Sometimes you can do what’s called an “audit” in one of your later years, which is when you take a sixth course but not for credit. I don’t totally understand the last part of your question about classes, but if it’s about how many students per class, it’s usually anywhere from 9-14, average 12. What a good dorm is depends on what you want. Some dorms are much bigger than others, which is a factor for many people, and some have double or single rooms. Each dorm also has its own unique culture, but there are friendly people and artistic people and academic people and athletic people and people who fit more than one of those descriptions in every dorm. I believe there is a housing survey that comes out sometime over the summer for new students where they can select some of their preferences for their dorm, such as size, and they will be placed accordingly. Also, if your first-year dorm isn’t a good fit, you can request to switch to a different dorm the next year. People wear whatever brands they want; dresscode can be found in the E-book, which is both accessible through the school website and which has been linked somewhere upthread I believe. As for homework and free time, it depends on how you manage your time and what you choose to do for extracurricular activities. If you do no extracurricular activities, which I would not recommend, you will have a fair bit of free time. If you are in 25 clubs, three musical ensembles, and play a varsity sport, you will probably be overwhelmed. You have to figure out where your personal balance is, and part of that calculation is how much time you need to relax to stay sane. As for homework, if you’re a prep and you manage your time well, you can expect probably 2.5-5 hours of homework a night, also depending on what classes you take. For me, I use frees during the day to do some homework, and as a prep, I typically had another few hours of homework left at the end of the day. Because I get up early, I would often do some of this homework at night and some of it before breakfast, but I also had plenty of room in my schedule for extracurricular activities like clubs, music, and a religious community. If you play sports, you will probably have a bit less time; same goes for being involved in multiple high-commitment ECs such as MUN or debate.
Hope that helped!
How do you guys recommend preparing for the rigorous academics of Exeter over the summer? In my case, I’ve always been a ‘gifted’ student but in my past schools I’ve never had to work hard, do much homework, or study much to excel easily (though I do have pretty good study methods). Over the summer I want to make sure I’m prepared. Does anyone have any tips?
@CriminalMindsB I would recommend relaxing over the summer. Get plenty of sleep, spend time with your family and friends, do whatever it is that makes you happy. Everyone comes in from a different academic background; once you are in fact in classes, yes, do the homework, word hard, manage your time well, seek help if there’s something you’re struggling with, etc., but you’ll figure out which bridges you need to cross when you come to them, which will be in the fall. If you’re antsy for the start of school, make a list of books you want to read or shows you want to watch before school starts and work your way down the list. Don’t stress about being prepared. The school does an excellent job of helping new students calibrate and you’ll be fine.
I would rest for the summer, but prepare. Study lightly and make it fun! Maybe download an app that makes Math a game, or start glossing over what you’ll be learning in Exeter. You’ll have to study A LOT in Exeter and you don’t want to regret not taking a break while you could. Your mind can still be fresh but you don’t have to be tired of studying by the time school starts!
I can’t find anything on the website about this. I’m applying and wondering what they can do. Can 9th graders go and visit town with friends? Is it mainly clubs and sports? Homework?
Extra Question: How many clubs can you join?
I don’t think preps are limited from leaving campus, but I believe they have a different curfew. We actually live in Exeter and see PEA kids in town all the time. It’s also my understanding that weekends can be pretty busy because that’s when many of the clubs meet. I asked my tour guide about joining clubs, and her recommendation was to join a few you can really contribute to as opposed to signing up for a bunch. (Again, I don’t think there’s an actual limit.) Plus, you won’t know how much you can manage until school really gets going.
@MaylaSunshine Yes, preps and lowers have check-in at 8 on school nights (but it’s the same as everyone else’s on Friday and Saturday). I agree that being heavily involved in a smaller handful of clubs is probably better, but that’s not a reason to shy away from putting your name on a lot of email lists at ESSO openhouse and Club Night. (If I were to do one thing differently this past year, it might have been putting myself on more club email lists!)
