Prep school choices for a URM

<p>Crash, you might want to post under the high school thread. Lots of good boarding school advice there. I'm a SPS fan also and I would like to hear what Demarius has to say.</p>

<p>I think it would be hard for anyone coming in Junior year as one of the handful of transfers. Exeter can be a difficult adjustment coming in any year. Like Harvard students, Exeter students are very intellectual, independent, brainy and many are a little rough around the edges. I am sure there are some 4th generation Exetonians, but there will also be crude hockey players who write poetry and street smart inner city kids who score 1600 on the SATs. In addition, unless it has changed, the food is supposed to be terrible. Contrast that with St. Paul's, where Judeo-Christian values are served up several times a week in the form of chapel service, there is a strong sense of community and emphasis on giving back to society, the food is excellent, the dorms are beautiful and everything is first class because the school has a huge endowment. The students are athletic, but in more of a scholar-athlete way. There are no day students, which gives a greater sense of community, and there are no post-graduates. It is also middle-sized so students don't get "lost" the way they might at Exeter, but they aren't in a fishbowl the way they might be at smaller Groton. The avereage SAT at SPS last year was 1390. I also like St. Andrew's for its unassumming ways. SPS is a feeder for the Ivy League; St. Andrew's is a feeder for Williams.</p>

<p>All Exonnians thank you for your kind an gracious descriptions of us. Wow is all that I can say.</p>

<p>Damaris-just wondering:
1. have you ever stepped foot on the Exeter campus? Seen the science building?????!!!!
2. have you ever met an Exeter grad?
3. did you make up the term "Exetonian"?
3. are you an SPS grad?
4. what do they feed you?</p>

<p>ok, one last question...wouldn't a poetry-writing hockey player be a scholar/athlete???</p>

<p>Hazmat, you nailed this one...WOW!</p>

<p>Hazmat- are you "rough around the edges"? Are you street-smart? :)</p>

<p>Hazmat-are you an ill-fed profanity-spewing atheist with hockey-hair? :)</p>

<p>More to the serious point here, I know reasonable minds can differ, but I certainly don't consider it a drawback if a prep school has a large percentage of day students. After all, if a really good prep school existed in my town, I might send my child there as a day student, and I don't think I'd have any worries about my child getting along with the boarders there.</p>

<p>FWIW, S attended Exeter as a Day student and really loved it. </p>

<p>Is he .." intellectual, independent, brainy and a little rough around the edges." ? </p>

<p>Well, he's not quite independent even though he may disagree. He can be intellectual and brainy when he wants to be. He is a little rough around the edges for sure! In fact, now that he is a sophomore in college, he is even sporting a "designer stubble" on his angelic face. We think he is going for the Tom Brady look, but maybe he lost his toiletries. We didn't ask.</p>

<p>Most of all, he is a normal, fun-loving teenager! (soon to be 20) :)</p>

<p>P.S. As for the food, he had the option to eat at home or school. He ate at school. I guess I know where my culinary skills stand. </p>

<p>This is a rough crowd.</p>

<p>Tokenadult- it is a real drawback for the boarding community if the percentage of day students is high. We had a disastrous experience with a prior school for that very reason. The school was about 35% boarding and many of those were locals who were not admitted as day students. The boarders disappeared on the weekends and there were too many opportunities for running around the city with day students. I would not recommend anything with less than 75% boarders for a boarding kid.</p>

<p>Could also look at Blair Acad. in NJ and the Hun School in Princeton. There is the Hill School in PA and also the George School in Bucks County, PA.
Tatnall School and Tower Hill School in Delaware.</p>

<p>Quote:</p>

<p>"The boarders disappeared on the weekends and there were too many opportunities for running around the city with day students."</p>

<p>I think Exeter has only about 20% Day students. They have a very strict policy about boarders leaving campus. The boarders can not even go to a Day student's house without a lot of signed "approvals" from parents and or advisors, etc. The good thing is that my Day student son and his Day student friends stayed on campus to socialize with their boarding friends. They were not driving around the streets at all like many of their local public school peers. That was actually a major benefit to us. One less thing to worry about!</p>

<p>
[quote]
**Hazmat-are you an ill-fed profanity-spewing atheist with hockey-hair?
Hazmat- are you "rough around the edges"? Are you street-smart?

[/quote]
**</p>

<p>Well let me begin.....not ill-fed, not usually profanity spewing, I don't have hockey-hair. "Rough around the edges" I cannot answer for I know not what it means.[someone help me out here]. Street smart? I think I can say yes to that one for I am on a metro campus and have survived so far. I try not to bash other schools and try to clarify misrepresentations of my schools. </p>

<p>As to driving in cars while at Exeter.......an Exeter student can ride in NO car that their parents haven't given written permission to ride in. No day student or faculty cars. Cabs yes but cruising with sibs of current students, or other parents NOT, NOT NOT.</p>

<p>"Rough around the edges" generally means not socially sophisticated. The term "unpolished" is really the same metaphor. </p>

<p>Don't worry about it. I don't think anyone's reaction to that description of Exeter would be to dismiss Exeter as a worthy school to apply to. I just took it as rabid school pride in another school.</p>

<p>One would only dismiss it if it were UNworthy, not "worthy".</p>

<p>As a rule I don't see that great school spirit includes any element of "bashing" any other institution. It surprises me to see this on CC. I know we all love our alma maters but I strive for a higher plane.</p>

<p>you must have missed the "I don't" at the beginning of the sentance.</p>

<p>Tatnall and Tower Hill in DE are day schools.</p>

<p>hazmat - It still holds. Read the sentence (not "sentance", by the way) slowly. You have shown much intelligence on these boards - I am surprised at you!</p>

<p>leanid, unless you can point me to chapter and verse from a really authoritative book about English grammar, I think the interesting point you raise is debatable. I thought about it for a while, and the point really depends on how one would restructure the sentence to not use the word "as." </p>

<p>What do you think about the substance of the issue?</p>