<p>CaT HEADS…</p>
<p>The cads …</p>
<p>IT’S ALL GOOD (Interlochen, Tabor, Salisbury; Asheville School, Lake Forest, Linden Hall; George School, Ojai Valley, Oldfields, Dana Hall)</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of half of those schools…</p>
<p>SMEG= the schools I applied to.</p>
<p>What is so great about Thacher and Cate?</p>
<p>The facilities and matriculations don’t exactly match those of the HADES.</p>
<p>Haha, how on earth is Milton above Andover at all, principalviola?</p>
<p>Andover:
Wins sports vs. Milton
Has superior college Matriculations vs. Milton
Has half the acceptance rate of Milton
Has more than twice the endowment of Milton
Has a higher ratio of boarders vs. day students and doesn’t allow weekday boarding; What do you do when half of the campus disappears on the weekends?</p>
<p>And the list goes on. I mean come on, seriously?</p>
<ol>
<li>Sports, maybe</li>
<li>Not to Harvard, pton, or Amherst. My tops, other than that it really does not matter </li>
<li>Not for day students, in which it is SUPER competitive </li>
<li>We half fewer students</li>
<li>I like that, it helps the life… Go home with friends into BOSTON</li>
</ol>
<p>Look, people have different opinions. I know which fits me, ok? While you may support your to be alma mater, I will do the same for mine. Plus we get to work with Boston MIT profs, what uni does andover get to work with?</p>
<p>Yeah, PPV, the MIT profs make all the difference… Clearly they’ll be teaching you 9th graders exactly the same quantum physics that you’d learn at MIT itself</p>
<p>You’re right. You certainly are allowed to root for your <em>hopeful</em> alma mater. I just think it’s interesting that you would choose Milton over the great Andover. As for college matriculations, I’d posit that the only reason Milton sends proportionately more students to Harvard, Princeton, and Amherst is that Milton is a little obsessed with prestige. I would also go on to posit that many students at Andover who are accepted at Harvard, Princeton, and Amherst elect not to go and instead choose schools like Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Brown, and Georgetown. Andover’s greater diversity of student body contributes to its greater diversity of college choices.</p>
<p>Well… I would never be taught at the same caliber of John MITgoer, but I think having the opportunity to work with MIT prof is something in itself. Don’t tell me that Andover Community College even rivals Harvard Institute of Technology (mix of mit and h). </p>
<p>Remember that many students at milton elect to go elsewhere also. Proportion means everything, you guys have more students, and thus more people to send. We are not obsessed with prestige, many students elect to chose uchic, other ivies (brown is one of our top matriculations also), Amherst/Williams, etc.</p>
<p>Indeed. Because Phillips Academy is just so well-known for its association with Andover Community College.</p>
<p>Again, let me say that of course you are completely welcome to your opinion and everything and it’s totally awesome that you’d like to go to Milton, but on the college matriculations again… You say proportion is everything. You also pointed out that day student admission is much more competitive than boarding admission. The day-boarding ratio is 50:50. So, one could assume that there may exist in gap between the academic performances of day students and boarding students. You’d be a boarder, right? So, wouldn’t it conceivably stand to reason that more day students go to your prestigious colleges than the boarders do?</p>
<p>More day students apply, the caliber of the students is not lower. I spoke with the director of admissions who knows the college counselor very well. Milton is extremely well known in the Boston/Cambridge area. I was kidding about ACC, not as if ACC is even close to Andover’s caliber.</p>
<p>Fair enough. You’re the one who knows about Milton, not me, although my mom was accepted back in '75 (and chose Andover, btw :))</p>
<p>Did you go to the Milton revisit? I heard from a good friend who just turned down Milton for Exeter that the dining situation was nightmarish.</p>
<p>I heard food sucks, at the dining hall. We get to go to Boston three days of the week and friends houses and all. The day boston food sucks may end up being the day I kill myself. Exeter food is even worse I hear. </p>
<p>I talked with a Milton alum, now at Yale, I believe. He said that while Milton food is not the best, it is far better than Yale’s.</p>
<p>I have heard bad things about Exeter’s food. I didn’t have the misfortune of eating there during my visit, though. Nor did I eat at Andover, but I hear Commons dining is insane. With the amount they spent on refurbishing Commons and the kitchen facilities, it should be.</p>
<p>I heard Andover food is nothing amazing, but the commons are. Then again it will be far superior in food to any other school in the nation. I don’t think you can beat good homemade food though, not even at Andover… :)</p>
<p>I’m a vegetarian (except every now and then) so I get to half a fridge in my room. :)</p>
<p>benevolent4them: What is so great about Thacher and Cate?
