<p>Hi,
I work in helping Chinese Students come to the US for boarding school. This is highly competitive and will only continue to be so. There are many independent schools who are accepting Chinese students with less rigorous standards; some that do not require a TOEFL or SSAT. They are great schools that offer ELL support. Please pass along and contact me if interested.
school us</p>
<p>Parlebane I disagree because basically you are saying that schools like Andover and millbrook/peddie are essentially the same</p>
<p>Actually Ehphant, what is Millbrook like?? The pictures I have seen look beautiful but don’t know anything about the academic reputation of the school.</p>
<p>Ehphant…I do think that the peer group at Andover is so much stronger statistically (SSAT, Grades etc) than the peer group at Millbrook or Peddie that you can clearly support the claim that Andover is more rigorous in absolute terms. But if you were to run a sort on SAT’s or Lowest Acceptance Rate, for example, on Boarding School Review, the top 30 schools (with an exception here and there) are all, in my view, equally rigorous.</p>
<p>Madaket - Millbrook, where the former William F. Buckley cut his teeth in English class and writing for the school newspaper, is a great Tier 2 school. It is not as rigorous as Andover and doesn’t claim to be. It is, however, an excellent school with the only accredited zoo of any boarding school in the U.S. and one of the best executed Community Service programs anywhere. The campus is 800 acres of Dutchess County splendor. Spending four years here will result in a top notch education and wonderful training to be a good human being. Top students DO attend top colleges.</p>
<p>Honestly don’t mean to – whatever, but just want to understand “equally rigorous” conceptually. Could a school that accepts students typically with A grades and an average Ssat score of 95% be equally rigorous as a school that accepts Students with B grades and an average ssat score of 80%? In other words, shouldn’t the overall quality of the student body be an important factor that determines how rigorous a school can be?</p>
<p>D’Andrew: I’d vote yes–the rigor is largely determined by the overall quality of the student body. I give an A in my community college class much more easily than my kid’s teachers do at Exeter; that may be a more extreme leap than the one between a “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” school, but I’m willing to bet that if we looked at the grades given out at both schools, the range would be about the same–yet the native ability of the student body is not. Stands to reason that the 95% school is more rigorous than the other. As a teacher, I can say that it’s inevitable that you adjust your standards to the bodies in front of you.</p>
<p>That said, I’m confident that all of those top 30 or whatever schools are pretty darn rigorous and, Parlabane points out, graduate top-notch college students.</p>
<p>They’re all academically rigorous, but to claim to know about the academic intensity of these schools never having attended is really just stupid, to put it bluntly. Total bs. All that I can say is that I know for certain that Middlesex is very time-consuming and has a major “daily grind,” if you will. I’m finding as a sophomore that it’s easy to accumulate four or five hours of homework a night if you want to do it right. Less some days, more others. Two essays due in the next week and a half have magically fallen into my lap [<em>joy</em>], so that’ll shave an hour off my expected sleep every night if I can get it done in a timely fashion [something I am NOT known for doing- the opposite, actually].</p>
<p>Good point Izzy–and I was off-topic from the OP, who was asking about workload, not grading. It would be interesting to see more specific posts like yours. Out of curiosity, where do you fit 5 hours of homework into a busy day?</p>
<p>I do not know how Izzy does it, but my son often has a similar workload. He generally gets up early and works for an hour or so in the morning (never goes to breakfast; keeps breakfast bars, oatmeal, etc. in his room…microwave in lounge). The rest of the day is generally full right up until 7 or 8 PM with classes, sports practice, and meetings. He then uses his two hour study hall (8-10) and is generally up another 1 or 2 hours still doing homework. On occasion, he has works during lunch as well. His school has block scheduling, so this workload is for three classes, two of which are AP.</p>
<p>Well what I’ve noticed is that the people who seem to always be on top of things get a lot of it done well before the evening- spending a free and some of your afternoon in the library doing homework can easily knock out half of it, if you don’t have something major due. It’s something I’m trying to push myself to be able to do [trouble is, I have issues concentrating and procrastinating is ingrained into my habits].</p>
<p>I gave it some more thought and realize that if rigorous means stretching the students to their fullest potential academically then schools can be equally rigorous. In that sense as I said earlier at least 50% of all private schools and many public schools are rigorous.</p>
<p>The OP asked about which school has the biggest “daily grind” which I am assuming means work load and possibly stress about the work load. It’s my opinion that academic stress is self imposed. Top, straight A students ALL feel this stress, they all study 3-4 hrs a night, whether they go to Andover, Peddie, a competitive day school, or a competitive public school. It’s the student that does this, not the school.</p>
<p>Of course you can debate which school has a brighter student body, or other attributes, but I believe that work load and stress level are similar at all top schools, driven by student, not the school.</p>
<p>ny22 - I guess I question whether the same 3-4 hours of study per night would get you an A at both Andover and Peddie. I am pretty sure it would at a competitive day school and at competitive public school. I suspect it would at Peddie but am unsure if it would at Andover.</p>
<p>People sometimes make baseless statements.</p>
<p>^ Like the one you just said?</p>
<p>Ccer999, How many hours of homework on average do you have at Deerfield each day?</p>
<p>OP and Madket, you get the idea. If you have been here long enough, you should know that unless it’s for a general process type question, you’d have a hard time getting straight answers. People coming from different background and have different “agenda” will question the legitimacy of your question, give you info you are not looking for or give lectures on things remotely related to your questions etc. You must learn to get through it and “get the idea”. Good luck! :)</p>
<p>To the OP: I think there are levels of rigor and it mostly has to do with placement options. Some schools have regular, honors, and AP tracks so you can make it as rigorous as you want in the subjects in which you excel. Others, have an honors and super-honors track (often going beyond AP) so that all subjects are difficult, even if you’re not particularly strong in that area. So, I think that the most important thing to look at when trying to determine the rigor or intensity of a school is not the highest level courses available, but the lowest.</p>
<p>For a thread with a lot of input from students at Andover and Exeter specifically, do a title search for “Is Exeter too hard, also for Andover” or something like that. I remember finding the thread interesting and if my memory is correct, it will answer some of your questions.</p>