<p>I’ve just been doing some mad shopping. My old school has an uniform, so I needed to fill in my wardrobe a little bit. It’s awesome to be able to call shopping at Aeropostale, Abercrombie, Hollister and American Eagle, school shopping =D</p>
<p>That sounds very much like you are shopping here in the States. I guess nowadays kids around the globe share the same fashion, brands, etc. Happy shopping!</p>
<p>Judging by his facebook, I believe he is.</p>
<p>FACEBOOK STALKER</p>
<p>Haha, just kidding. Yes, I’m in the US. On my way to NH tomorrow to work at a summer camp.</p>
<p>Haha, well it showed up on my newsfeed a few days ago lol, you can’t not stalk with the new facebook.</p>
<p>Totally agree. Must be because a damn Exeter grad created it ;)</p>
<p>Some interesting figures to share with you - </p>
<p>The 221st class grade breakdown:
Grade 12: 330
Grade 11: 271
Grade 10: 296
Grade 9: 208</p>
<p>A smaller upper class. And then a big jump in Grade 12, where only “a total of 30-35 new seniors and postgraduates” are supposed to be taken in each year. Looks odd to me.</p>
<p>Then the 232nd class:</p>
<p>Grade 12 = 307, Grade 11= 286, Grade 10 = 264, Grade 9 = 233 </p>
<p>An unusually large junior class while all other grades are relatively small. Very different from last year. I’d like to hear comments from recent graduates and parents about this new – trend (?).</p>
<p>
He and his Andover roommate, originally.</p>
<p>Andover’s yield has been increasing, meaning more students are joining the junior class than they plan for, partially explaining the slight increase in the junior class. That senior class is a little smaller than normal, though it may be due to students leaving/being forced to leave. 09’s senior class was larger than 08’s, if I remember correctly, so that seems like natural variance. The lower class may have had more students pull out than normal, or fewer new lowers choosing to attend (although I have received some calls at work there from students requesting to remain on the waitlist). I think it may be worth seeing numbers for years in between to see if it’s just normal variance or actually a change. Andover has been converting more and more rooms for additional housing (singles to doubles, empty rooms to singles, etc.) recently. I think 10-15 more were added for summer session this year, and they will be kept for regular session.</p>
<p>It seems many students dropped out at the end of lower year in 2008, because even after taking in 25-30 new students (assuming a waitlist pool is big enough to achieve these numbers), the upper class in 09 actually decreased. Is it the “norm” that more students tend to leave after lower year? It appears there are students leaving after junior year as well. What are the typical reasons for those who choose to leave voluntarily, and for those who are forced to leave?</p>
<p>A large number of students leave after junior year because the workload is more than they can/want to handle. Andover is not for everyone. Living away from home is tough on people. Sometimes the high stress environment causes students issues, and they may decide they are better off at their town’s public high school. In addition, students may be asked to leave due to rule violations, particularly alcohol and drugs. They exist on campus, like anywhere else, but they are more strictly regulated than in colleges. Students feeling depressed may also leave or be asked to leave for a time, as the school does not want a suicide on their hands, both from a legal standpoint and from the standpoint of the “psyche” of the students. Depending on the class, students may be “weeded out” like this early (my understanding is that most of the people who left the class of 2009 left early), or it may happen later. My year lost several students to drug abuse during the senior year.</p>
<p>Note that this is primarily anecdotal - I’ve known some of the people who have left voluntarily and forcibly, but certainly not all of them. Hopefully it helps to explain some of this, though.</p>
<p>Thanks, Uroogla. Assuming all 351 students who sent in the deposit check are considered enrolled, based on the count of junior, lower and upper classes in '08 and the total enrollment number of 232nd class posted on PANet (figure it’s a projection as there may be people who change their minds the last minute), there are 36 students that left during or after the '08 school year - if this approach makes sense.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, watertester, where did you find these stats? I’ve just spent a few minutes searching and I can’t find them. </p>
