<p>I’m extremely confused as well.</p>
<p>19 Doctorates
65 Masters (46 ONLY Masters)
114 Bachelors (49* ONLY bachelors)</p>
<p>I guess I forgot to subtract 19 from 65 to find the teachers with only masters and then subtract that number(46) and the number of doctorates (19) from 114 instead of subtracting 65 and 19 from 114. </p>
<p>It seems like simple math but the way they wrote it made it seem overly confusing.</p>
<p>You don’t need a masters to get a doctorate. You can do that directly after your bachelors. So there is no double-counting. On another Deerfield page which I posted below they said they have 70% of the teachers with a.d. It is silly to compare Nobles at the same level as Deerfield. Magazines may do it to sell but we know better.</p>
<p>Pulsar-It would be unusual to find a PhD without a masters degree. It’s standard to earn one along the way, often at the same institution where you’re doing your doctorate. Trust me, I worked in a graduate department for many years. If you don’t believe me take a look at the faculty biographies on Deerfield’s website. You may find one or two PhDs without the lower degree but not more. </p>
<p>What you may find is a few faculty members with JDs or MDs who do not have an MA.</p>
<p>As to Nobles, you may prefer Deerfield, but to call comparing the two silly is, shall we say, silly? According to matriculationstats.org Nobles has stronger college placement than Deerfield. Both are great schools.</p>
<p>Deerfield be mighty, mighty confused. </p>
<p>Pulsar found a spot on the website listing the percentage of faculty members with advanced degrees at “over 70 percent”. </p>
<p>I just looked at Deerfield’s “Teaching at Deerfield” page on the same site and found this:</p>
<p>“The Teaching Faculty is exceptional…Almost half have advanced degrees and all are involved in every aspect of the school.”</p>
<p>It just means they have to update the web content. If you have the time, you can count the individual faculty degrees available online you will find close to 70% with advanced degrees. Nevertheless, Nobles is good for the body (athletic?) and Deerfield to the mind (
).</p>
<p>^^And yet, Nobles has higher SAT scores than Deerfield ;-)</p>
<p>I’m perfectly willing to believe 70% of Deerfield’s faculty has an advanced degree. What I find amazing is that Deerfied itself is publishing the lower number (42%) and released it to Forbes. Clearly they didn’t fire a quarter of their faculty members in the last year and replace them with better educated teachers!</p>
<p>Maybe it’s not a worthwhile metric? How does a doctorate improve a pedagogue? Can anyone define its worth in two sentences? </p>
<p>And, am I supposed to take seriously an article on this topic which misspells cr</p>
<p>DAndrew,</p>
<p>Sorry to have jacked your thread…</p>
<p>To get back to your original topic, I agree that each has its plusses and minuses. A top local day school can have as much or more racial and economic diversity as a top boarding school. What a day school can’t provide to the same extent as a BS is a student body with a more diverse world experience. No kids from Iowa, Tehran or Mexico.</p>
<p>Another disadvantage to day schools is the commuting time. Time which could be spent playing or studying is instead spent stuck in traffic. </p>
<p>One advantage to a day school I hadn’t considered until it came up at a school visit was that elite athletes at day schools can continue to play on elite/club teams which tend to have a higher calibre of play and coaching than even the most competitive prep school teams. </p>
<p>Day students can also more easily continue with outside activities not offered at school. If you have a kid working on his pilot’s license or taking Farsi you’re going to have a tough time arranging for those activities to continue at a BS.</p>
<p>Some kids are ready to board. Others who think they’re able to handle things without Mom and Dad are not. A friend brought her son home from BS after he dropped 20 pounds his first semester. He just wasn’t eating and sleeping properly.</p>
<p>
That’s very true, and something worth serious consideration.</p>
<p>There are relatively few places that offer day schools that can compete academically with the top boarding schools, but NYC is definitely one of them. My son is now a senior at one of the Forbes top-ranked NYC day schools and neither he nor we ever really had any interest in boarding school. He was happy staying in the city for high school and we were happy to have him with us for another four years before shipping him off to college. </p>
<p>As a result, we obviously don’t have direct experience with boarding school, but our son does have a few friends who went off to top boarding schools and he is convinced that the education he’s getting is at least equal to the education they’re getting. The boarding schools have an edge in terms of facilities that the day schools can’t match. But it’s hard for me to imagine a faculty better than the faculty at my son’s school. We’ve also been happy (actually pleasantly surprised) with the diversity at his school - his circle of friends includes black, hispanic, asian and indian students - and there is even some economic diversity (about 20% of the class receives financial aid). Finally, I think Sue22 is right about outside resources, at least in a place like NYC. I won’t be specific about some of the things my son has done, as I don’t want to out him, but he has had access to opportunities in the city that he never would have had at a boarding school.</p>
<p>The OP’s question is the one keeping me awake at night. I’m hoping the decisions coming out soon will help with that choice, but I don’t want to look back with regret whichever we choose. And, to be clear, it’s not all about the most rigorous school and access to Ivys, it’s about the most healthy environment for the development of my child.</p>
<p>How would you go about finding a school with a healthy environment for your child?</p>
<p>By touring a lot of prep schools over a 2 year period, talking to a lot of students, parents, teachers, alumni at these schools and asking thoughtful questions about what life is like on campus, particularly vs a local private day school. The students were eager to talk to us and they were thoughtfully honest when answering our questions. We asked difficult questions of headmasters that we would want to know before our child was to live in a different environment 24/7. Our child is not happy at their current day school. We’ve tried many different routes to address this, but the school has shown indifference. We are looking for a school that WANTS our child to be there, that will notice if they are having a bad day, that they are struggling in class, or applaud them when they excel in an area. Of course, we as parents are providing support, but we believe a school has a role to play in TRYING to bring out the best in each student. Our child lights up when talking about boarding school, and comes home in a funk from the top-rated private day school. I know that the current environment is not healthy for our child, and the schools we visited were a breath of fresh air compared to the one our child is at.</p>
<p>eastwest, hope you will post decisions on March 10 or thereafter. I admire your pursuit of the factors you’ve identified as critical, and will hope to see the choices you found next month. Expect to do the same, myself.</p>