<p>Anybody who knows Saint Mark's School
in Southboro, MA.</p>
<p>Is it a good bording school?
I like to know any info about the school.</p>
<p>Is it a good school?
If so, how good is it?
I like to know other schools that are comparable to
Sait Mark.</p>
<p>Is it comparable to Taft?
Please let me know if you have enough info.</p>
<p>I really want to hear your opinion about Saint Mark's.
I want to cmpare Saint Mark's, Taft, and Concord Academy.
It is not going to be easy, but If you had choice, which one would you take?</p>
<p>well to me so far St. Marks has the best repuatation and fair ivy placement
while the other 2 are good as well. I also applied to concord but know i wish i would have done st. pauls annd taft 2!</p>
<p>I am not asking St. Paul, but Saint Mark's school.
Would you let me know what you think about St. Mark's
school in MA?</p>
<p>Sry, for some reaosn i was thinking of st. pauls! I know that st. marks makes up St. Grottelsex, an elitist group of bs's. Groton middlesex, st pauls and another one make it up. These schools all have very strong relationships and rivalry.</p>
<p>Thanks. It is good to know about St. Grottlesex.</p>
<p>Okie Doke Artichokey!</p>
<p>Folks!, any other opinion?</p>
<p>I've posted on St. Mark's elsewhere. I have a child there now. I am thrilled with St. Mark's. It's a great school. I went to one of the elite academies, and wanted something smaller for my child. (My school was incredibly cutthroat, and although I went to an Ivy League school after graduating, I wanted something that wasn't so cold and impersonal for my child.) St. Mark's is small. The academics are excellent. Although I note that Groton has a stronger academic reputation, I don't necessarily see the basis for that. (I note, for instance, that in Boston Magazine's September 2006 rankings, St. Mark's and Groton are statistically in a dead heat.) St. Mark's college placements are considerably weaker than Groton's however. I think St. Mark's college placement office is actually one of the weakest institutions at the school. It's a quirk of the school. But if you do well at St. Mark's you will have no problem going to an elite college, particularly if you have a "hook" -- as many preps do. St. Mark's facilities are first rate, although at times a bit dowdy in comparison with other schools. The whole "school under one roof" concept is also rather unique. </p>
<p>St. Mark's has a rather intense institutional culture, I guess partly because it's arguably the most "WASP-y" of all the elite Ivys. You can get more info on that by going to the St. Mark's entry on Wikipedia, which gives you a good idea about the nature of the place. I would recommend St. Mark's without reservation to anybody, now that my child has been there a while. You can't easily compare it to the other St. Grottlesex schools, however. It's a quirky place. St. Paul's is twice the size; Groton is perhaps the school most like St. Mark's, but Groton is so much better known among middle class kids. Middlesex is kind of jockey and there's a weird vibe to the place. St. George's struck me personally as a bit of a party school and I thought was just a little too "precious". (The whole "dragon" thing is a bit over the top for me, but I am a Yankee.) I think if I could make one negative comment about St. Mark's, the students tend to be so self-assured that they don't take college admission seriously enough, and the counseling office fails at fighting to persuade its students to apply to elite schools, and fails at persuading elite colleges to take Marxians. On the other hand, I think there is no prep school in the United States, and I include Exeter and Andover here, that has produced more illustrious alumni in terms of its relatively small size. It's the St. Mark's paradox. Why are the alumni so successful when they have such a tough time, over the last two decades, getting into Harvard?</p>
<p>I appreciate your explanation.
This helps a lot. St. Mark's is one of the schools I am applying. But there are not much discussion about St. Mark's in this forum.
Thank you very much.</p>
<p>I know someone there who absolutely loves it. I don't have any specifics, but I thought I would add (:</p>
<p>St. Marks is a wonderful school, though I don't have any experience to base that off of.
One of my extremely smart friends got into St. Marks and is there now, and they are a hardworking, ethical student (as far as my experience and the rumors go) who was the best of their class. I'm assuming the school knows this, and accepts students of the like.