Is Dr. Zuming Feng leaving Exeter??? I heard rumors about it from multiple people…
@fesgvgv I would hate to see that… He appears to be one of the most talented and prestigious math teachers there! With all due respect to the other teachers, of course.
Ok so like sorry for asking so many questions but what is dorm life like at Exeter? Are the dorms nice? Bugs? Are the walls thin? Also what are the personalities of each dorm?
Hi! I’m an incoming prep (just as I suspect many of you are).
After reading this thread, I gotta ask: how do you guys know some of these really specific things? Are we supposed to know all the different dorms? In full disclosure, I completely forgot most of their names after the Revisit Day except my host’s own dorm. I just put in mid-sized dorm on the housing survey not really knowing anything and y’all are giving me mad anxiety about this! And how do you hear about retiring teachers, much less know what they teach on sight? Am I really the only one who hasn’t been stalking the Exeter website for all of the summer so far? (And even that’s not completely accurate).
I’ve got an actual question now - who else can’t see their schedule? Around early June to mid June I was able to see my schedule, but I got an email about it today and now it won’t load! I think I have a digital copy somewhere, but I’m worried. Am I the only one having this problem?
@RedLioness When you say you can’t see your schedule now but you could before, do you mean your list of classes on Lionlinks or your class schedule on the online schedule (OLS)? If it’s the first one, I have no idea why, but you can’t see it on OLS it’s because no one can see their exact class schedule until like two days before the school year starts. As for knowing everything about the school before showing up, don’t stress! I definitely didn’t know the names of specific teachers or most of the dorms before I came. If you do want to see where the different dorms are, I think there’s a map of campus in the back of the E-book and you may find some other helpful info on this page ( https://www.exeter.edu/current-students ), but if you just want to enjoy your summer and not worry about that yet, that’s also totally valid and you’ll figure everything out pretty fast once you’re on campus.
@eekeek Because Exeter has 20-odd dorms/houses, there’s a lot of variation in the facilities depending on which one you live in. Each dorm also has a different culture, but it’s kind of hard to describe something as nebulous as a culture in a paragraph on an internet forum. As for how the dorms are set up: There are kids from each grade in each dorm. Most dorms are designated as a boys’ dorm or a girls’ dorm, but there are also two all-gender dorms. Each dorm has some proctors, who are seniors who help organize dorm events and just generally be student leaders for the dorm, and one or two student listeners, who are students who are trained to listen to and support peers, sort of like a student version of a counselor. Hope that helped!
@Ravenclaw3 I can’t see my list of classes on LionLinks. I’m grateful that I saw my classes beforehand, otherwise I’d be going stir-crazy for sure, but I’m worried about the other things that pop-up on LionLinks that I might not see…
OK, that’s a relief. I’ll just get to know the different dorms when I arrive, then. And I’ll definitely check out that link, thank you!
As we get closer, I’m more concerned about how students fit everything in. Every time we’ve heard students speak, they list about 15 clubs and activities they’re involved in. My daughter is currently very active, and we are constantly running up against scheduling conflicts. What happens if you want to be on the dance team and in a music ensemble, but they conflict? You have to give one up? This is slightly complicated by the fact that my daughter is a day student and, at least this fall, has an external activity one night a week.
@ProudDramaMama Part of the answer is that you do have to make some choices. Another part of the answer is that a lot of clubs are pretty low-commitment; sure, something like a dance club or a musical ensemble or MUN can be pretty time-consuming, but a lot of clubs (econ club, biology club, ESSO tutoring, etc.) are an hour a week or less. Some things (sports/dance co/chamber orchestra and choir) are built into the schedule. An off-campus commitment as a day stud is doable, but kind of a pain. Personally, as a day student I found on-campus equivalents to my earlier activities and quit for the school year the ones I couldn’t do on campus. However, it is possible to do something off-campus, though it will make your life considerably more complex.