<p>How are the academics??? I have heard that MPS is the type of place where you can either slide under the rador and do the bare minimum, or you can make your curriculum very rigorous. Is this true? Compared to other boarding schools, how is the rigor and level of intesity? </p>
<p>Plus, soberdrunk-why to people you know talk badly of Miss Porters?</p>
<p>I don't think you can slide under the radar at all at MPS. Maybe your freshman and possibly sophmore years but no way any other time. Bare minumum still 5/6 hours of work per day. The most.... well lots of people get half their work done in 10 hours.
You also have no time at mps (except weekends) sorry but it is true.
It is definitely as rigorous as any top prep school ( don't anyone dare comeback with a statistic..).</p>
<p>elvenqueen10, i have no statistics, and I know little about MPS, but I do know this, I believe you. I get the impression people think that because MPS is an all girls school, that this some how makes it less demanding. This has to be the furthest thing from the truth. I would venture to say that we have a case of competitive juices flowing among various schools, including the co-ed schools. As many know, i have a d who is in a co-ed school, and I have another d in the 6th grade who I hope will choose an all-girls school. There are some definite advantages to a single gender school. The bottom line is.......MPS, Westover, EWS, et al are academically elite schools that work for many people.</p>
<p>prepparent- thank you.</p>
<p>I agree completley with you preparent. I think all-female institutions give people a lot of tools that will benefit them in their later life. Many things found in all-girls schools are sometimes not present in coed schools. Overall, I think attending an all-girls school can be a life changing experience.</p>
<p>Holy kamoley! The mordacity towards all girls schools is simply unbelievable here. Nonetheless, I will point out recent studies here that should put a different perspective on the subject.</p>
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<p>EXCERPT BELOW:</p>
<p>The study involved 2,954 high schools throughout England and findings were that (1) when academic ability and other background factors are taken into account both girls and boys did significantly better in single sex schools. Benefits were found to be larger and more consistent for girls than for boys. Girls at all levels of academic ability did better in single sex schools.</p>
<p>For boys the beneficial effect of single sex schools was significant only for those at the lower end of the ability scale. High achieving boys showed no statistically significant effect of school type. (2) Girls at single sex schools were more likely to take such subjects as Physics or Advanced Mathematics which ran counter to their stereotype. (3) For size of school it was concluded that schools of medium size were to be preferred since at small schools course offerings were limited, particularly at A-Level, and the student performance appeared to suffer at large schools.</p>
<p>The study also concluded that: "It would be possible to infer from the findings that, in order to maximise performance, schools should have about 180 pupils per year" (900 in a five-year school and 1,000 to 1,100-if A-Level is included). The issue of school size needs also to be addressed in Trinidad and Tobago.</p>
<p>The Australian Council for Educational Research compared the performance of 270,000 students in 53 academic subjects at single sex and co-educational schools in a six year study the results of which were published in 2001. Analysis showed that both boys and girls who were educated in single-sex classrooms scored on average 15 to 22 per cent higher than in co-educational settings.</p>
<p>The report concludes that: "Boys and girls in single-sex schools were more likely to be better behaved" and "evidence suggests that co-educational settings are limited by their capacity to accommodate the large differences in cognitive, social and development growth rates of boys and girls aged between 12 and 16".</p>
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<p>that's a good stat. You actually can pull out good stats but not like going anyone saying porter's has this acceptance rate .... so it mustn't be very tough to get in or a very challenging environment. That isn't a real stat</p>
<p>Let's look at the acceptance rate issue from a logistics point of view.</p>
<p>If school A's accpetance rate is greater than B's acceptance rate then B must be more academically rigorous than school A.</p>
<p>There are too many flaws in this argument...including school size, dropout rate, and endowment. More importantly, though, there has been a drastic up tick in interest for single sex education, and these institutions are creating the resources to support the demand as opposed to turning away applicants in droves.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.ncgs.org/type0.php?pid=108%5B/url%5D">http://www.ncgs.org/type0.php?pid=108</a></p>
<h2>The past decade has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in all-girls' education.² Since 1991, student enrollments at schools belonging to the National Coalition of Girls' Schools (NCGS) have risen 29 percent, applications 40 percent, and more than 30 new girls' schools have opened.³ These recent developments represent a significant reversal of fortune from the 1980s.</h2>
<p>The Andovers, Choates, Exeters, and St.Paul's of the boarding school genre have the benefit of strong alum networks that have kept the schools competitive since their beginnings and...guess what? they were all originally single sex schools for men (and I notice there does not seem to be as much animosity towards boys schoools on this thread and others probably b/c of their history with the coed institutions) In fact, I tend to wonder if the high and mighty so called "rigorous" schools at the top are displaying envy, b/c they lost a certain status and tradition when they began to admit young women into their confines during the 70's and 80's. Schools like Porters, Westover, EWS, etc... and the like were among the few that did not merge with other schools to keep up with what seemed popular at the time and should be commended for that. Since the early 90's, in fact, single sex education for women has been a more desirable option for parents b/c of studies that I cited above.</p>