George School -- good option for serious student?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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We’re looking at boarding school for our son. He’s a serious student and self motivated. We like the IB curriculum.

I’d like to know more about the school environment as it seems quite different from what I’ve encountered elsewhere. Specifically –

  1. Does the school get too politicized in its “liberal” atmosphere? Would a student from a conservative background be welcomed, or is it more like “we’ll accept you as long as you agree with us 100%”?

  2. Students seem to have more freedom at George School as compared to other boarding schools. Be honest with me – do students mostly use this freedom wisely, or is there an undercurrent of partying or alcohol/drug use, more so than at other schools?

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Paging @gardenstategal and @SevenDad

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Are you considering other schools, too? Which? What are you looking for?

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As for serious students, yes, there are plenty here, and if your son likes the IB program, George doesn’t offer some of the easier ways to get the IBD that may be available elsewhere. This is a place that really wants students to love learning for its own sake and to take intellectual risks, so your son will find his people there - from all over the world. My interactions with students there have generally left me envious of the folks who get to work with them. Smart, funny, down to earth, kind kids.

The school has a reputation for being very liberal - and I think that is probably deserved - , but there are definitely kids there who are not, and honestly, I think the school would be excited for more diversity along those lines. (Kids in my son’s class applied to service academies, for example, which probably does not align with what you might expect at a Quaker school.) My son is not super liberal nor were many of his friends, yet he loved the community and his experience there.

Most students are responsible with their freedom. Some, though, are not. And it is not a one strike school, so kids who break rules get second chances. (But repeat violators are asked to leave. A kid who was expelled for drug use about 8 years ago, upon expulsion, went crazy posting about drugs at GS on social media as retribution. People still discover those posts, without context, and have concerns.) Overall, I don’t think it’s different from most BS (but I am a parent, so by definition, a bit clueless.) Fom what I hear from (possibly clueless) other parents in the area with kids at other schools, it may be tamer than several of the other private schools in the area with more affluent students but again, that opinion is based on conversations among parents and my kid’s friend group.

As everyone here knows, I am a fan of this school. The academics are great (which is pretty much par for the course at all the BS.) It honors all types of kids and gives them a lot of support to figure out who they are and to be the best version of themselves. The commitment to diversity, inclusion and community is rooted in the faith tradition of the school and is both long-standing and genuine. The faculty are caring. I think your sense that the environment is different from most BS is correct. For some, that’s really appealing while for others, not so much. I felt like George did a great job of preparing my kid to engage with the world in a way that was authentic to him.

If you have any other questions, I am happy to take a stab at them.

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This is 3rd hand with a sample size of 1, but I have a friend whose daughter graduated from George a couple years ago. Her experiences are in line with what @gardenstategal is reporting.

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@gardenstategal has covered most of what I would have said.

Here’s a link to a recent post about the school’s math team:
https://www.georgeschool.org/george-school-math-team-ranked-20th-in-nation/

As for academic rigor, my daughter (GS 2018 grad) is at a single-digit admission rate university and seems to be doing fine in adapting to a college workload.

I do want to comment on your question about whether the school is “too politicized”. The school (and the student body) definitely leans liberal…and this should be no surprise given the track record of Quakers in America. But part of their Quaker-ness also means that it’s a very welcoming environment. Moreso, IMO, than the average American BS. But I also think it that it’s a “meet halfway” thing…something to consider if you are going into the process with a “we’ll accept you as long as you agree with us 100%” mindset.

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@sevendad and @gardenstategal , thank you for your responses.

Regarding the “political” atmosphere, I don’t have any agenda myself and our family tends to be conservative on economic issues and more liberal on social issues. I am aware that Quakers, at least in the 19th century, were known as astute businesspeople, perhaps because of their testimony of integrity and perhaps because they did not take up government employment. I want to avoid placing my kids in an extreme politicized environment such as happens at some universities – like a social studies teacher praising present-day Venezuela as a model country of social justice, or someone preaching an extreme animal-rights agenda, or leading kids off to picket with a local antifa group. Does George School avoid this kind of stuff?

But beyond that, can you GS parents tell me about weekends for boarding students? I’m not very familiar with boarding school and in fact am only considering it due to a particular family circumstance. Do they have organized activities to do – or do kids head off to the house of whichever day student’s parents are away that weekend? What kind of adult supervision or oversight is available in the dorms?

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So, starting with the weekend question. There are lots of things to do on campus on the weekend, and in our experience, most of the day students end up back on campus for some part of the weekend rather than there being an exodus off of it. I think from a kid’s POV, it’s great to have a place to hang with your friends and to have some activities to do with them – indeed preferable to going to someone’s house and trying to figure out how to dodge the parents and find something to do. While there are often sporting events or theater productions on a weekend, there are also activities. The options for each weekend so far this year are on the website – go to the bottom of the home page and click Student, Campus Life, Weekend Activities. You’ll see that in the fall, this was everything from full day trips into Philadelphia to a Harvest weekend, late afternoon/evening trips into nearby New Hope, scavenger hunts, etc. Live music weekend in the winter is always a big event. With that said, DS used to just go play pick up sports with friends.

