<p>A deleted troll post (thanks, Benley, for clueing me in) and recent school visits have me wondering about this. How, as a parent, do you suss out the negative (and positive) aspects of a school's culture when all you have to go on is web sites and view books and tour guides and admissions officers who are making nice to you? </p>
<p>I went to a large public high school so I have some idea what that might be like for my kids. But I would really like to know what kind of culture they will be immersed in when they are away from me, and I get only the barest hints from all the above-mentioned sources. Help?</p>
<p>I have to say, this was the part I struggled with the most when we were looking. I still don’t have a real/concrete way to determine this. I used CC as much as possible, but since the schools we applied to were not the “most popular” ones mentioned it was of limited use.</p>
<p>I did find that when I posted questions about specific schools, I got enough comments to weed out the high and low opinions, and made my mind up based on the “common” comments… I also received PMs from people who may not have wanted to commit opinion to the boards. All were helpful.</p>
<p>I also used the search function, and went through threads backwards… sometimes starting years back – it was helpful to hear general comments about culture as well 0 many of the things I read were applicable to many schools… a common experience, I guess.</p>
<p>Good luck. Keep reading. Ask questions. That’s all I have to suggest!</p>
<p>Schools, like companies and people, have their own personalities. Some are very “type A” while others are a more laid back “type B”. The fit is individual and two kids from the same family may not fit well at the same BS.</p>
<p>In our case fit was very obviously <em>not</em> there for one of the best-known schools and very much there for others that were less well known. But the judgement call was not the school per se. For us fit is all about what will best leverage our kids’ personalities, goals, abilities, and learning styles so that they can achieve and feel good about themselves while doing so.</p>
<p>1) the interview logistics (how friendly, responsive, available were they), since they should be very much wanting you to apply at that point - if it is bad then, it will get worse.
2) Can you as a family meet with faculty in areas your child is passionate about? Do they let you go outside the “admissions bubble?” - most do. I also requested a quick moment looking through the door at a class very briefly, unannounced, during the tour - were half the kids asleep? Texting?
3) walk near random kids and smile. Do they smile back? Laugh? Run? Point and laugh? Or come over and ask if you are an applicant family (since you obviously are).
4) Do you feel you are being sized up for donor status when you enter admissions? Are they fawning over those who are displaying obvious wealth and ignoring the rest?
5) Do the students look happy?
6) Did you observe staff or teachers yelling at students?
7) Has the AO worked there very long?
8) Check out the food in the cafeteria.
9) school newspapers are very telling, and usually can be found online.</p>
<p>Once your child is admitted, on “revisit days” your child spends a day with a student (in class etc.) and you get to meet with people who very much want you to enroll. How do they present themselves, and the school? Is it a “country club atmosphere”, overly scripted, or open, transparent? What are the other admitted kids and parents like that you meet?</p>
<p>In our case, we KNEW, and thankfully all agreed on our choice. It has worked out well.</p>
<p>I think asking frank questions of non-tourguide students and non-Admissions adults (parents/teachers) is a good idea, even it if might feel impolite. I often ask people to tell me their least favorite thing about a given school…because everyone else is giving you the rose-colored picture.</p>
<p>Thanks, all. I will try all of the above if we are lucky enough to have revisit days. Part of my confusion comes from the fact that we started looking at schools with one child in mind and now have to backtrack and think how they might be for a very different child (while hoping that both kids could somehow end up at the same place).</p>
<p>Visit. Go to revisits, if possible. When you first request information from a school, do take the section which asks about the child’s interests seriously. For example, if your child is interested in crew, or dance, or writing, put it on the form before you visit the school. It makes it easier for the school to match child with interviewer or tour guide (if they do matching), and some schools give names to department heads for email contact. It can be very useful.</p>
<p>Most high schools enroll students with a variety of interests. Children make up their minds very quickly. If your musical daughter’s tour guide is a male baseball player, you might mistakenly think the culture’s not a fit.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t put too much stock in the opinions of people whose children don’t attend a school, unless they’re reputable consultants or have worked at the school. </p>
<p>Other resources: If there are yearbooks in the admissions office, read them. Some schools post chapel talks (or senior talks) online, either on their website, or sometimes on Youtube. Such talks can give you an idea of the students’ concerns. Any online review of a school must be taken with a grain of salt; they’re likely to be either students who were very, very happy, or students who have an axe to grind.</p>
<p>My son and I had the same issue when determining which school to apply.