They came from a pretty small school too, which surprised me because I didn't know a school like St. Marks even considered people from here (int. students from the overrepresented countries =/) unless they were big names with big reputations.</p>
<p>But I've read about them, and in addition to oldpreps comment, it's a relatively small school that works their butt off. Which is why I'm also applying for next year :)</p>
<p>Sounds like it is a good school. Actually I applied to the school. I hope everything goes well. Looking forward to hearing from them on March 10.</p>
<p>any other opinion about St. Mark's school?
I'd appreciate it.</p>
<p>My daughter graduated from the place in 2003, and I could not wait for the whole experience to be over. Arrogant administration, awful admissions office, terrible coaching, even worse college counseling. Distant, unfriendly teachers. Most money-focused private school I have ever seen. Living off of their reputation from 75 years ago, and suffering from a bad case of Grotonitis.</p>
<p>Ed Haskell's daughter clearly had a far different experience than my own daughter is having now. Every student's experience is different, and I couldn't say how SMS has changed over the half decade since his daughter graduated. My daughter is there now. Institutions evolve. It's a function of time. Here are some of the reasons I am glad my daughter attends St. Mark's School:</p>
<p>-- The academics. The relatively new St. Mark's Math Institute, led by Jim Tanton, is probably one of the best high school math programs in the country, public or private. People all over the world subscribe to Tanton's math newsletters and math games. Beyond math and classical languages, the academics are uniformly strong. St. Mark's teachers are a mix of young (enthusiastic and willing to try new things) and old (experienced, jaded, old fashioned). The music department, particularly choral, is fabulous. The choir this year is world class for high school level. The art department has brand new facilities. There's even a computer science department. Interesting speakers regularly come to school partly because it's close to Boston.</p>
<p>-- The athletics. As a small school with a lot of history, St. Mark's fields a lot of teams and by definition spreads itself thin, at times. It recruits athletes as well as trains them. While the 34th ranked HS basketball player in the country currently attends St. Mark's (according to <a href="http://www.rivals.com)%5B/url%5D">www.rivals.com)</a>, and its hockey teams have historically been legendary despite a tough patch right now my daughter's squash team has kids of every level from rank amateur to ISL contenders and best of all, everybody gets to play. They don't always win, but they play. If you want teams that always win, go to a school that recruits PG athletes. But don't expect you will always play. </p>
<p>-- The student body. Sure there are a lot of the kind of people one would think of as traditional boarding school types: scions of wealthy old New England and New York families. But there's also a diverse group of kids recruited for everything from their math abilities to all sorts of other unusual talents and best of all, the school's small size and emphasis on collegiality means that all the kids get to know each other whether they want to or not. This is not something that necessarily happens at larger schools. St. Mark's feels neither snobby nor cliquey -- the twin curses of many boarding schools, and particularly the St. Grottlesex schools.</p>
<p>-- Southborough and St. Mark's just as places to live. Southborough is beautiful rural New England, but only a half hour from Boston. The campus itself, with its quirky Gothic architecture, has a unique feel, rooted in its past. St. Mark's has one of the most distinguished bodies of alumni of any small school in America, and you can sense this heritage as you wander about the campus, which is admittedly a little old-fashioned and rumpled. Beyond the alumni, writers and poets from F. Scott Fitzgerald to W.H. Auden to Robert Lowell to Vladimir Nabokov have had opinions about the school, whether for good for bad. I suppose nowadays history like this doesn't matter to many people. It matters at St. Mark's I think. </p>
<p>-- The presence of the Episcopal Church. St. Mark's is broad-minded, with Episcopal traditions of values and tolerance. Our family is Episcopalian, but other faiths are present. Required classes study religion as well as contemporary affairs from a religious perspective but not necessarily in ways you'd expect. There's also the Brantwood Camp in New Hampshire, which the school has sponsored for around a century and which offers unique opportunities for students to learn while helping others who are less fortunate. This is about values.</p>
<p>I've been happy with St. Mark's, and more importantly, it's been right for my daughter. Too bad it didn't work out for Mr. Haskell's.</p>
<p>I heard that there are fewer spaces available for 9th and 10th graders at st. mark's next year because they over enrolled this year. Has any one else heard that too?</p>