<p>Thank you so much for joining the board and answering my questions. There is nothing more real than what a current student feels about his school. Especially relevant is the fact that you had seriously considered Belmont Hill as an option. I also appreciate your take on your campus and your rivalry with BH. I liked the fact that each considered the other the biggest rival; this suggests to me that both are excellent schools.</p>
<p>I also enjoyed your opinion on the relationship between RL and Harvard. It is somewhat refreshing to know that RL students are more interested in a good education than other less fundamental stuff. Sometimes I wonder about that, since common responses about RL are always related to Harvard admission rate and SAT scores; the latter, as we know, are not very good indicators of someone's capability due to the ceiling effects of these tests.</p>
<p>Thanks for offering to answer additional questions. I will PM once I have more time to think about this. I also hope that I can hear from people who are related to Belmont Hill and/or Windsor, to get different perspectives. Hopefully during the holiday break people will have more time to offer their opinions. </p>
<p>I understand what you are saying about the range of courses available at RL. We wish that they can offer more years of Spanish, for example, which they may still add in the near future (?) to make it a four-year experience. However, from what I understand, in general RL has more advanced math options comparing to other schools (e.g., Algebra at 7th grade), and someone can move ahead of sequence if he is ready and wishes to do so.</p>
<p>There were so many people visiting RL at its open house, I thought that it might be challenging for them to show their best in that particular setting. We were shocked by how mobbed the place was when we visited.</p>
<p>So I wanted to find out why people love it so much, despite the fact that it has somewhat limited course offering and a smaller campus. </p>
<p>I did find the school to be a genuinely caring school for all. From talking to other parents, most want their boys to go to the school because of the amazing matriculation (actually, EVERY parent I talked to mentioned matriculation as a factor). There's no doubt that they must be doing something right to be held at such high standing. Unfortunately, 7th Grade for Pre-Algebra/Algebra I or 9th grade for Geometry / Trigonometry/Algebra 2 is not what we are looking for. The schools that allows kids to take a placement test and put kids in classes according to their ability (BUA and the bigger BS), we decided, are more suitable for our child.</p>
<p>A considerable number of very good schools are surprisingly inflexible in terms of math placement. If this is an important issue - and a student is looking for pre-calc or above in 9th grade, folks should be sure that a school can handle their needs. It is also important to look at how far the curriculum goes. Some schools were willing to start our child in the math desired (calc in 9th) but would have 'run out of math' in 10th and had limited ideas on what could happen then.
RL is a fine school - for those that it suits. There are certainly quite a few that are quite intelligent enough but not in the RL mold. Matriculation there is quite impressive, however, it is difficult to say what that really means. All the boys there are very capable and hard working, and many are legacies so one would expect a very impressive matriculation list.</p>
<p>I have a lot of guy friends at both schools. The ones at RL are generally much smarter than the ones at Belmont, and the ones at Belmont seem much more fun and laid-back. RL is pretty much full of nerds.... nerds in a good way. They're all wicked smart and have weak social skills. It's been my personal impression that RL is more prestigious(not that prestige matters) and "harder-to-get-into" than Belmont. </p>
<p>RL is close to Windsor.
Belmont is close to Dana Hall. </p>
<p>As about the connection to HArvard, I doubt that when all those kids decided to attend Roxbury Latin, they were thinking about "my sole goal is to get into Harvard." Honestly, who thinks like that?</p>
<p>As a former student, I'd have to say I disagree with your impression that RL is full of nerds. While we certainly had our share, there are plenty of kids who don't have "weak social skills." I'm not sure what gives you that assumption; I knew plenty of kids at BH who couldn't function at a party but just resorted to insults and racist jokes. The only way I could see "full of nerds" applying to RL is if by "nerd" you just mean "incredibly smart." The kids I went to school with were the most intelligent people I've ever interacted with in my life, and I'm proud to have attended RL.
I've also never heard of anyone getting into BH and RL, and then choosing to attend BH. This year, a quarter of the senior class at RL were National Merit Semifinalists. One-fourth! And yes, they get a surprising number of kids into Harvard each year. And that doesn't include the ones who get into Harvard and don't go. I had a friend who graduated two years ago from RL who chose Princeton over Harvard, Amherst, Penn, and Cornell (he was rejected from Yale).</p>
<p>We also looked into RL and were told that although moving ahead in the math sequence was possible, it was rare and difficult. There also is nothing in place for kids who finish the sequence early.
I do know of boys who were admitted to RL and choose other schools - including Commonwealth and BUA.</p>
<p>I think that for kids applying for 9th grade, BUA, Commowealth, and boarding schools may be more attractive because they start at 9th grade. We would probably prefer BUA and boarding schools if applying for 9th. </p>
<p>RL and other schools start at 7th grade may not be as accommodating to 9th graders as 7th graders (?). It is our understanding that Math flexibility is available in both RL and BH, and college level classes may be arranged off site when necessary. Since one of the focuses of RL and BH is providing well-rounded education, and academics are at very high level at least for RL, it would not be surprising that pushing ahead in one subject while shortchanging other aspects of education (other subjects, athletics, and EC) is not encouraged there.</p>
<p>In our somewhat limited experience, it is quite difficult in both theory and practice to find any private middle schools that can handle math acceleration well. One problem is simply that the schedules are generally by grade so finding a way for a 7th grader to fit into a 8th or 9th grade. The problem can be particularly difficult when a middle schooler is taking an upper school class since the schedules are often quite different. That being said, Fellsmom, if your son is applying for the 7th grade, you will probably find RL more able to deal with advanced math abilities than Belmont Hill. RL's advanced track does give 7th graders (sixth form for RL) algebra 1, and will put them into calculus as 11th graders (second form for RL). BH gives the most advanced 7th graders pre-algebra and puts them into calculus as 12th graders.
