<p>I went to the local public school and there was only 1 person in my fourth year Latin class --me!</p>
<p>Guess it goes to show good students will succeed and grow wherever they are planted.</p>
<p>don’t need BS for small class-size. Just and editorial comment.</p>
<p>Update: I followed up with the short list of schools we will be visiting again in the Fall and they all said that it was relatively simple to get some teachers to stop by the admissions office to chat.</p>
<p>Avon Old Farms welcomed my son to shadow a freshman by spending a night in the dorm and attending classes the following day. I find it interesting that Miss Porter’s, AOF’s “sister” school, encourages that as well!</p>
<p>Emma Willard includes a class visit as a part of the tour. Woodbury Forest will allow you to spend the night and attend classes the way baseballmom describes AOF.</p>
<p>@mainer (post 17) - No, I never saw my son’s recs.</p>
<p>Northfield Mount Hermon has several “Class Visit” days when you can do exactly that - and they will try to place your student in classes he/she is interested in. Info about this is posted on the website - sign up early if you’re interested!</p>
<p>I think it is obvious why many of the schools cannot do class visits - Andover/Exeter has close to 2000 applicants every Fall - how could that possibly be manageable? Also, many interview/tours are scheduled on Saturdays and not all schools have saturday classes. So some applicants would be treated differently. Make sense to invest time in that sort of thing once you have been accepted and have taken your critique of the school to the next level.</p>
<p>@Madaket: Well, seeing as some schools do make the effort (see above) to accommodate class visits…is it so hard for a school of 1000 to absorb an estimated 25 visiting students a day over the course of four months?</p>
<p>I initially posted this because a few of the schools in which we have a serious interest are over 6 hours away by car…each way. And since we have already toured and interviewed at these schools over the summer, I wanted to get as much out of our Fall follow-up visits (to see the schools when students are present) as possible. I don’t see anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>That said, I’m mostly over it. Thanks to the advice/encouragement of a few other members, at the very least we’ll get a few minutes of time with teachers in my daughter’s favorite subjects. And a swing through New England during prime leaf-peeping season…</p>
<p>Best of luck with your search and application process.</p>
<p>Was trying to read through all the posts so sorry if any of my answers are a repeat.</p>
<p>I so feel your pain and your expectations. Trust me, I’m a grad and I had to temper my needs to fit the reality I knew was there.</p>
<p>Why you can’t sit in on classes until revisit day:</p>
<ol>
<li>Look at the number of applicants - especially on any given interview day. Now repeat that over multiple days/weeks/months. It isn’t possible to have every applicant sit in on a class. The extra body if it were the only one that year wouldn’t be disruptive. But extra bodies every day or several times a week (even if one per class) is very disruptive. The number of on-campus interviews can literally fall into the thousands.</li>
</ol>
<p>So yes - it’s impossible to accommodate those students, a large percentage of whom are applying to multiple schools and may or may not be enrolling (or be accepted). Remember, the schools are taking less than 10% of those kids</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Class instruction is the main reason those existing students are there. Parents paid for their children to be focused on course material. In some cases $50,000+. The teachers need to focus on that, not meeting with (or accommodating) prospective students.</p></li>
<li><p>The students conducting the tours are giving up their study, homework and social time. They aren’t compensated. It’s a volunteer gig. Even that amount of time is intensive. On previous threads students have talked about how stressful it is to be distracted by all the campus visits in the midst of homework, sports requirements and other issues. Revisit days are even more stressful in that the newly admitted applicant is around all day.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Teacher interviews/sessions</p>
<ol>
<li>Our experience is that some motivated extra curricular teachers contacted my D after her application was complete and the interview was established. So it may have been that your process was reversed (toured first, applied second?). We were contacted by email and phone by a tennis coach, debate team coach, English, Latin and music teachers.</li>
</ol>
<p>But it depends on the day, the applicant, and the teacher’s loads.</p>
<hr>
<p>So one caveat: there is a fine line in getting what you feel your D needs and being perceived as high maintenance. Everything that seems “logical” to a parent has probably been demanded by other parents before them.</p>
<p>We were all sitting on our hands during the process earlier this year. Nerve wracking - yes. But armed with the knowledge that parents have been known to kill their children’s chances with demands, most of us demured and graciously accepted what was offered.</p>
<p>Good luck. You’ll do fine.</p>
<p>BTW -
The revisit days are the best times to sit in classes. That’s when you’ll get a real picture of a typical school day. Parents are sent one way, the students another. My D spent the day in classes, hanging out in the dorm, eating in the dining hall. My husband went to different classes and talked to admin and faculty. MUCH BETTER experience to do it that way once you know the school is interested (and has accepted) your child.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Is it impossible, really? This coming from an MIT grad? I surmise you are not probably an operations research major. There are so many classes going on and accommodating a few students each day in NOT IMPOSSIBLE. On top of it, the applicants are not monkeying around in the class room, they sit just like everyone else and listen. The more likely scenario is that it is difficult to set up a SHOW on a daily basis, whereas it can be set up easily with POPULAR professors on a revisit day. That leads to many sales. My 2c.</p>
<p>Exie is right; revisits are the best time to sit in on classes.</p>
