<p>Hey guys.</p>
<p>I'm a student at Phillips Academy right now and I understand a lot of people are applying there, so if anyone has any questions or concerns about my school, or the high school admissions process in general, send me a private message or respond right here. Don't hesitate; I'd love to be able to give back to my school in any way possible. </p>
<p>Good luck to all the 8th graders (and anyone else applying to high school!). Thanks.</p>
<p>Ya Big Blue!</p>
<p>What do we call the imcoming class next year? '010?</p>
<p>Well, I've watched my son ask this question once before of an Andover student (home on summer vacation) in person, but I'll ask it here online. Why should someone considering Exeter prefer Andover? :) What do you see as the differences between the two schools? What do you like about the boarding school experience? (My wife was a boarder for six years of junior high and senior high, in another country, but I didn't live in a dorm until after completing my undergraduate degree, when I lived in that same country.)</p>
<p>Well, I'm a day student so I can't tell you much about boarding.</p>
<p>But about Andover and Exeter. The two schools are very similar. I would recommend applying to both. Hopefully you will end up with a choice. I would say Andover is liberal and Exeter is somewhat stricter. For example, at Andover many decisions from what courses to take to what to wear are left up to the student while there is a dress code at Exeter and I have heard you have less leeway in making your courses.</p>
<p>I think you might better understand what I am trying to say after you take tours in both schools.</p>
<p>If you need any more information, feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Exeter tends to have more rules than Andover, including mandatory lights out for younger students. Exeter students usually remain in the same domitory for four years, rather than move around each year. Exeter also has more Saturday classes than Andover, and Exeter has a dress code. Boston is more accessible to Andover students than to Exeter students. Andover has far more day students (in fact, my understanding is that over 40 percent of Andover students are from Massachusetts).</p>
<p>Yes, but Massachusetts is a large state, and many people who live in Massachusetts are boarders.</p>
<p>How many day students at Exeter?</p>
<p>Tokenadult: good questions, definitely.</p>
<p>Let me start with what I like about the boarding school experience. </p>
<p>First off, there is no better way in the world to meet and befriend your peers than living and bonding with them. You share everything: drama, homework problems, initial adjustment issues, and gripes about the dining service. Some of the kids you meet at your dorms will become the closest friends of your life, and you really get a whole new perspective on things by living with people from around the country and the world. In short, there is no better way to make great friends and learn about the world from the viewpoint of every boy in your dorm. </p>
<p>We get the Exeter question a lot, as you can imagine, and quite honestly there isn't that much of a difference except the details. Exeter and Andover are both great academic institutions.</p>
<p>The details, however: Exeter is a more traditional, intense place. They have a dress code (not a problem for girls, and just a minor nuisance for boys, but it does change the environment considerably), and a lot more Saturday classes. The workload is notorious, and classes don't end until 6, so you spent a lot of time working. My uncle went there, and he told me that the thing he remembers most about Exeter was burning out.</p>
<p>Exeter is also rather isolated from Boston and New York, and their town is rather quiet (ours isn't that great either however)</p>
<p>Hope that helped! And I open the floor for an Exonian to bash Andover a little, I think I was a little harsh.</p>
<p>Still seems like an awful lot of people from the same "large" state, whether they board or not.</p>
<p>I think most elite schools favor </p>
<p>a) applicants from their own state, or possibly from their own town if there is another elite school in the same state, </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) applicants from completely different regions. </p>
<p>I'm pretty sure that Harvard consciously looks after applicants from greater Boston and Cambridge, and especially from inner-city Boston, and that Yale looks after applicants from New Haven, and that Princeton looks after applicants from nearby parts of New Jersey, etc., etc. The applicants all the big nationally famous schools are looking for, it is reputed, are the applicants that help "run up the score" of having all fifty states represented, once the home state is taken care of. Thus an applicant to Andover, by this hypothesis, would have best odds if applying from Massachusetts (and LOTS of young people in Massachusetts apply) and next best odds if applying from a state where hardly anyone applies to Andover. The crummy odds would go to the applicant to Andover from, say, New York or New Jersey, populous states that provide lots of applicants but which don't add a lot of regional diversity to the entering class. Anyway, such is my current guess about how regional factors influence admission chances. According to Andover, no one from my state was in last year's class--my state is one of the very few that is not represented at all there.</p>
<p>Don't look at that as Andover doesn't like applicants from Minnesota. That just means Andover didn't like the people who did apply. Nothing against your state.</p>
<p>xGods - what do you think got you into Andover? (I'm assuming most applicants have high grades and SSAT scores) so what do you think an applicant needs to get across in their application?</p>
<p>Is the atmosphere competitive? Workload manageable? </p>
<p>Do you know any students who have left Andover and can you tell us why?</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing your experience.</p>
<p>Oops - one more: do you want to share with us what your other choices were and why you wanted to attend a b.s. in the first place?</p>
<p>What's a typical day at Andover for a junior or senior?</p>
<p>
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Don't look at that as Andover doesn't like applicants from Minnesota.