<p>Assuming the stats are real, the 12th grade jump is not that unusual. When I was applying as a new upper, they insisted that they take 15-19 per year, yet they’ve consistently taken about 25 for the past several years, though I don’t know about this year. So that 30-35 is not set in stone, it depends how many spaces they have to fill. However, 56 new lowers is quite a bit on the low side for Andover, but it’s reasonably plausible, especially I’m fairly certain no freshmen were expelled this year, though there were a number of suspensions, with most ending at the beginning of lower year.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I doubt that the stats are legitimate for a few reasons. First of all, the 208 freshmen from the ’08-’09 stats was a little on the high side (by about 8 or 9 boarding girls) and it put a crunch on the freshmen girls dorms. 233 is huge. I don’t know where they’d find the space. Especially since I know they just reduced the number of freshmen dorms to make space for upperclassmen boarders, which effectively removes about 20ish spots for boarding freshmen. Unless they are increasing the number of day students, this doesn’t make any sense. However, they have extensive plans to add something like 65-70 boarding spots through dorm renovations, so it simply does not make sense to add more day students now. However, it’s the ten student decrease that seems like the biggest issue. Even assuming that they’ve only taken 15 new uppers, that still means that 25 lowers left the class last year. Whenever a class even gets close to that number of people leaving the class in one year, everybody knows about it, because it almost always means that there was a giant bust. There was no large bust in the lower class this past year, at least not one large enough to attract widespread attention, and picking them off one by one would mean a little under one a week. There was an incident at the end of the year involving some twenty DCs predominantly in the upper class, though I don’t deny there were likely lowers involved. It’s just not very likely that the lower class lost 25 people this year. For perspective, the Class of ’09 is known for losing people in giant busts, and we probably lost about 40-50 people over four years.</p>
<p>Sorry, I didn’t see your post. Where on PANet? I’m still absolutely shocked that they seem to be real, for the above reasons.</p>
<p>But it only shows freshmen who didn’t make it to graduation, and only ones who left before the yearbook went to press. In the Class of '09 a fair number of new lowers didn’t make it as well as one new upper. I’m not sure about new seniors and PGs.</p>
<p>Oops. Tapper7 was responding to a post that I deleted regarding the yearbook. They published a collage of the 2005 entering 9th grade class with spaces for those that departed before graduation. It looked as if 10% or so left early.</p>
<p>Some freshmen dorms have had singles turned to doubles this summer, but not nearly that many. I do know that Andover overenrolled freshmen, expecting a lower yield, my brother being one of these freshmen. I’d take those numbers as estimates more than exact totals, but it’s quite possible that those are the true numbers. They’ve not completely unreasonable, though Andover doesn’t seem too concerned about overenrollment at the moment, since they still have students on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Where did I get those numbers? The 231st stats come from the school website: [Phillips</a> Academy - Fast Facts](<a href=“http://www.andover.edu/About/Pages/FastFacts.aspx]Phillips”>About)</p>
<p>As for 232nd class data, they are posted on the parent portal of PANet. Further breakdown follows:
Boarding students - Boys 394, Girls 404 = 798
Day students - Boys 143, Girls 149 = 292 </p>
<p>Also on the website it says: “Every year, nearly 200 new ninth graders, or juniors, begin their journey at Andover. They are joined by an average of 85 new peers in the tenth grade, or lower year, and 20-25 new eleventh graders, or uppers. A total of 30-35 new seniors and postgraduates round out the graduating class.” That’s why I think this is an unusually large junior class; and with 20-25 new uppers joining it looks like many students left after lower year. But if Padre13 was right about the 10% leaving rate, it seems on track.</p>
<p>Ah, the parent portal, that explains my inability to locate them. I was refering to the '09-'10 stats when I asked where they were, I’ve seen the '08-'09 stats many times. </p>
<p>The 10% leaving rate is accurate as depicted by the yearbook. However, it’s only for students who entered as freshmen, it’s over four years, and it’s for the Class of '09 who lost an unusually large number. A minimum of 25 students leaving in one year seem exorbitantly high to me. The rest of the data seems a little unusual, but not completely implausible. </p>
<p>Rereading my original post it seems slightly…antagonistic. My apologies, it does seem you have a basis for your claim, no matter how odd the numbers look.</p>
<p>No worries, Tapper7. I too thought the number of students that left, which seemed to be implied by crunching the numbers, surprising and questionable. I’d like to see an article next year on the Phillipian that may solve the mystery.</p>
<p>When my son and I visited Andover this winter, our guide, who was a senior assistant dean of admissions, crowed that the school had an annual retention rate of 98% and that this rate was the best in the NE boarding school system. Looks like something is amiss here. Whatsup?</p>