It is certainly quite possible to advance in a single subject without shortchanging other aspects of education.</p>
<p>Is it hard to get into Roxbury Latin from a good public school? Does anyone know if my son attends Meadowbrook school of Weston, his chance of acceptance will be higher? </p>
<p>Based on my very limited personal knowledge, RL looks for boys who are very bright, fairly sports-minded, and eager to be RL. Extraordinary math talent is not necessarily a key to admissions. They also make a point of drawing from a highly varied set of schools and circumstances, so I would not think that attending Meadowbrook would necessarily help. Meadowbrook is a very fine school, of course, and might help - I'm just not sure.</p>
<p>I agree with post #26. My son attended a very elite prep boarding school that had frequent athletic & debate competitions with Roxbury Latin & my son, a very social person, made friends easily with the Roxbury Latin students.</p>
<p>While it is rare and "difficult" to accelerate in mathematics at RL, it is not impossible. If you can prove to the school that you are truly capable of handling advanced mathematics, then they will let you do so. A student who graduated last year joined the normal sequence in 9th grade, but he performed so well that RL let him skip two grades, placing him in BC calculus in 10th grade. Currently, at the school, I can think of 4 students who are in this situation: 1 in 9th grade, 2 in 10th grade, and myself (12th grade). Yes, I no longer have a math course at RL to take, but I'm fairly certain that most prep schools (at least when I was applying) offered more than one class after BC Calculus. Instead, I'm doing a tutorial (independent study) in math in the fall and am taking a course at Harvard extension school in the spring.</p>
<p>Nataliez - I think there is a real mix of public and private school boys at RL but I don't know the numbers. I'm sure RL staff could tell you. RL is one of the preps that really does walk the walk in terms of recruiting outside of the upper-middle-class-private-school crowd.
123s - I'm glad to hear you are happy with math at RL. I didn't mean to suggest that acceleration was impossible at all. It is is merely difficult - and so families who are concerned about this point should make sure that their needs will be met. From what I know, classes after BC calc are a mixed bag and tend to be somewhat 'ad hoc' - the schools will offer what suits the students to a certain degree. Students can also 'go sideways' and pick up AP stat, and/or AP computer science to fill in their math slot. ( AP computer science AB is probably being phased out, by the way, so some may find AP computer science A less than challenging .)</p>
<p>poss791, soxfan, nemom, ColdWind, 123s -
I enjoyed reading your very informative comments. Thanks so much! </p>
<p>nataliez -
It seems to me that if a boy attends a good K-8 school such as Meadowbrook, it is less likely to go to RL after that. I would imagine that it is hard for him to leave a good learning environment before he finishes 8th grade, while most RL students enter as 7th graders. This might be one of the reasons that BUA is somewhat a popular choice for math/science oriented kids seeking 9th grade entry. Some limited online search on secondary school placements of local independent day schools showed that Shady Hill only sent 2 kids to RL between 2004 and 2008 and Fenn did not send any to RL within the same period. Both of them are excellent lower-middle schools as far as I know. BB&N and Concord Academy (with large 9th grade entries), for example, seem to be more popular for their graduates.</p>
<p>Fellsmom, is it because the school does not want you to leave? Do you mean if my son attends Meadowbrook, he will have less chance to be admitted into Roxbury latin at grade 7? Meadowbrook never gave us a good placement statistics. If my son goes to a top public elemetary school, does he have more chance to get into RL?</p>
<p>nataliez -
I am only speculating based on the available data I alluded to. I was mainly thinking that you or your son may not want to leave Meadowbrook if things are going well there. Placement statistics of Meadowbrook could be very helpful; I am not sure why they don't make it available to you. I have no direct knowledge whatsoever, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of RL students are not from K-8 private schools.</p>
<p>Some private k-8 or -9 schools do publish placement statistics, but those are only for students who graduate, or leave after 8th or 9th grade. More boys enter RL in 7th grade than in 9th, but all those 7th graders do not show up in the placement statistics you may see. Yes, even students happy at their k-8 school sometimes leave before it ends. RL attracts a diverse talented student body, including plenty of boys from private schools. It is impossible to measure, but I doubt that doing well at a school like Meadowbrook instead of a public school would hurt anyone's chances.</p>
<p>For those parents whose major concern in choosing a high school is how far their children can go in math, step back and think about your child's education more carefully. Math is not the only thing and the list of available classes is not the only thing. It is similar to looking only at sports. Think about the people he will be learning with and the environment. Perhaps he would learn more by working hard at writing or speaking in public or developing sports ability than in going one more class ahead in math.</p>
<p>Roxbury Latin and Belmont Hill are great schools, but if you look at the matriculation statistics for the good all-boys pre-preps in the area, such as Fenn, Fessenden, etc., the eighth and ninth graders show a strong preference for coed high schools. Of course, we don't know how many boys applied to Roxbury Latin and Belmont Hill, and didn't get in, just as we don't know how many students apply to Ivies from boarding schools.</p>