@mommysmalls - the grade distribution post (see way above) was a screen shot from the school’s website. Schools post their school profile and (I believe )most (if not all BS’s) post their grading rubric or quartile on their websites. The matriculation stats should also be on the websites - although many schools have it over a several-year period. It seems 5 years. Sometimes these states are embedded in the College Advising page and sometimes on other pages within the school website. I wish someone had told us about grading! Yes, I think it would make a difference now that I have lived through it.
I do think my son might have had an easier college admissions process if he’d just gone to our local (inner city) public school, but the flip side being that there is no way he would have been as prepared as he is now for college. I went to an Ivy and tutored a lot of athletes and valedictorians from public schools that were struggling, I never felt that despite not being the top of my BS class.
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@Golfgr8 ? Did you mean to reply to someone else?
Are you finding that the grading at Deerfield has negatively impacted your child’s college advising process thus far? Do you feel that your child has been pushed toward a list of schools that is not appropriate? And is that list similar to what all students there are getting, because they’re all being similarly impacted negatively by the grading system?
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Interesting to read and learn.
Unimportant side note: @comtnmom and @one1ofeach I actually had your kids not at the same school in my mind. I’m guessing I’m wrong since you would know your kids better than I would!
Anyway, thank you all for the conversation – I’m tucking it away in my mind for the near future.
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No idea if we are! @Calliemomofgirls I’ve seen you on chats about Mercersburg - I went there and my 3rd of 4 kids really wants to go for dance!
@Golfgr8: Are you having regrets this late in the game? Does your daughter have those same regrets? If you had to do it again, would you make a difference choice? Would she? Did she get a stellar high school education? Is she well-prepared to shine at whichever college she eventually attends? Sometimes revisiting the original reasons for BS helps to put things in perspective.
I totally agree with @cinnamon1212 that it all works out in the end. You have no control over Deerfield’s grading rubric and never did, it is what it is, so you have to let that go. But I will also emphasize what @CateCAParent brought up – BS students are evaluated only in the context of their own BS where all of their competition is under the same restrictions. It’s the only way for colleges to make apple-to-apples comparisons. Deerfield students are not compared to Choate students or LPS students or homeschooled students or any other students; they are competing among themselves for however many offers any given college is going to make to Deerfield students. We heard this over and over and over again at Choate both at the school level at College Info weekend and from our son’s GC; she gave her honest opinion of his chances at each of his choices based on his Choate competition, nothing else mattered.
The flip side of that reassuring statement, however, is that at every BS, whatever the grading rubric, SOME students ARE getting those top grades, so your student is competing against classmates who are able to make those top grades regardless of how harsh the grading may seem. That’s why we always say here that if being at the top of the class is most important to a student, BS is not a safe choice because among a cherry-picked global population of mostly all-A incoming students, right out of the gate half of those remarkable students will be at the “bottom” of the class. But you knew that going in, and that is not why you chose BS. Basically, you’re lamenting what every BS parent/student knows – it’s hard to be at the top of (any) BS class. And that’s where the experience of the BS CC offices come in. Their job is to present each of their students in the best possible light to the colleges that they know are great fits, and they do an amazing job as those matriculation lists attest (I’ve seen them, not a clinker in the bunch). If there is disappointment, it comes from unrealistic expectations, preconceived notions, or misunderstanding of just how many excellent colleges are out there.
So, we’re discussing here how we think those matches are made, sharing our various experiences and opinions but, ultimately, nothing we posit here matters. The minute we sent our children to boarding school, the education and college match process was out of our hands. Now is not the time for second thoughts. Remember, we chose BS for the amazing high school education and experience, not any particular college result. Deerfield will do right by your smart, accomplished athlete, @ Golfgr8. The school will ensure she makes her best match. I’m just looking forward to the day you post her happy results. Hugs and cocktails. 
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My DD attends SMU. Do you think the SMU students from BSs overindex in Greek system?
I don’t know what “overindex” means (guessing, disproportionately go greek?) But then it occurred to me I don’t need to know because I really have no sense of what boarding school kids, as a group, do at SMU.
Yes, disproportionately. That’s fair to not generalize based on limited observation. I’d suspect the appeal is southern, fun, academic U with historical pull in different geos of the U.S. (northeast, FL, CA, IL/STL, etc.).
Paradoxically and regardless of the obsession on this matter, I also believe that this ultra small subset (top BS graduates) is the least likely group of all to be adversely affected by college placement.
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We have a son at Deerfield and yes, the grades are hard but it is easy to see where your child falls within Deerfield scale to give the colleges a sense. My son is middle of the pack and colleges will know that he is an “average” Deerfield Student and judge him on that. Makes no difference if average is 85% or 95%. I have this argument with him all the time. Yes the grade hard, but you still have 50% of your peers scoring above you! Deerfield does a great job of always giving you the grade in a class and the class average for that particular class so you know where you fall.
I wonder if the issue is that parents go in thinking “yes grading will be hard so Harvard probably isn’t in the mix but say a NESCAC is” and then you get the college list and it’s all Washington and Lee, Hobart, etc. sure the kids are going to shine but that isn’t the level I’d expect for a 90 average kid from Andover.