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</p>
<p>Oh, I don't look at it that way at all. Rather, I think (as is known to be true for MIT and some other highly selective schools) that the base acceptance rate for applicants from Minnesota is likely to be higher than the overall national acceptance rate. Whether that is because of self-selection of applicants (with only the better-prepared prospective students even bothering to complete an application) or because of a geographical diversity "hook" is a bit harder to figure out. But at any rate we definitely think it is worthwhile to apply to Andover and to see what happens. </p>
<p>But I do find it puzzling that in the most recent reported year there were NO students at Andover from Minnesota. That's because </p>
<p>a) Minnesota is a fairly populous state (in the top twenty of all states nationally), large enough to provide quite a few applicants, </p>
<p>b) and Minnesota is a fairly prosperous state, wealthy enough to provide applicants who have received high-quality pre-prep-school educations. </p>
<p>I don't know if last year's absence of Minnesotans at Andover means that very few applied or that most of the TOP Minnesota high school students do something else for high school. There is a book about Andover by a Minnesotan girl who studied there some years ago, Andover:</a> the face of Phillips Academy, and the author was very proud to be an Andover alumna. My county library system seems to be one of the few libraries in the whole country that has this book, which is mostly a viewbook with a bit of historical information about Andover, current to the 1980s. The author comes from the most wealthy part of Minnesota (I live across a picturesque lake from that town). </p>
<p>It may be that most Minnesotans these days respond more to the phenomenon that most students go to school within a short distance from their homes than respond to the idea of "flight to quality." These days Minnesota has a postsecondary enrollment options (PSEO) program that allows capable eleventh- and twelfth-graders to take college classes for high school credit, on the state's dime. The local public and private high schools now offer more AP courses than they did when I was a high school student here. We have been touring local schools to get a sense of what is available here, and will have an information interview with our state flagship university's honors program to find out if early college is a suitable choice for our son's situation. So it may be that now Minnesota students are much less likely to apply out of state for prep high schools than they were a generation ago, and it may even be that the "yield" of admitted Minnesota students who actually enroll at out-of-state boarding schools is lower than it used to be, but I'm not at all sure. I went to a suburban high school here in the 1970s, a "good high school" by reputation but of course actually very mediocre by international standards or prep school standards. We're still trying to figure out what to do for our son--and the interview visit to Andover in January is an essential part of that process. </p>
<p>BTW, where do families on interview visits stay in Andover, typically?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.andoverinn.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.andoverinn.com/</a></p>
<p>This is where most families that I know stay. This is on the campus.</p>
<p>you're right about grades and SSAT score. Most applicants have straight A's and incredible board scores, so neither of them will get you into prep school (however, terrible grades or board scores can raise a red flag in the admissions committee so don't sleep on them).</p>
<p>What you need to get across in your application: strong character and personal qualities. At this point in one's academic careers, it's a little early to distinguish oneself at the national level (there is no USAMO or RSI for middle schoolers, for example), so admissions officers tend to look for committment, disipline, and overall, passion in your academic and extra-curricular activities. Show them what you love most in your life, and how you could channel that passion to make something great out of it at Andover. </p>
<p>Essentially, you want to portray yourself as interested and interesting. First and foremost, Andover is an academic institution so you would want to show how you love learning. Disipline and drive are also biggies: Andover wants students who will take something from the school and also give back to it. There are too many lazy geniuses out there for one to try and get by on intelligence alone. Hard work is essential and you need to be able to show them you have the drive to succeed at Andover and in the world. </p>
