<p>Do you have the top 10 Canadian boarding schools as well?</p>
<p>i also agree with hdm245. it is not reliable to base your decision on numbers. when i was browsing my options, i saw these rankings, and i decided that they were not worth my time. of course, it is good to see the top 30 schools from the list above, to get some idea of the schools that have prestige. other than that, it really depends on your personal preference.</p>
<p>i would suggest to jonathan that he not base his decisions on these statistics. for example, st. paul's may be ranked #1, but i discovered that i did not like it as much. i thought the students were somewhat snobby, and i did not like the fact that it was composed solely of boarders. there is more depth to the school than its college matriculation.</p>
<p>really, the goal of boarding school is not to be planning ahead for college. you could do just as well at a public high school, work really hard, and get accepted into harvard/yale/princeton.</p>
<p>i really discourage jonathan from relying on stats too much. otherwise, he will find himself with a handful of schools that he does not like. it is a bad way to go about applying to boarding school.</p>
<p>I'm not relying on stats.</p>
<p>I've like St. Paul's from the beginning. It was the first school that really appealed to me. They have many, many courses and weekly Saturday classes and a ton of ECs. A huge campus and an extremely high average SAT score. With that said, this is one of my top two choices.</p>
<p>I also like Andover. It seems more like my style. Lots of AP courses, an amazing history, and of course, the competition. :)</p>
<p>Next year, if I get accepted into either of these schools (which I doubt), I would be thrilled.</p>
<p>Edit - After reading some comments about Andover on boardingschoolreview.com, it's making me want to go there more and more. lol</p>
<p>
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**Lots of AP courses
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**</p>
<p>How odd that you would use this standard to judge a school where most faculty have the ability to teach courses to a much higher level and AP.</p>
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I'm not relying on stats
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extremely high average SAT score
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</p>
<p>Is an average SAT score not a statistic?</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
Lots of AP courses
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</p>
<p>How odd that you would use this standard to judge a school where most faculty have the ability to teach courses to a much higher level and AP.
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</p>
<p>Very true. At my private high school, only math, language, and comp sci offered "AP" courses. The others had "Advanced" courses that, according to the school, met or exceeded the rigor of an AP course. I felt inclined to believe the school, given that the majority (as in over 50%) of kids who took those courses and then took the AP got 5s.</p>
<p>hdm245, No! matriculation is not the way to choose a school. NONONONONO! I only sent it because the thread was talking about matrics. I will say this, most of the kids on these threads (boarding school), are certainly looking at the matrics. Makes no sense to me. I really think this is more a northeast phenomenon.</p>
<p>JonathonK, something tells me you have been very selective in your reading of schools on boardinreview. How do you know that Blair, or St. Andrews, or Govenors academy are better suited for you? Matrics and Halo effect need to be banned. lol</p>
<p>matric numbers also don't tell the story of legacies, URM, athletics, etc.</p>
<p>When I said stats I meant college matriculation.</p>
<p>SAT scores are important. Why is wanting to go to school that has a high average bad?</p>
<p>Like I said before, I've look at tons of schools on the web. (Cate, Choate, Deerfield, Milton, St. Paul's, Exeter, Andover, etc.)</p>
<p>I felt that SPS and specifically Andover were more my style like I explained before.</p>
<p>despite all of my readings on this board (the archived threads) and boardingschoolreview.com, i couldn't really decide which school i liked the best until i visited it. even after seeing the different campuses and meeting the students, i have a hard time deciding which ones i prefer.</p>
<p>anyway, good luck with your decision-making.</p>
<p>Thanks. :)</p>
<p>Apply to all the schools that you can, that way you have options. Then visit every school again that you get accepted to. Go with your gut feel. Go to one you know you will enjoy the WHOLE environment. Since you want to go to a ivy school, consider this: you should be in the top 10% of your class! If you can't be there at a bs, find a school that you can! I recommend Western Reserve Academy, just out of cleveland. Its not in the top 10, but it is a great school!!</p>
<p>Thank you for your reccommendation, but I actually prefer Cranbrook to WRA, which is only about fourty minutes away. I much rather go to one of my top choices for academics, rather than my top choice for close proximity.</p>
<p>...........</p>
<p>we dont mean that its wrong to like a school with good stats. we're saying dont get hooked up on them. the school that fits you may not necessarily have the highest SAT average, or best HYP matriculation. just because many ppl flourish at one school does not necessarily mean YOU will. and a school where many ppl are so-so may be just the place where YOU can succeed.</p>
<p>like i explained on a pm, at first, i was like you - totally hooked up on stats and everything, and thats how i put my favorite schools - favorite was the school that looked nicest on paper. then i visited the schools, looked carefully at the students, blah blah blah, and changed my top choices; i saw MPS, and it didnt have a glorious campus like choate, and as good as academics, but something about it made me bring it all the way up - right now its tottering a little over choate. i thought it was because mps reflected me. </p>
<p>it comes down to your gut feeling and which school fits YOU.</p>
<p>Hopefully I can visit these schools this summer to get a feel of how the schools really are.</p>
<p>If you really want to get as good a feel as you can at the schools you're interested in, I strongly suggest visiting them while the school is in session, and there are kids milling about that you can observe and converse with. The campus alone cannot show you the true nature of the school.</p>
<h1>of ap's is a poor measure of the education that a school can offer. My school is among the top 20 schools in the country in terms of # of ap's offered, however my school is considering shrinking this number because teachers complain that teaching to a test (tests that seniors generally could care less about, unless they are overly concerned with course placement in college) is neither satisfying to them as educators nor helping to create curious students.</h1>
<p>I would also like to suggest that when considering boarding schools, you consider them not simply as day schools that because of their boarding programs offer more intensive academics (glorified day schools). The education I've received at my boarding school has been half challenging and enriching academics, and half an education that extends far beyond the classroom. So look beyond stats and college placement... look at mission statements, look at students, look at graduates, look at school traditions, look at alumni giving even, but don't let a boarding school search be so one dimensional.</p>