The percentage of boarders vs. day students has an impact as well. A school like Exeter (80% boarding) is likely to pick up some kids from the local public schools whereas St. Paul’s (100% boarding) is less likely to do so. I live in a community with 2 boarding schools. A lot of the local public school kids apply to these schools but only as day students. The kids who have spent years in private school apply to a wider range of schools, often including boarding schools. I think some of it has to do with the fact that some of these prep school kids have older siblings, or friends with older siblings, in boarding school, so the idea doesn’t seem so foreign.
In the end the demographics of the two groups is not so different.
All boarding schools will be painted as elitist by the media. If the incident had happened at any of the boarding schools mentioned, the press would come up with the same characterization.
Exeter has had plenty of unflattering media attention itself. I could argue that the Exeter administration has handled their scandals of the past few years in worse fashion but I’m not going to rehash and contrast each schools recent scandals.
Why don’t you talk to the school directly about their private school/public school percentages and hear their justification? Whether you’ll like their rationale is up to you but I think it would be more productive than repeatedly posting here when no one can really address the issue as well as the school can. While you are at it, if you have any concerns about the Labrie incident which caused the media focus, talk to the school about it as well and about steps they have taken in the aftermath. Their approach to answering your questions could, in and of itself, be of interest to you.
BTW, Labrie comes from an unprivileged background and his mother is a public school teacher. So, no correlation/causation between public/private/elitist and what occurred.
The incident and the resulting media circus as well as the private/public breakdown was in place before you applied. There must have been reasons you chose to apply knowing that.
I do think @Sue22 brings up a very valid point. Students in the local towns that feed day students to Exeter primarily attend public schools. There are very few private middle schools in the area. If 15% or so of Exeter is comprised of day students, the majority of those students will be coming from public schools.
So - any idea how these numbers compare to other schools? I would be interested to know if these schools’s numbers are average or skewed one way or another.
I think post #20 makes sense. Schools with very high boarding rates (and maybe those remotely located) may attract more families that have the tradition of attending boarding schools. And I wouldn’t be surprised if those families happen to be the ones that have their kids attend private schools from early on. With that in mind, I see Andover and Exeter share similar public/private rates, and expect a school like Hotchkiss to be similar with SPS in that respect, but unfortunately I couldn’t find that data for many schools.
Regarding the comment about “meritocracy”, my view is that arguably schools with generous financial aid programs tend to be more so than those without. And schools that are bigger in size can do so more effectively because smaller schools tend to be filled up more easily by “institutional priorities” such as legacy, athletes, big doners etc., leaving less room for the “raw talents”.
@panpacific Schools with very high boarding rates are attractive to those coming from some distance away, whether they be public or private school kids. I know it was one of the things we weighed heavily. I would think that it would be a common concern for all public school kids who intend to board.
@Sue22, I am familiar with these resources, but none of them seem to offer a breakdown of the student population by type of school attended previously (public vs private). Where are these data coming from (e.g., 66% of SPS students being from private schools)?
@GoatMama,
I didn’t mean to condescend. In addition schools sometimes release additional information in their acceptance letters and/or follow-up materials to new students.
According to the 2016 student survey at PA and PEA, the puplic/private school percentage at these schools is NOT similar. At PEA, only 38% of students surveyed come from private schools, whereas at PA 57% of students surveyed are from private schools. (http://nonsibipress.org/) Even so, I am not convinced these statistics will determine how inclusive a school is or whether a particular student can be happy at either school. A better proxy for inclusiveness and meritocracy might be the percentage of students on financial aid, although only looking at this metric will not answer the question either.
Not at all, @Sue22! The frustrating thing is, I went to the SPS parent portal and looked at all materials, and still didn’t see what I was looking for.
Thank you @panpacific for sharing your sources. The data from the sources you list seem to conflict with the data in the student survey. One possible explanation for the divergent statistics may be the following. When Andover mentions that 39% of students come from private schools and an additional 15% of students come from foreign schools, it may be that most of these international students come from private foreign schools (a strong possibility given the dearth of financial aid for foreign students). In order to get a sense of the total percentage of the student body that comes from private schools, one would need to add the domestic and foreign private school students. That total may be reflected in the higher percentages of private school students to be found in the aforementioned student survey. Another explanation for the different statistics might be related to the participation rate in the survey. However, the student participation rate was high, so the survey is representative. Sorry for the rambling, but interpreting statistics can be tricky.
If we go back to the day student concept, the area that Andover draws from for day students has many, many more private middle school students than the day student draw for Exeter. Again, that could explain part of the difference.
In addition schools sometimes release additional information in their acceptance letters and/or follow-up materials to new students.