<p>I wouldn’t place much faith in the Boston Magazine rankings. Their #13 and 18 schools are rolling/open admit special ed. schools, both of which they rank above Deerfield (#20). Corwin-Russell (#18) is a school for kids with a variety of LDs which operates out of an office building and offers one sport-ultimate frisbee. The school apparently does a good job at what it does but to compare it to Deerfield doesn’t make any sense to me. This makes the entire ranking suspect in my eyes.</p>
<p>Austin Prep was ahead of Phillips Andover according to the BM ranking. It made the top 3.
The ranking is a complete farce, but I had a good laugh looking it over closely. Catholic Memorial finished last at 65 which also makes it suspect. I always considered it to be very respectable for the catholic day schools for greater Boston. </p>
<p>The magazine had the same problems in 2009 when they ranked Roxbury Latin #26 and BB&N #27. After a lit message board, the editors finally admitted that they had wrong data for both institutions and had to send an apology in the following issue. Without mentioning names the same statistician who screwed up the stats in 2009 also did the ranking this year and the #s look dubious again. The focus looked to be too test-centric and while testing is an important indication of a school, I would have brought other criteria in like faculty-student ratio, graduation rate, quality of college placement, endowment, and the alumni participation rate.<br>
The magazine wasn’t clear as to how the #s came to be. </p>
<p>Colonel, your top 10 list was excellent for the best private in MA. I agree with you across the board.</p>
<p>always enjoy the posts out here. mdgran1955</p>
<p>Sorry, Colonel, as I’ve read this thread, I’ve come to the conclusion that not much is learned or accomplished by ranking these schools according to unquantifiable opinion. Admittedly, reputation matters in the independent school world, but there is also a good amount of un- or under-recognized value, which a ranking according to thoughtfully selected data would hopefully bring to light. Unfortunately, Boston Magazine’s methodology is both obscure and haphazard, and the data they rely on is unverifiable (when it is provided at all). I would be more interested in a study of expected vs. actual SAT scores (an approach taken elsewhere on this site), college acceptance (rather than placement), percentage of faculty with degrees from the colleges that students aspire to attend, or other such usually unexploited metrics. But, alas, the schools on this list would probably never agree to supply a third party with this information, and perhaps with good reason.</p>
<p>The other obvious problem, with this thread and with the BM rankings, is that, as noted above, like is not always compared with like. Why rank Roxbury Latin against the Winsor School, when no student would ever choose between them? Why include these tiny schools serving very specialized populations in the same ranking as some of the true Goliaths of American education? To sell magazines, I guess. But I doubt students and parents are well served by this approach.</p>
<p>With the ISL, the problem is more complicated. On the one hand, the ISL schools are deeply intertwined and I doubt the classroom experience at the schools most frequently discussed on this thread differs very much. I’ve been to every ISL school save one and have gotten a good in-depth look at a handful, and I didn’t observe great differences in instruction or academic standards. This is a very select and privileged group of schools. Standards and expectations are high. Facilities are top-notch. Students are talented, motivated and ambitious. Those who resort to “tiers” on this thread usually separate schools that appear up close – to me, at least – to be very, very similar.</p>
<p>On the other, life at a single-sex (boys, in the case of the ISL) school seems rather different from life at a coed school. Likewise, a boarding school experience is worlds away (sometimes literally) from a day school experience. The overall feel of a campus can differ appreciably. These are factors prospective families will want to consider carefully-- and they will hopefully ignore most of the hearsay and self-serving prejudice aired here, as interesting as it is to read.</p>
<p>Thank you ApreVerite, you’re spot on. </p>
<p>Thank you ApreVerite!</p>
<p>To add to your accurate summation, for most families considering ISL schools, the traffic in the Greater Boston area matters a great deal. Many schools fall off families’ lists, because they just can’t imagine how to get a child to and from school. As most parents work, child transportation has to align with parents’ schedules and commuting habits. If you look at the ISL schools on a map, you’ll notice they are spread out; those which seem to be close are not close, given the vagaries of traffic.</p>
<p>The greater Boston area is a vibrant, intellectual center. There are more than enough families in the area to fill every ISL school with serious, interesting students. Every year, all these schools turn down students who would have thrived. Attempting to rank the schools is like trying to rank different varieties of roses. In comparison to most American schools, the ISL schools are superb.</p>
