hey, i’ve responded in pm’s!
Did anyone leave Choate or did they just accept new people?
there were quite a few people who left from my grade that i can think of, five to ten last year, i believe? i think i might have actually overshot the amount of new people accepted, i would say closer to 30. lots of them were sport recruits. hope that helps!
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why do they leave and where do they go? (another boarding school? LPS?)
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hi!
most of the students who leave do so because of mental health priorities. they typically go back to public schools, though i know at least three this year who have left but will return to Choate next year to repeat the grade. mental health is just not great nationally, especially with the prominence of social media, so i would definitely say this is not only a choate-related issue.
i know a few who didn’t return after the covid year / left this year because of sports. they wanted to get recruited, and choate was canceling some of the seasons due to covid risks. choate is relaxing on covid protocols though, as people are getting boostered and infection rates are declining.
the others were unfortunately booted because of major school rule violations or honor code violations.
hope this helps.
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I can’t speak specifically to Choate, but many boarding schools increase their class size sophomore year. Most sophomore admissions at those schools aren’t due to someone leaving.
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Out of genuine curiosity, why do the BSs increase school size in sophomore year? I always thought the largest class size with 9th grade?
Tradition. Many Junior Boarding Schools operate 7-9 and have served as feeders.
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Yes, JBS. But also because there are many school systems where the break is between 9 and 10 vs 8 and 9. The transition point for students in the former is 10.
My kiddo entered as a repeat Jr. Those openings were not all from people leaving either. All schools she applied to indicated they typically add about 25 Juniors each year.
In Deerfield’s case, the freshman boarding class is limited by the number of beds. The school houses all freshman in one dorm (it has a boys side and a girls side with a joint common room in the middle). From memory, I think that the number of freshman is 103.
I think that this is a relatively new thing for Deerfield but that is exactly why they have a slightly larger relative intake in sophomore year than some of their peer schools.
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@MacJackAttack – this is a common limit at many schools. I think it may have something to do with the adoption of “vertical housing” at some schools. It provides a bit of a release valve on that.
I think, in most cases, the beds were built around the target freshman class size, not the other was around
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Totally agree. But that also means that as changes in desired class size may have changed, the freshman dorm size has not. So amending housing models is the easier fix.
Lawrenceville does the same; there’s exactly 88 spots for freshman boarders (44 boys and 44 girls), while sophomores are distributed amongst 11 different dorms. I believe around 1/3 of my grade is made up of students who came as sophomores.
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At Middlesex, I was told that they target a number of boarders based on the number of beds they have. They use a conservative yield model that I assume is very effective. I mean what if their yield is super high one year?
They shove more beds into a room. They convert lounge areas to dorm rooms.
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That’s great. Both Deerfield and Choate are amazing schools!
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Hi! My daughter got accepted to Choate as an incoming 9th grader. Like HQSH, wondering if we could get advice on what it’s like to be a student at Choate.
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How does a school like Exeter deal with this?