As for the slant in the classroom, it’s an education, not an indoctrination. I actually think that the curriculum is more “traditional” than progressive and is very much about having a solid foundation. If there is a “slant”, it really is about being tuned into the human experience. Literature classes might include works by Shakespeare, Bao Ninh, Fitzgerald, and Achebe. In other words, plenty of western classics, but not only those. Students are encouraged (expected) to think for themselves, so there really isn’t a particular view that’s promoted – I don’t think that there’s a good/bad dichotomy on anything – but there’s a big emphasis on critical thinking. (This is consistent with the IB and Theory of Knowledge, which btw, is also very popular with non-IB kids). As the former head used to say “There are many truths”. George does a good job of teaching kids how to hear those and hold several simultaneously which is something that I appreciated – we don’t live is a world where there are a lot of absolutes, so it’s good to be able to have opinions without dismissing everyone else’s. (DS is very diplomatic with me, for example!) . Remember too that many of the kids are taking AP and IB exams so are expected to have mastered certain topics (and not in a revolutionary way!) Because there is an emphasis on having a global world view, all freshmen take AP Human Geography-- not radical. It sounds like your own views wouldn’t be at odds – btw, IB Econ is very popular.

There are adults who live in the dorms, but i honestly don’t know what the supervision looks like (i.e., doors open, etc.) My sense was that the kids felt like they had a lot of freedom but that there were quite a few eyes on them. @SevenDad may be able to shed more light on dorm life (and has other schools to compare it to.)

9

Well, it’s not “leading kids off to picket with a local antifa group”, but about 300 students did take part in the national gun safety walkout this past Spring as part of a student-led initiative.

I’m not trying to unsell you on George, btw. I just want to make sure you know that this is not some mini Liberty University. My daughter was a voluntary (meaning not for academic or discipline reasons) Junior transfer and we have zero regrets about sending her to George.

Now, going back to your question about weekends…I think my daughter’s experience is fairly unique in that she was often off campus on weekends (at least part of one of the days) due to non-scholastic sports training and competition. That said, I do think that GS does try to program enough things to do for boarders on the weekends. I know Live Music Weekend is a highlight of the year.

I personally think George enjoys a very enviable location…the charming downtown area of historic Newtown, PA is very walkable, and a local supermarket and some restaurants are an even shorter walk away (across a street). Philadelphia is very close by train or car and NYC is not too far either. There is usually (always?) a local trip available …like going to the Oxford Valley mall or even just to the Chick-Fil-A on the other side of Newtown (also walkable, but on the far side of things).

One thing that can’t be discounted is the campus itself. It is really quite beautiful and has great facilities (including an Athletics Center on par with or superior to those of many of the “bigger name” schools)…and I’ve been to a number of BS on visits over the years. So it’s no hardship to stay on campus itself. And it’s not unheard of for day students to go to campus to visit with friends and/or work on projects on weekends.

Do some kids get up to shenanigans occasionally? Yes. They are, after all, teenagers. But I think GS is no worse and probably a little better than most BS in this regard. It’s definitely better than the school my daughter transferred from.

If you haven’t seen this thread I created after my older daughter went through the process, it’s probably worth reviewing. 7D1 was and still is a very serious student who will graduate with a Chemical Engineering degree in the Spring and is currently applying to PhD programs…so I think we had similar goals for her as you do for your son, at least from an academic POV.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/1174214-one-family%C2%92s-bs-search-and-application-process-%C2%97-start-to-finish-p1.html

Best of luck with the process and let us know if you have any other questions.

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Hello - we briefly looked into George for one of my kids. The campus is beautiful. But one thing that caught my attention during the visit was that George offers both the IB and AP curriculums.

Completing the full IB curriculum is well recognized for its rigor. However I’ve heard that some students like to mix IB and AP courses. The mixing doesn’t go well for those who want to get the IB diploma. If your child wants to study in Europe, then the IB curriculum can’t be beat. Some UK universities allow the AP in lieu of IB. There are some slight differences between the IB and AP curriculum (take HL maths for example – it is a bit more advanced than Calc BC).

But these differences are rather minor. Unless your child is aiming for the IB diploma, it doesn’t really matter much.

11

One thing I want to mention based on the OP’s OP…don’t think that just because a school does not offer IB program that it is any less rigorous. Also, note that some schools don’t really do the AP thing because they don’t believe in “teaching to the test” but can offer a similar amount of rigor…and by and large the college admissions people know what’s up.

My daughter initially planned to do the full IB (which starts Junior year) but opted out when she realized that it would mean taking a subject she had already taken at her previous high school, where IIRC, it was handled as a two-year class. While I am a fan of IB, it can be restricting.