<p>@pulsar: I appreciate you being the devil’s advocate on the CC Prep Admissions forum and everything, but stooping to personal digs A) strikes me as juvenile; and B) minimizes your credibility (and yes, I kind of agree with you on this issue). Just my 2¢.</p>
<p>@ExieMITAlum: I think I was gracious enough about it all. And if the drive weren’t 6+ hours each way, I wouldn’t be such a squeaky wheel. That said, it was our choice to tour/interview in the Summer when there were no classes in session. Though I’m kind of glad I did that seeing as Fall slots seem to get booked up quickly.</p>
<p>Also,</p>
<p>One good thing may be that you interviewed before the “crowds” so the staff was fresh. When I’m doing college interviews the “crush” happens just before the deadline and by then the students start to blend in. Standing out early is always a good thing. </p>
<p>But I know what you mean. We’re a plane ride away. No “do-overs” for us even in the realm of possibility.</p>
<p>You’re fine and I know you were polite. It’s just that the 100 before you probably weren’t so even a nice request get’s seen through those lenses - know what I mean.</p>
<p>Hang in there. At least you care. That puts you ahead of the game.</p>
<p>Deerfield interviews many siblings during Parents’ Weekend. The sibs are able to attend classes and sleepover if they want. They are not given a campus tour and Admissions does not interview the parents.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Let’s see… I checked out Andover’s website. They had 2,784 completed applications, 3203 “preliminary applications” (whatever that might be.) Some applicants will live too far from campus to visit, but on the other hand, some applicants will visit & interview, but decide not to complete the application. So, I think it’s fair to estimate about 3,000 students visit Andover each year.</p>
<p>Some visit over the summer, of course, so let’s knock off 15% as a guesstimate. 2550 students visit during the application season before February 1st. Something like 15 weeks or so. 170 students per week, if it’s evenly distributed.
<a href=“http://www.andover.edu/Admission/Pages/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.aspx[/url]”>http://www.andover.edu/Admission/Pages/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.aspx</a> So, if applicants’s proportions mirror matriculated students’ percentages, about 59% of applicants are applying for the 9th grade. Let’s make that 60% for convenience. So, 102 applicants for 9th grade visit campus each week. </p>
<p>That’s about 50% of the size of the 9th grade. As the parent of an applicant, I’d like my child to shadow a freshman, as I think most parents would. Do you think half the freshman class will volunteer to be shadowed by an applicant every week? If you divide 102 by 5, 20 applicants would be shadowing Andover volunteers every day. That would mean that every Andover student would have to put up with applicants in some classes every day. That is, to me, rather the definition of an unreasonable burden on the admitted students.</p>
<p>What is there to put up with visiting students? They are sitting there listening to the teacher just as you are. On top of it Andover has zillion classes and the students are distributed throught the day. They don’t all come to Calculus I Class eating their sandwich at the same time. So the number 20 is super easy to divide between classes, space and time as Einstein would say.</p>
<p>Pulsar, you don’t seem to have gone through the process as an applicant, nor as a parent. A student “shadowing” another student follows the host student around. She attends the same classes, in the company of the host student. I assume it is considered bad form to lose one’s guest. (sorry, sometimes my humor leads me astray…)</p>
<p>If Andover offers classes with an average size of 13, the school could cover Freshman English with 15 or 16 class meetings. If 20 applicants are shadowing 20 Andover students, that would mean that every class meeting might have a visitor. Or, a few classes might have 5. Every day. Now, one more student might not make a difference in lecture classes of 200 at the college level, but in classes of 13, it makes an enormous difference.</p>
<p>Also, at boarding schools teaching by the Harkness Method, the students are not “sitting there listening to the teacher.” It’s not a passive experience.</p>
<p><<You’re fine and I know you were polite. It’s just that the 100 before you probably weren’t so even a nice request get’s seen through those lenses - know what I mean.</p>
<p>Hang in there. At least you care. That puts you ahead of the game. >></p>
<p>the hundred before you probably weren’t???I find this incredibly trite and haughty.</p>
<p>Periwinkle, I have seen it all at the HADES schools. Adding 1 to 13 is not much of a distraction. Many schools don’t use the Harkness method nor are they as large as Andover in terms of visitor numbers. Also, all visitors may not be interested only in English class. Some may want to try the drama class, some may want to go to the music class etc. and there are so many classes. As far as hosts following the student visitors, they are not doing much extra work. The host students have to go from class to class anyways and the guest is simply tagging along. As Sevendad said many day schools accommodate student visitors in their classrooms. May be all applicants are not interested in sitting in a class, but the schools can certainly accommodate those who want to. Do people like buying a car without test driving? These schools cost at least twice as much as an average car each year.</p>
<p>There is an opportunity to test drive. It is called revisit day. Each admitted student gets to go to multiple classes usually matched with a host of according to class year, subjects of interest and other compatabilities. One adcom told me that matching for revisit day is more stressful than making the admission decisions in the first place. And, it is distracting to have visitors in a class. Classes become small learning communities with a shared history, rapport and their own inside jokes. That is the power of prep school, joining a community of engaged learners in an optimal small class setting. Having regular non-participant observers in these small classes would disrupt that process. I understand the desire to observe before applying, but it would not be fair to the students who are there.</p>