<p>Boston Magazine has withdrawn the rankings: <a href=“http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/13/boston-magazine-retracts-school-rankings/40YsOIEhZ8CHiGb7o5lcWM/story.html[/url]”>http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/13/boston-magazine-retracts-school-rankings/40YsOIEhZ8CHiGb7o5lcWM/story.html</a>.</p>
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<p>One further thought about Boston area traffic. The Mass Pike has been terrible this week, due to construction. I read that more construction is planned, after the completion of this project.</p>
<p>This project is slated to end in 2016. <a href=“http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/05/pike-drivers-left-fume/vk1BJ38Tf1XPEhHhb1dyrM/story.html[/url]”>Pike drivers left to fume - The Boston Globe; </p>
<p>To begin in 2017, straightening the Pike in Allston: <a href=“Straighter Mass. Pike may dramatically redefine Allston - The Boston Globe”>Straighter Mass. Pike may dramatically redefine Allston - The Boston Globe; </p>
<p>This will make it even more difficult for parents to make reliable plans to transport children to school. It may decrease the number of applications to quite a few schools; why even apply if a school which used to add 20 minutes to your commute now might add 90 minutes? </p>
<p>Press make an error, shocking! </p>
<p>“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.” - Mark Twain</p>
<p>Not just “an error”, but a completely moronic methodology to start with. Taking the one third of the schools that dont’t report SAT scores, and just arbitrarily assigning them the average SAT of the schools that didn’t report, is just bizarre. Who would even dream that up? One of the schools is a brand new high school that has its first 9th grade class this year, with only 7 students. Yet somehow, using these made up SAT scores, it ended up ranked as the 30th best private high school in the state. I think it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain that a school that is three years away from graduating its first class of seniors shouldn’t be included on any ranking of high schools at all. </p>
Not sure how these are derived but FWIW… top 10 prep schools
http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/05/22/the-10-most-legendary-prep-schools-in-america/
IMHO, the odd one out on the list in caringmom11’s link is West Nottingham. I think it’s listed as one of the “Most Legendary” prep schools because it’s the oldest boarding school in the US, but it’s dissimilar from the other schools listed in that it’s 45% international students, has a very small endowment, and has an acceptance rate of 65%.
Even I was surprised to look at that Sue22… I really have not heard of West Nottigham… hence my comment of FWIW… there are so many other schools which could/should have been part of the list…
- Milton Academy, extremely rigorous, extremely smart kids
- SPS
- Groton
RE: “West Nottingham” Unlike any other boarding school – really, UNLIKE any other boarding school – West Nottingham does not have a college counseling link on its website and does not produce a college matriculation list. Could it be because a school with an average SAT of 1520 and an ACT of 21 knows that a list full of community colleges for its “graduates” would make it exceptionally unattractive for the internationals who go there (perhaps for its ESL program, a sure giveaway for a desperately tuition-hungry school).
RE: "Roxbury Latin is often #1 in this yearly survey. That is #1 in the Country. Last year 21% of the graduating class were heading for Harvard " The Harvard thingy is over-stated, as probably Harvard faculty send their kids there and/or the usual in-state bias applies. Harvard takes way more out of Massachusetts than is rationally justified, no doubt to fill their hockey team.
Not just for the hockey team maybe? http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/01/15/247-wall-st-states-best-schools/21388041/
Roxbury Latin is not graduating a bunch of lunkheads. Their median SAT scores are CR 720, Math 750, Writing 740. Combining those would give you a score of 2210, just 27 points lower that Harvard’s average SAT score and well above Phillip Andover’s 703/714/695.
(I do know the difference between mean and median but Harvard doesn’t report median and RL doesn’t report mean. I would assume PA is reporting mean, although they do not specify.)
Yes, PA reports the mean. They specified it here http://www.andover.edu/About/Pages/FastFacts.aspx
^Yes, that’s where I found it. We can assume they’re reporting the mean, not the median, because they aren’t rounded to the nearest 10. Of course PA’s median could be above RL’s. I was just trying to point out that RL kids are seriously smart, not dumb jocks getting into Harvard on the strength of their athletics or some imagined bias toward Massachusetts kids.
@Sue22 Agree on the point you are making here. But why “assume”? They “specified” it’s the mean they were reporting.