You can also get some feel after the revisit, but that only happens when you are accepted. I would have liked to screen schools prior to the application process and it was very difficult to get more hands-on info on schools beyond the public info. </p>
<p>The best way is perhaps ask parents/students here in CC, or your friends whose child goes to the same school if any. I received great help from them. But at the end of the day when you need to decide to choose which school to apply/attend (mostly attend part), you need to rely to some degree on your gut feelings, I should say.</p>
<p>I do trust my gut quite a bit; we eliminated one very well-known school that way and found one that seems perfect for our daughter (her gut and mine agree ). But perfect for daughter doesn’t mean she’ll get in (or get sufficient FA) and says nothing about perfect for son or whether he’ll get in and vice versa. And I would really rather not apply to schools that I wouldn’t want to send them to. As Charlie Brown said back in the day: Aaaaaauuuugggghh! The only thing keeping me calm is that I would be perfectly fine with them ending up at the local public HS, so que sera, sera. Thanks for all the excellent suggestions.</p>
<p>It is hard to really get a feel for the place from a ‘snapshot’ experience, for sure. My daughter emailed with the tour guides from several schools, and asked a lot of questions – got very frank responses. And two schools gave me a list of current parents that I could call and ask questions of… and I did; it was helpful. The admissions offices have a list of parents who have volunteered to be called… and while you wouldn’t expect them to say negative things, I found the ones I spoke with to be very upfront with their answers. Nobody wants to see a kid come to school and be unhappy because it’s not the right fit.</p>
<p>Agree with 7dad and 2prepmom about the newspaper–but read a few editions of the actual newspaper, not the single articles posted on CC from time to time, as those tend to be very occasional, extreme events or opinions and aren’t usually reflective of the culture as a whole.</p>
<p>Here’s the Andover Phillipian link <a href=“http://www.phillipian.net%5B/url%5D”>www.phillipian.net</a> Also, if you look in the back issue of May 2013 you can take a look at the State of the Academy student survey about all aspects of life on campus although only half of the student participated. It covers everything from social, academic, sexual practices, drugs, drinking.</p>
<p>I also wonder about how regional culture affects our judgment when assessing schools. All five of the mid-Atlantic schools we have visited have felt very comfortable to me, whatever my overall opinion of them. Andover was the school we eliminated by gut feeling. Nothing concrete, just not for us.</p>
<p>One thing people outside the school should keep in mind when they read Phillipian is that this is a student-run newspaper with no censorship from the school administration. To run it similarly to a “professional paper”, negative or controversial news is naturally or justifiably highlighted or publicized. And for the “opinion” pieces, those who feel strongly about something may be the most vocal, and often times they are from teenagers caught up in the moment of venting mode. I think it’s a wonderful thing to have a student paper like that, but I also think people should read it with some perspectives. Having said that, <em>my personal opinion</em> is that if you feel you can’t handle the “negative” news and comments in the paper, this school may not be for you. As a matter of fact, many other boarding schools may not be either. To put a teenager 24/7 in a place full of teenagers for four years is to open the possibility of exposing him to this type of negatives ‘close range’. Be sure to make distinctions between “culture of a particular school” and “incidents that happen from time to time in boarding schools”.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this has anything to do with school culture or not, but I’m trying to discern how nurturing a school is. While I want my daughter to be more independent and self-reliant, I don’t want her to be left to her own devices and fall on her face in the 1st term. She will need time to adjust. Thoughts welcome. Thank you.</p>
<p>Oh no! The nurturing discussion is as infamous a thread as laundry… </p>
<p>In all seriousness, it’s a good question, but if you could define what kind of support you’d like to see, you will help us out a lot and avoid…well let’s not even go there!</p>
<p>I think that one way to get at the nurturing issue is to look at how the rules for 9th and 10th graders compare to the rules for 11th and 12th graders. At some schools, you’ll find a relatively even set of rules that apply to all grades (maybe with some extra perks for the seniors). At others, you’ll find more of a progression of freedoms and responsibilities as the kids get older – what time is lights out, where and when is study hall, how much time are they allowed to be away from campus, etc. I could have the progression slightly wrong, but for instance at Groton, it’s something like the kids start by having study hall every night in the main building supervised by teachers, then they move to having set study hours in their rooms, and then they move to being able to study wherever they choose around campus. A school that has this kind of approach seems to feel strongly that younger kids need more supervision and guidance, and so probably isn’t a sink or swim kind of a place. Also potentially relevant is how they divide kids among the dorms, many but not all schools divide by age. But at St. Paul’s, for instance, the dorms are mixed by grades, so each dorm will have a relatively even mix of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. Personally, although I can see some benefit of having the 9th graders have older students to look up to, I worried that for my child, he’d see the older kids goofing around more in the evenings and not get his work done. For him, I think it’s better to be with kids more his age who are all required to be in their rooms from 8-10 every night studying.</p>
<p>2prepMom’s thread #4 has some good practical advice:
We actually saw this happen and were very surprised to be witnessing such an open display of fawning in the admissions waiting room of a well-endowed school. The tour guide also spent an inordinate amount of the tour name-dropping about a famous alum and gossiping about which student got assigned to the alum’s former dorm room. These were all signals to us that our child would be a nobody at that school.</p>
<p>I think you will have a hard time finding any posters who will openly post anything NEGATIVE about their own school. The consequences of “maligning” the school could result in dismissal from the school.</p>
). But perfect for daughter doesn’t mean she’ll get in (or get sufficient FA) and says nothing about perfect for son or whether he’ll get in and vice versa. And I would really rather not apply to schools that I wouldn’t want to send them to. As Charlie Brown said back in the day: Aaaaaauuuugggghh! The only thing keeping me calm is that I would be perfectly fine with them ending up at the local public HS, so que sera, sera. Thanks for all the excellent suggestions.</p>