The situation at Andover

Prep School Admissions Prep School Cafe
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Phillips Academy Andover has a community building student mandate called: All School Meeting.
The students must gather at the Chapel and “bond”.

Apparently that was fine when the administration scheduled two meeting a month. Now, it’s weekly and some students are disgruntled cause the extra meetings are eating into “student bandwidth” for resting, relaxing or grabbing “a quick toast at Commons”. But the worst part is faculty patrols are surveilling aisles, castigating students that don’t pay attention and even confiscating phones for the remainder of the day.

Then you have the sad state of Andover football. There was once a time (a long time ago) that the majority of Andover’s football games were against college freshmen teams. The school drew huge crowds to home games. In the last 30 years or so, the football team was still extremely competitive routinely beating teams like Choate (now one of the top 3 programs in New England)

Now? Andover rarely wins and may only win one game this season: The opener vs Kent. Meanwhile, Exeter has done a fantastic job in building back it’s football program.

The positive right now is Andover’s impressive investment in athletic infrastructure. The brand new Snyder Center is incredible. The soon to be finished Pan Athletic Center is even more impressive and of course, the two huge hockey rinks. The only downside is these new buildings look generic, industrial and detract from the otherwise beautiful historic character of the rest of the campus.

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Putting that little faux-pas aside, file the above under “life’s a ■■■■■ and then you die.”

A bad football team? No phone use during all school meetings? Joseph Conrad was right:

I can’t even classify this as a first world problem; it’s a 1% of the 1% problem.

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:salt::salt::salt:

Bad football team is the worst thing you can come up with? Really? Plenty of schools have that…no one cares.

And a lot of schools have weekly all school meetings, like mine. Peddie has them twice a week…Find better things to complain about LMAO

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As an Exeter alum I am sincerely sorry to hear of these hardships. Please listen to the following…,

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Wow…people are a little edgy these days about Andover. I was merely offering up a few “fun facts”

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Are they “fun” facts or a pet peeve list?

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Needs work.

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This comment gives off “My little brother took my phone! It wasn’t me!” energy.

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Perhaps consider transferring to Cheshire Academy.

They defeated PA by a wide margin (42-6) at football and don’t seemingly have a weekly all campus meeting obligation. Given PA is considered a top 5 BS and Cheshire tends not to be considered as elite or competitive academically you would be a good candidate assuming you are in good academic standing.

That way your concerns and priorities will be addressed. Good luck.

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Sadly, the Cats fell to Exeter last weekend…

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Heck, my prep school had NO football team. I think I wouldn’t be the only sad alum if that changed.

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Northfield Mount Herman dropped football as did Cushing Academy. Worcester Academy once played all the New England Prep School football powers but now they’re playing schools like Hamden Hall Country Day and Albany Academy (Not, that there’s anything wrong with that)

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I…nevermind.

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