I recently received admissions to the Lawrenceville School in NJ as a day student. Despite the price and logistics, we were greatly impressed by the curriculum. This school might be great for humanities oriented students, but we found the stem program to be slightly weaker. It would be a great help for parents and students to answer the following questions:
What is the STEM program in Lawrenceville? Is it a school that focuses on science, and computer science?
Is it possible to only participate in L’ville HS swim and still be competitive in the college recruitment process?
Does Lawrenceville provide opportunities for student to participate in competitive robotics/computer science competitions? If not, does it offer the ability to create new clubs?
More questions will likely come soon, but it would be great to find out more about this school!
If you & your parents are concerned that the STEM program at a top-10 school is too weak for you, then it probably isn’t the school for you.
If during all your research / interviews into the school you didn’t become aware of their award-winning Big Red Robotics team, it probably isn’t the school for you.
If you being a recruited athlete is an important element for you, but you have not inquired about this during the admissions process OR with your current coach, it probably isn’t the school for you.
Thank you so much for the reply! We obviously considered this and asked these questions to the admissions counselors. Still, we thought it would be important to get input from parents and alumni! Thanks again!
Overall, my experience with STEM here has been fairly positive; I actually came into this school a full-on humanities kid, but I’m now considering a math-related major in college.
I’ve noticed two main trends:
You will have a far better experience with STEM if you take the most advanced classes. In both science and math, the best teachers tend to exclusively teach classes like our infamous Honors Chemistry or Calculus BC. The problem is… those classes are hard. I’ve been lucky enough to thrive in them, but many people just can’t keep up with the workload (which is completely fine)
There aren’t many opportunities for advancement until fairly late in one’s Lawrenceville career. In science, all students are required to take the same first-year biology and second-year physical sciences (no advanced/honors options), so you can’t take honors classes until junior year, while in math acceleration starts in algebra 2 (though personally I’ve found Math 3X, our honors algebra 2 class, to be a waste of time; Precalculus BC was when things got good). Some “honors teachers” teach these lower-level classes, but it’s a bit of a lottery.
There’s also the Hutchins Scholars program, which is incredibly selective and has connections with labs at Princeton, Stanford, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Edinburgh…the whole lot. It’s very prestigious, and the students in it really love it.
Our science-related extracurriculars are a bit less involved (the captain of the robotics team told me that they don’t really do all that much, though apparently the rocketry team is top 10 in the country or something), but we perform fairly strongly in math olympiad-type competitions.
Is it possible to only participate in L’ville HS swim and still be competitive in the college recruitment process?
My good friend, who is a swimmer, said this about Lawrenceville swimming: “We’re good because we have people who came in good. It’s not because of the coaches.” One of my friends is trying to get recruited for swim without outside swim involvement, and he’s been pretty successful so far, but most of our recruited swimmers are day students who swim at a local club called Xcel. (Side note: pretty much every student who got into MIT from Lawrenceville in the last few years was a recruited swimmer or rower)
Does Lawrenceville provide opportunities for student to participate in competitive robotics/computer science competitions? If not, does it offer the ability to create new clubs?
Yes, and also yes. One of my friends is actually organizing a hackathon right now. The “outside competition” culture here is pretty sparse, though, outside of competition math, debate, and MUN; Lawrenceville students mostly stick to doing stuff within the school.
I am curious if you are also considering (or applied to) Peddie? If you are a serious swimmer focused on STEM it would likely be a better fit.
I think @confusedaboutFA point about being good because they came in good is fair. It is very difficult to attend Lawrenceville and continue swimming year round. Confused can correct me, but 9th graders are required to play a sport each season. After that they are only allowed one exemption (out of 3).
Exemptions are also quite difficult to get, as there’s some sort of requirement involving doing two terms of (varsity? can’t remember) interscholastic sports in order to be eligible. For swimmers, this typically means doing Water Polo in the fall. I also know of people finding incredibly low-commitment co-curriculars (one meets once a week for 20 minutes, but it is for this reason that it is super difficult to get into) and using that newfound time to swim.