Honestly I don’t know because my older changed her mind totally and went a way we didn’t expect and my younger wants to play a sport so it’s a different ball game.
@mommysmalls
I guess I should clarify for people who come after us. There are a lot of repeats. In my kids experience the repeats are not any kind of academic competition. If anything they tend to be the kids getting an 85. My kid hasn’t ever mentioned a kid blowing it out of the water because they’re a repeat.
The only reason I ever bring up repeats is because of the (seemingly) large number of kids on here who are young, have skipped grades, but present on the internet as immature. I think BS is hard for immature kids and extra hard for immature kids 2+ years younger than the other kids.
Again, academically I don’t see the repeats as an issue at all!
I am curious about your rabbit hole experience. Especially since for as long as I’ve lurked on here and then posted after lurking I haven’t seen anything I’d consider not pretty accurate about BS in general or in particular schools I have experience with.
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I’m just going to say once again that many of these Southern schools that you are classifying as not being good enough for an A student at a boarding school are top colleges. If you look at us news rankings for lacs, Washington and Lee is number 9 in the country tied with Middlebury and Hamilton. It is ahead of Vassar, colby, Haverford, Colgate and Wesleyan. That Andover college counselor who recommended that school most likely genuinely considered it to be a great fit for the student.
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I get super fascinated by matriculation lists, and who sends kids where - more as a way to determine school culture than anything else, because the bs’s all seem to send students to the same caliber schools in roughly the same proportions. But the specific schools differ 
. Matriculation lists don’t tell you anything about legacies, recruits, URMs, majors, etc, so can’t address the meaty questions, but they are still interesting, imo.
Here’s a link to Deerfield’s school profile, which includes a matriculation list covering the past 5 years - just the schools who received 3 or more students in that time frame:
https://deerfield.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/School_profile_2020-2021_rev.pdf
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown and UVA all received 30+ students (average 6+ per year).
Dartmouth, Duke, Penn, Princeton, Trinity and Williams all received 20-29 students (average 4-5 per year).
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan (plus many others) received 10-19 students (average 2-3 per year).
I don’t know what the class size is for Deerfield, but those schools combine account for about 70+ students each year.
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@bernesemtnmama - plus you should see the early post I shared about Southern colleges and their athletic programs. Sorry, I can’t help it - I am a SEC fan! 
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Nice to meet you @boymom928
I have a son who is a senior at an SEC school. He is in the honors college and it has been a wonderful experience for him. He will graduate this summer with a job that most kids at elite colleges would be envious of. My best advice is to try not to get swept up in that New England bubble. There are hundreds of great colleges out there. Many of which may be a better experience for your daughter than the schools that have a higher profile in the Northeast.
I am working to put together a college list for my son who is a junior. He wants to study physics and wants a smaller school. His college counselor suggested he take a look at Haverford and Williams. My husband is a native southerner and never heard of those schools. It’s all a matter of perspective.
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Thanks @ChoatieMom and @one1ofeach for sharing your insights. You have been on this journey with me for the past 4 years now . @ChoatieMom - It is late in the game and honestly have some regrets, but also more affirmatives about the decision. Some things are more clear and I have been honest about the school. I’m certain that other DA parents may have had a different experience.
Our experience, like many of you, has been impacted greatly by COVID. As someone said above, COVID as thrown a wrench into college planning, recruiting, and academics. A couple of factors that are unique to Deerfield, or maybe one other school? Over the summer, Deerfield announced it would move to a Block Schedule this year. This means that students complete 2 year-long courses per term. IMHO this has been stressful for both students and teachers. The schedule was implemented to de-densify the campus buildings. Some kids like it, but most do not. I think this schedule has been particularly hard on the older kids. It has changed the educational experience. For example, your kid finishes Arabic in November and does not take it again (at the earliest) until next September. It just isn’t a good idea for BS, IMO. Same with Math. There are many students who will not have math until late March or early April, then have 8 or 9 weeks to complete an entire year of Calc?
When came on board as Freshman, this was not in the stars. We would never have signed up for a Block Schedule. Also, it is making it rather difficult for teacher recommendations - as most teachers only have students for a few weeks before they have to write something in the Fall or Mid-Year. It also makes it very tough to prepare for AP tests that are 6 months out from when you completed your course.
What is making students a bit anxious now are the rumors that the Block Schedule may be kept as a modified version next year. Maybe, having 2 terms - so you complete the course in a half year. That is not what we signed up for. It is too late to transfer or leave now as a Junior - so half of my kiddo’s Deerfield experience might be with an academic system very different than what we accepted on Revisit Day. Yes - we have a choice to not return for Senior year and some people chose not to return last Fall for some of the reasons stated above.
Regarding college applications & advising, it is our concern that a busy AO will just see 2 courses on the transcript and wonder what-the-hey? There is a small-font (IMO) disclaimer on the School Profile that addresses the 2 course per term schedule this year.
You know how in Mission Impossible they had the file or envelope that would self-destruct after reading, that is how I think it will go down next application season.
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