Please share your thoughts on Marlborough and Harvard-Westlake School. Is one particularly strong in any area?
Our daughter is applying to both schools. Her ISEE score is excellent (94-99 in all sections), straight A student from a top public school with excellent teacher recommendations.
Thanks for sharing your opinions.
Hi! I’m a current student at HW and know people who attend/have attended Marlborough, so I’m pretty knowledgeable. What grade is your daughter in?
This is for 7th grade admission, thank you.
HW is in general more competitive and academically intense, and Marlborough tends to be more collaborative. That is not to say that your daughter won’t get an amazing education at Marlborough (both do very well in college placement) or will not find supportive friends at HW, but I have seen many people leave HW because they could not handle the pressure and stress. I had the same stats as your daughter and have thrived because the competition, but it is really dependent on her personality.
I’m guessing she is the smartest in her class or just about, but she should definitely be prepared for that to change (unless she is a super-genius taking calculus in middle school). A huge shock for many new seventh graders is turning from the big fish in the small pond to the small fish in the big pond. There are many extremely smart and talented kids at both schools, but it seems more magnified and hierarchal at HW. It is almost inevitable that she will feel inadequate compared to some of the other students at some point in her HW career. Also, HW does not hold back on the seventh graders, and she should be prepared to do about 30 minutes (or 40 in honors) of homework per subject every night (it is my impression that Marlborough is a bit easier to transition into).
Marlborough has smaller grade sizes, which, depending on your daughter’s personality, may be a good or a bad thing. I have found that this makes Marlborough less cliquish than HW, and everybody seems to know everyone else. The all-girls environment also seems to eliminate much of the immature meanness that you see in the lower grades at HW, as it is mostly from the boys. They do seem to have frequent interaction with boys outside of school, however (especially with the private all-boys school, Loyola).
HW definitely over-glorifies STEM (even though they claim not to), and it will be more difficult to have a competitive GPA if your daughter is more interested in the humanities, which has been a continual source of frustration for me. This is because there is no opportunities to take honors/AP English and history until 11th grade, so the kids who had been taking honors math and science since ninth grade definitely have an advantage in college admissions. Plus, regular classes at HW are equivalent to honors classes at most public schools, so one has to be very proficient in a subject to do well in honors.
HW and Marlborough both have impressive sports programs (especially basketball and water polo at HW), but there is more focus on recruitment at HW. Overall, I will say that HW’s extracurricular activities tend to be more stellar than Marlborough. HW consistently has many nationally ranked debaters, musicians, athletes, artists, etc., and its newspaper is always in the top three in the nation. This is probably a product of having more students.
As a broad assessment, Marlborough is better socially, but HW is better academically.
Can you give me more specifics on what your daughter is interested in and what she wants out of her school experience?
I will also add that at the HW Upper School, the teachers treat the students like college students and expect college level work. Do not expect straight A’s all four years. The schedule is pretty nice though, because you get “X” periods (usually) once per cycle in each class, meaning that class does not meet. So, you get 40 (Middle School) or 45 (Upper School) minutes of free time to do whatever you want at least once a day (plus the lunch period). I’m not aware if Marlborough has something similar.
What the above two posters said confirmed my impression on HW based on one visit, some online research and filling out the application. It is indeed one of the few schools in southern CA that are very similar to the super competitive prep schools in the east coast. Like its counterparts in NYC and somewhat unlike the top BS in NE, the student body seems quite homogeneous. During our visit, I couldn’t help taking notes on how many shiny Mercedes and BMW there were in the parking lot! 
Another note: HW has a much wider selection of classes you can take. I recommend you take a look at the curriculum guide here: http://www.hw.com/pdf/curriculum_guide.pdf It’s full of cool classes like mythology, robotics, sports research, video game design, etc.
Thank you so much for your information. Much appreciated
Janesmitty, please check your mailbox. I sent you a PM.
You’re welcome! I honestly love talking about my school (lol). I wouldn’t worry about seventh grade; the “weed-out” years are actually 10th-11th grade when the school starts to REALLY live up to its “pressure cooker” reputation, and she has a lot of time to prepare until then.
The most crucial thing at the Middle School is developing work ethic! I cannot stress this enough. She will be totally swamped if she doesn’t learn how to manage her time (yes, even in the lower grades). Her grades in 7th and 8th do matter; they affect what classes she will be able to take in high school because if she doesn’t complete her work (or waits until late to do it), not only will she be exhausted and stressed, but her teachers won’t allow her to take honors classes, which affects her high school transcript and GPA (HW teachers have an unusual amount of power over which classes a student can take).
Every single student I have encountered at HW has had to make the horrible and stressful decision between completing all their work (grades) or sleeping (health) at least once (some, more than others). Most choose grades, by the way. I would encourage you to read some of the articles on the school’s newspaper ( http://hwchronicle.com ) and search “anxiety” and “stress” for more detail (or just use it to get a clearer picture on student life in general!).
The upside of this is that every year, consistently, recent alumni come back and say how much easier college is than HW (yes, even the kids who go on to Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and the like)!
In your decision, I also urge you to consider location. When I was at the Middle School, I lived over an hour away, and waking up in the wee hours of the morning after going to sleep just a few hours prior was a pretty awful experience, honestly.
As miserable as I say I am all the time, I actually love HW, and given the chance to redo everything, I would choose it again in a heartbeat. There is just no educational experience like HW.