Lawrenceville’s swim season is in the winter; I believe Peddie’s is year-round. I will say that I think we recently beat them, though
Thank you so much for the input. Although we realized Peddie had a stronger swim program, the logistics did not work out. Furthermore, I have one question: when do student begin taking computer science classes in Lawrenceville?
If George is in your list, there is a club team that uses their pool (like Peddie’s) that the more serious swimmers join. Definitely doesn’t have the history of Peddie, but it won’t be an impediment to a top swimmer staying on track for recruitment. I think they will allow you to use that as a sport in the off seasons.
The boys did, the girls did not. So is the ebb and flow of sports.
The point is that it’s hard to be a fully committed swimmer at Lawrenceville vs Peddie, where your club practice IS your varsity practice. Strictly from a swimming standpoint, year round is better. It’s just how the sport is. Lawrenceville tells you it’s fine, you can do both, but the reality is very very few kids manage to attend Lawrenceville and swim at the same level they were before. The school day and life isn’t structured to accommodate that and the choice should be made with eyes wide open. You have to be willing to give up a lot on one side or the other.
Also, just to clarify, it is not that Peddie’s season is year round. Swimmers train all three seasons but only compete inter-scholasticly in the winter. Fall and Spring the compete at USA Swimming competitions along with the club.
Similar question on Computer Science at Lawrenceville. Per the curriculum it seems like you need to be a junior to take any computer science electives. Is this not correct in practice? Being able to do Computer science/programming is important to my son as well.
I can only speak to Peddie’s curriculum which allows students to jump in at whatever level they are at. The only constraint being that 9th graders only have one free block and therefore only room for one elective.
A lot of kids don’t take one so they have more free time while adjusting. Chorus/Orchestra is pretty popular. We skipped intro CS (that’s not the actual name) and were able to sit for the AP exam at the end of freshman year. DS will move on to CS research and CS seminar in 11th and will be taking over projects of current seniors who are all heading out to top CS programs.
That’s mostly true. In theory, you could muck about a bit in your sophomore year and take it then, but it would make finishing graduation requirements a lot more annoying later on. The best way to be involved in CS here is through clubs.
My son was a Lville graduate (class of 2018), and here are my thoughts:
STEM is not the strongest at Lville. There are much better schools for that, especially the county magnet schools. Lville is very strong on humanities, and prepped my son well for college. Even the best STEM type people need to learn how to be effective writers and communicators.
Because of the saturday classes and lack of exemptions for off-season sports, it is difficult to maintain competitiveness for college recruitment purposes. My son started off ranked in top 10 in his sport nationwide in grade 9. But he was not able to attend tournaments on the weekends, and his ranking took a beating. There are Lville students each year who get recruited, but it is not easy. If athletic recruiting is the main goal, then go to a school where its easier to miss classes and go away on weekends.
Other thing to consider: Day students stay on campus quite late. Pickups at 8-10 pm are not unusual, plus on weekends. Each of the day students are assigned to a house, so they have a place to park their things during the day.
Regarding STEM competitions: the local science fair is affiliated with ISEF. Similar story for the robotics competitions. But the initiative has to be from the student. The faculty at Lville won’t give any special help. In fact, I found that unless your kid is a Hutchins Scholar, they really don’t want to be bothered. But there are loads of Lville kids each year who do well at the national level science competitions.
That may have changed recently, as I’m a non-Hutchins Scholar but have received quite a bit of help from my science teachers, especially when it came to taking the Chemistry Olympiad. I’m not sure about research, though, as I don’t plan to get involved in that.
Thanks for all the valuable feedback. Do you know if kids graduating from Lawrenceville attending top computer science or Engineering programs or are most going on to pursue Liberal arts/pure science majors for the most part in college?
I’d say of the top ~20 students (i.e. the ones who get into top colleges without legacy etc.), there’s maybe 5 or so people in such fields. Very few people from here attend Stanford or MIT, while a lot attend Harvard/Yale/Princeton; to give you a better idea, in our five year matriculation, it’s 20 to the former compared to 92 to the latter (44 without Princeton, with which Lawrenceville has the whole “feeder” thing).
But let’s qualify for future readers that “feeder” does not mean an acceptance to Princeton. Lots of legacy, faculty kids, Dean’s List and even Questbridge make up this group. In other words, the vast majority are hooked.