<p>Atmosphere: competitive, but not overtly. I came originally from Fairfax County, and the feeder school to TJHSST, so the students there were competitive to the extreme; comparing test scores constantly and showing off board scores to each other. None of that happens at Andover, but you can tell everyone wants to out-do each other. It's a question of whether or not you prefer subtly or bluntness in how your peers compete with you.</p>
<p>The workload is manageable but you have to work at it considerably. Organization becomes an art, but once you master it you prepare yourself for so many things in school, and in life afterwords. </p>
<p>Most students who leave Andover, do not do so by choice. Some are expelled for various actions (the most prevalent being plagarism and drug use), and some leave for other extenuating circumstances (one girl had a chronic sleeping disorder so she left because she simply could not function). I actually haven't heard of anyone transferring out of Andover to another prep school, although the opposite certaintly happens (albeit uncommonly). </p>
<p>I have to run now, but I'll get to your last question shortly. Hope that helped!</p>
<p>Honestly, be yourself on the application. If you don't like math for example, don't be afraid to say so even if your interviewer is a math teacher. If you show true dedication to something you enjoy, odds are you'll get in.</p>
<p>The atmosphere is not overly competitive, although academics are important. About the course load: you decide where you want to put yourself for the most part. Other than a handful of required courses, the rest is up to you, as long as you follow a few basic guidelines. You can take three math courses, or you can drop math altogether and take some English electives. You can go after a demanding six-course load, or you can chose to concentrate on a four-course load that interests you. Seniors are allowed to do independent work in a certain area. These projects range from writing novels to writing computer programs. If you ever feel like you're behind, there is always the Academic Support Center, which hooks people up with tutors who are more than willing to help.</p>
<p>I do not know anyone who has left Andover, although I have heard of a few people leaving. One had a medical condition and was advised to leave. Another felt that he couldn't easily adapt to boarding school and decided to go back home. And several other people take a term or a year off for various reasons, such as SYA. The vast majority remain at Andover for all four years.</p>
<p>I'm a junior myself. Classes start at 8:00, each lasting 45 minutes with 10 minutes in between each. After second period, there is a half hour block in which students can talk to teachers. Every student has a lunch period, either 4th, 5th, or 6th. After 7th, sports, which are required for every student, meet. Usually practice is over by around 4:30-5:00ish, after which there is dinner, club meetings, and then study hours. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, only about a half of classes meet, but for double periods.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!</p>
<p>To address your other question: What my other options were, and why I chose boarding school in the first place.</p>
<p>My other options were quite good, and academically I'm sure I would have been fine. I come from the DC area and so the local schools were very strong. I applied to TJHSST and Gonzaga College High School, an all-boys Catholic School in Washington DC but felt that I would want to go away to boarding school, even if I did get in; simply because: Boarding schools provided me opportunities that even academic juggernaut TJ could not: a music program more to my liking, more competitive sports (my sports, in any case), an unparalled humanities program, as well as the ability to experience all this without having to drive 45 minutes to and fro. I also liked how the teachers at boarding schools were so involved in one's life, (they are your house counselors, your coaches, and your advisers, as well as having to teach you) and how I would be given the opportunity to meet kids from across the country and around the world, with passionate interests that may or may not have been the same as mine; I had been to several "sleep-away" camps before, and I really liked the dorm experience and the opportunity to meet kids from different places. Boarding school seemed like an extension and an improvement upon that, and I could not have asked for anything greater. </p>
<p>In addition, I didn't like the kids who I would have been going to TJ with; too nerdy and overly competitive.</p>
<p>So what is Dr. Margarita Curtis like? I understand she has been named the new head at Deerfield.</p>
<p>Thanks, xGods - you've drawn a pretty complete picture.</p>