-What is the dress code?
-Obviously, since these are among the top schools in the country, it is going to have a decent amount of work, but do you have a social life (unlike schools like Andover, Exeter, etc)? What time do you usually go to bed during the week?
-How does one compare to the other three?
What grades do you have to have to get in? What sat percentile?
-Is there a lot of partying?
-Are there only varsity sports? Or can you be on a JV team as well?
-What languages can you take?
-What looks better on your application, the language latin or coding (computer science)?
I’ve heard that Choate and Hotchkiss have a more rigorous academic program, but I’m sure all boarding schools are great in that sense. Also, although Taft may be a notch lower, I think that a school in which you are able to be on the top of the class is better than failing at a somewhat “better” school. If you would like to know what languages you can take, I suggest you visit the Taft homepage and search in the academics catalog. Also, I’ve heard that Taft does not accept students with a ssat percentile lower than 50%. You can be on Varsity, JV, and thirds for some sports as well.
Although taft has a “jock school” (I’d prefer “sporty”), it was proven untrue a few years ago, but you don’t seem to need to worry about that!
Thank you so much! Do you by any chance know what the “student life” is like? Also what the dress code is, what grades you have to get to get in and on an application does it look better to take latin or coding?
You seem to have posted a lot of threads with approximately the same content in them. Many of these questions can be answered by looking at the school’s website. For the dress code, look at the school’s student guide/handbook. For questions about JV/Varsity teams, look at the “Athletics” section. For questions about student life, dorms, and campus, see the “Student Life” or “Residential” section on the school’s websites. To see the languages you can take, look at the “Academics” section.
I would also recommend using the search tool above “Search Forum” by entering in the schools you are interested in and also testing out “[[School Name]] CollegeConfidential” on Google–you may find some of the answers you are seeking already there.
There is no set grade or SSAT percentile admittance. Plenty of 4.0 GPA, 99th percentile SSAT kids were denied admission. Grades/SSAT is only one small part of the package, and schools look at the entire package.
This question honestly scares me because no one should just take a course in order to have it “look good on their application.” Take the courses you love and want to take. Don’t take a course to show off to colleges/BS.
I don’t currently attend Taft but I was accepted for the 15-16 school year, so I can only answer your first, sixth and seventh questions from what I saw on Revisit Day.
The dress code is VERY relaxed compared to schools like Hotchkiss. Some people get away with leggings while other people wear faux leather pants with peplum tops.
The sports levels are Varsity, J.V, Thirds, Fourths and Intramural so you have plenty opportunities to be on a sports team.
From what I remember, the languages are Latin, Spanish, French and Chinese.
All of these questions can be answered by looking at the school’s website/handbook, so take a look at them.
All of these schools have a ton of threads about them. You should do your research and look them up and THEN ask additional questions you can’t find. Also, most of your questions are found on the school websites which also usually have student handbooks attached.
I know a student (female) who is a current junior at Taft and when she was interviewed, they were impressed that she knew Spanish, French, and Latin; but I think this all depends on the interviewer. Also, this doesn’t necessarily mean Latin would be a better impression than coding, in my opinion, I would be impressed by both but especially coding because it is less common.
For student/social life, try this thread, (it is a bit old but it helped me a lot)
@njohns I don’t really know much about the workload. My tour guide says that you have to manage your time wisely (and that goes for any school) unless you want to end up with three papers, a Global History project and fourteen chapters to read at 11 P.M that are due the next day.
Assuming that the workload for all prep schools are similar (although there are some differences), you might want to look at some of the Andover threads that say the work load for that school as a reference…
@thelittleswimmer I agree with you that many of @njohns’ questions can be answered by looking at Taft’s website, but there are some areas such as ‘student life’ that can’t be entirely described on the student handbooks. There are a lot of details and experiences that are better explained by a parent or a student who knows the school really well and can give an incoming student a much wider scope. For international students the insights from a student who has actually experienced the lifestyle and the ‘feel’ of the school are invaluable. Sending a child away to another country, no matter how great the school is, is a huge and difficult decision, so there are never enough questions that an anxious parent or international student can ask and a resource like CC for families outside of the US is really important for us. I have some questions myself that I hope a current Taft student or parent can answer:
1.Does the school have a strong community feel?
2. How welcome do international students feel in the Taft community?
3. Does the school plan activities in the weekends for the students? If so, can you describe some of them?
4. Does the school help new students integrate socially or is it more of an independent task for the kids?
5. Are international students well integrated with the student body?
5. Do the NYC kids dominate the ‘feel’ of the school or is it more of a diverse environment?
6. Are most kids nice?
Thank you! I would really appreciate any insights I can get to the school! (Sorry, I hope you can understand how I feel sending my kid away for three years to a foreign country for the first time)
@Happymom123, I can certainly understand why it feels scary to contemplate sending your child to school in another country. And you’re asking really good questions. The only thing, though, is that I think the answers to all of your questions (except #5) would be pretty much the same for any of the boarding schools that you’re probably looking at. All the top boarding schools have a strong sense of community, with significant international student populations, lots of school-planned activities for weekends and for helping integrate new students into the social life of the school, etc, etc. Now, if you’re able to visit any of the schools, you certainly may walk away with the feeling like you liked the atmosphere at one school better than another, but that’s really something that’s just a “feel” thing, not something that you’re going to be able to get from answers to the questions you pose. As for your #5 about NYC kids, I’m not sure I’d say there are any schools where they truly “dominate” the feel of the school (that is to say, I think all these schools look and feel incredibly diverse). But there certainly are some schools where a big enough percentage of the kids are from NYC that it’s noticeable (Deerfield comes to mind, for one).
^^^Choate is another school with a large population of NY/C students, but I wouldn’t say they dominate the feel of the school. It is a generally sophisticated student body, though, if that is what you mean.