The facilities and matriculations don’t exactly match those of the HADES.</p>
<p>Cate and Thacher are superb schools, among the best at preparing students for college and life. Although you suggest otherwise, college matriculation data isn’t an absolute measure of a school’s success for everyone. I would postulate that the success of a school can’t be accurately measured solely in terms of SAT scores, Ivy placement, or national merit scholars, rather a successful school inspires its students to succeed and have a lifelong desire to learn. Quality of life and happiness of students and faculty are also important factors. </p>
<p>Without question, the facilities at the HADES schools are superb. To my knowledge, neither Cate nor Thacher have a DNA sequencer like Hotchkiss and Exeter have. But then again, I can’t think of any other boarding schools that have one either. I suppose a Cate or Thacher student could schedule time in one of the labs at nearby Univ. of California Santa Barbara if they really needed to sequence DNA. For humanities, math, English, history, art, etc… I’m struggling to think of what facilities are needed other than great faculty, books, and students that are eager to learn. While the swimming pools at the HADES schools are inside beautiful buildings, Cate and Thacher students have to suffer with their pools outside and risk being sunburned (sorry, I couldn’t resist!). Seriously though, the out of doors is an important “facility” of these two schools. The horse program at Thacher is special. Mr. Thacher said to his first pupil: “Come west. Breathe deep. Let these books and these hills and these horses be your teachers.” </p>
<p>Below I have copied and pasted a few of the comments given by the “Most Selective” colleges and universities when they were asked what is distinctive about Cate kids. I found these comments on Cate’s website.</p>
<p>“I think what makes Cate kids stand out is a sense of excitement about
learning that hasnt totally been scheduled and beaten out of them by
competition like you see in other schools of Cates caliber. A part of this is
probably geography, but I also think there is a Cate ethos that emphasizes
learning for its own sake and kindness to others that is lived out by the kids.
They seem nice and smart, not just smart and driven.”</p>
<p>“My impression of Cate? Students who have the full respect and trust of
their teachers and administratorsstudent prefects and other leaders arent
just resumé-padding positions, but meaningful roles where they work closely
with other students and staff. That trust and respect doesnt happen at a lot of
high schools, and it seems to bring the best out of your students because of the
way your community functions. I also see a lot of down-to-earth and genuine
kids (young adults actually!) and that is refreshing.”</p>
<p>"Interesting assignment . . . A distinguishing quality of Cate students is that
the students seem able to express original thoughts and ideas more ably than
most of their peers. They are fascinating conversationalists! There is
certainly more emotional maturityMilton said it best in Paradise Lost, ‘free
to fall; sufficient to stand.’ The students I am thinking of seemed to
comprehend that freedom equals responsibility. They seem more like ‘young
colleagues’ than robotic impersonations of high-achieving students.</p>
<p>“After recruiting at boarding schools in New England for several years
now, I can say, with some degree of first-hand knowledge, that students
at Cate are just as interesting, intelligent, smart, and quirky as kids at all the
rest of America’s top-flight secondary schools. Let’s face it. Cate is
academically inferior to no one. The real difference with Cate students comes
not with what is ON their mind, but rather, with what is NOT on their mind:
Your kids are NOT stressed-out-hyper-manic-college fanatics obsessed with
selectivity ratings and parental expectations. Or at least, that’s not what I see. I
see intelligent young people who approach life with a laid back, smooth, coolas-
a-cat attitude about what’s really important. Although still very driven and
full of expectations to succeed, Cate students seem to respond to the all-too common
teenage pressures of ‘name schools’ and ‘US NEWS rankings’ with an
eye toward attending a college that will provide a springboard for a satisfying
life. Your kids are very well-grounded. They manage to exist in a world of
relative privilege while keeping their head OUT of the clouds (a hard thing to
do on your mountaintop oasis of a school).”</p>
<p>In closing, I think it’s important to note that there are MANY great schools beyond Cate, Thacher, HADES, etc… Where’s Waldo hit the nail on the head earlier in this thread… It’s all good. Students and their families should strive to find the school which achieves the best “fit” regardless of matriculation statistics and perceived prestige.</p>
<p>Thank you, CateParent! Your post is exactly what this site needs. I’m so tired of the “Andover is better than Milton is better than …” dribble. I certainly hope these kids wise up so that they aren’t obsessing that “Harvard is better than Yale is better than Stanford, etc.”
This should be a site to share knowledge, not a spitting contest.
I just wish California had more winter sports. I would have applied to Thacher, Cate, Stevenson or Webb had those schools had my sport available.</p>
<p>If you are a LAX player forget about the West Coast schools if you have D1 aspirations.</p>
<p>CateParent, the obsession about HADES schools on this site mostly reflects the highly charged, high-achieving, experience-free certitude of Type A 13 – 15 year old kids everywhere! While there are also some parents on this site who stoke the view that endowments, SAT and college matriculation stats equal the “best” or “most prestigious” boarding school choice, most BS parents have seen enough of life to realize that “best” equals “best for their child.”</p>