<p>L’ville has 20% international students? That’s pretty high number, compared with its peer schools isn’t it? How’s so? Or, a larger question is why some schools have more international students than others? Andover - 7%, Deerfield - 11%, Hotchkiss - 17% as far as I know. Can’t find Exeter number.</p>
<p>Great info, whynotmithoo. Your insights are great, especially with regard to your son’s opinions of his classmates. I want my son to be in an environment where the students care a lot about academics. However, I think a pressure cooker would be the wrong environment for him. </p>
<p>One thing that I find curious…L’ville’s science curriculum looks great in the viewbook. Their Ivy matriculation numbers are excellent (especially to Princeton). However, they have few, if any, kids matriculating to MIT. My son’s no-name public HS manages to matriculate 1-2 kids to MIT every year, even with a VERY limited science curriculum. Do you or anyone else have any info that might explain this discrepancy? That, and the fact that L’ville doesn’t have an observatory, were the two red flags in my son’s eyes.</p>
<p>Since I began looking into boarding schools last year, Lawrenceville always seemed in the same league as PA and PEA. It’s only recently I see that many people don’t agree, which I find very weird.</p>
<p>Watertester, the viewbook says that they have 9% coming from international schools, but I can’t find a breakdown of “international students”, per se.</p>
<p>I read the stats about the international kids in the school paper but do not have a copy of it. It could have been referring to the freshman class last year! It seemed very remarkable. Academically, the kids do not seem to feel the pressure from excessive homework that kids in some other schools feel. I have an older child in a private day school and she had to do much more work and was lucky if she got 6 hours sleep a night. The freshman kids in L’ville seem to be getting their 8 hours of sleep and for that reason, if not for any other, I am happy my son is in boarding school.</p>
<p>I do not have the figures about how many kids get accepted to MIT every year. Many really bright kids might be also applying to Ivies and then deciding to matriculate from one of then. SPS has an amazing observatory. I think L’ville’s strongest departments are English and Humanities/History, not sure about science, sorry.</p>
<p>It was L’villes humanities courses that wowed my son in the first place. He usually only looks at the science curriculum. But the Humanities courses caught his eye and the rest was just icing on the cake. At this time, he’s really liking L’ville, Choate, Deerfield and Middlesex–based solely on their science offerings (well, and he is particularly fond of the baseball cards in the Choate packet ;D). But we haven’t gotten viewbooks from SPS and some others yet.</p>
<p>I’m loving the sound of a more laidback environment. My son is a very high achiever, but he is driven by his own passion rather than competitiveness with other people. He makes great grades, but he could care less what his grades are, or what his class rank is, or any of that. He just loves to learn ‘new stuff’. He also needs his sleep! He cares ‘zero’ about school labels. He simply wants a school where he won’t run out of AP Science classes before graduation, that will prepare him for a top college science program…and an observatory would be ‘so fun!’ lol.</p>
<p>happykidsmom, I have a friend who is a Lville graduate and another friend who is currently a junior at Lville. From what I’ve heard from them, Lville’s English and humanities curriculum are superb, but not really so for Math & Science… That’s one point they are trying to improve, unless your S gets a very challenging Math course!</p>