<p>Only a few schools are discussed here, and I like to mention that there are many outstanding boarding schools other than Andover and Exeter. They are big schools and it is not easy to compare them with other samll schools. In the big schools, not everybody goes to a good college it is three to four times larger than small schools and
the students quality is not uniform in such big schools.</p>
<p>Some small schools are excellent in terms of academic and extracurriculars. For example Saint Mark's school is
execellent school. Their acepptance rate has been below 30% and SSAT average is 83 percentile and their endowment is over 100million even in this downturn of economy. Considering the size of the school, it is a very good school. Their college matriculation is excellent.</p>
<p>check it out:</p>
<p>St</a>. Mark's School - Boarding School Profile</p>
<p>It is the first rate school as you see.</p>
<p>----This is the thread that old prep posted a while ago------
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>