It also protects your privacy.
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Helpful hint for those applying and/or entering:
I wish I had looked at the School Profile for each school my kiddo was accepted to or even applied to. The School Profile is not always easy to find - even if you type it into the search bar. It might be a tab in the college counseling section of your school’s website. Here is the Taft school profile.
The School Profile will give you information about mean test scores, matriculation, grading, graduation requirements and grade distributions (some schools).
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Do most schools publish this? Groton at least does not. It is kept from parents until junior year when you start meeting with cc. I suspect because it is fairly brutal and people would realize how low their chance of a “4.0” is.
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Hotchkiss does:
I don’t believe Lawrenceville’s profile is public (I haven’t even seen it yet and I’m pretty far into my college process); that said, they do give us a grading distribution for our class at the end of junior year.
Interestingly, the document with that information states at the top, “Lawrenceville does not provide class rank, a cumulative GPA, or any other form of grade distribution to colleges either on our School Profile or included on any materials sent in support of a student’s candidacy.”
From what I’ve seen on my transcript, only class grades and term and year GPAs are shared.
This is a serious consideration if the student attends one of the really small schools. It isn’t about my privacy, but my kid’s, too.
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Does the low chance of a 4.0 matter, though?
Are Groton kids somehow penalized in the college admissions process? Do Groton kids matriculate at "lesser’ schools than peer boarding schools?
Without looking, I can answer “NO!” So tell me why it matters that it is hard to achieve a 4.0?
Don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. The goal of boarding school is not a perfect gpa. It is to get a superior education that will pay dividends for the rest of your life. And some would add, college matriculation. Has Groton failed at either of these metrics, the ones that matter? Um, no.
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A lot of students, myself included, come into boarding school with overtly ambitious expectations of themselves. For most of us, a 4.0 was our norm back in middle school, and it can be quite difficult to adjust to this new reality of grading in a much more competitive environment; in fact, when we were first introduced to the counseling staff, they reported that one of the most common concerns students came to them with was, “I don’t feel smart anymore.”
I think that, at the very least, knowing that so few students get 4.0s would help prevent students from setting themselves up for disappointment—I don’t think that most students coming into boarding school expect themselves to be at the tippy-top, and understanding that what may be common in your eyes (as a person who doesn’t know the school that well) is actually nigh-impossible may ease that pain a bit.
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I think the message was that not making the profile publicly available was to keep the info from incoming students (and their parents), not from AO’s. AO’s already know about the grade distributions. The students, however, are the ones who will freak out when they realize that 95% of their class will not graduate with a 4.0.
This is evident from the many, many posts we see here asking about x vs y for college matriculation, or how to prepare for the math placement test so they can jump from Algebra I to Calc BC, or how they can convince the school to let them take 7 classes.
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Boarding School was a great experience for my kid in many ways (too many to go into here), but the things I wish I knew before sending him are:
Take a look at the schedule. Long weekends usually involve a Saturday after sports pick up and a Tuesday drop off. Parents “weekend” also usually at our school is a Thursday/Friday, take your kid home Saturday and bring them back Tues. Luckily my husband’s schedule is more flexible than mine. As a public school teacher, I just can’t take off all of those Tuesdays to bring him back to school.
My kid has fewer friends than I thought he would. Don’t get me wrong. I love the friends he has, but his social circle is restricted as he wants to stay far away from trouble. He calls it the “risk/benefit value”. He’s worked too hard to hang with the kids that get into trouble as he doesn’t want to be guilty by association.
While he realizes that our family makes many sacrifices to send him to BS and that getting kicked out would be a major financial loss he’s had roommates that almost see it as a challenge to push the boundaries. And push they did. When dad donates a building or a playing field, you will get away with a lot. He knew he was not in this situation. He was okay with not keeping up with the Joneses in terms of vacation, cars, clothing, etc but that might be harder for some than others. I think the harder thing was not participating in a lot of the activities that formed some strong social bonds (which was also a blessing as those activities were “risky” or things that just don’t fit our family values)
I wish I knew that if your family donated a lot of money, discipline hearings meant nothing. You could rack up 4 or 5 and still be kept on campus. This at times resulted in dorms being trashed or other kids enduring discipline simply for defending themselves.
While the social stuff is a downer at times, it has built a lot of character. My kid is going into college with a strong sense of who he is, what his interests are, and exactly what he wants his college experience to be like (which I don’t think would have happened if he stayed in our local public school).
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You are probably right. Perhaps a better way to think of the gpa thing is this:
“What I wish I knew before boarding school was that it would be very difficult to get a 4.0, and also, that this would not hurt me.”
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Your post should be required reading for every family considering a $$$ private school education.
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Five minutes after I replied, I felt the need to come back with more. While my above post was definitely “the cons I wish I knew” there are also many pros and neutrals that I think one should consider. For the sake of clarity and perspective, DS has a sibling one year older that is in our local public school, I held a school committee position 2013-2019, and I teach in a nearby town.
I wish I knew how easy it was to make changes and how quickly (non-public) schools can respond to needs. No waiting 2 years to get buy-in before changing or adding a program. No waiting on guidance from the Dept of Ed. No push back on changing your kid’s academic schedule. The fact that they would create an extra section or an honors section to make a schedule that works best for an individual student. I felt the attitude was much more “Why not? let’s see if we can make it work” than “We couldn’t possibly do that” or “Let’s start with a survey, spend a year getting buy-in from all stakeholders and then put it in the budget for 3 years from now”
How I would see my kid in a whole new light. I feel like our relationship is really at a different level of respect then it was before he went away for school. I see how independent and competent he is while his friends that stayed home have parents’ that can’t believe DS can manage his travel, scheduling, college decisions, packing, even buying his own toiletries on his own. It’s not that he never asks our opinion, but he doesn’t need us to do it all for him. (By the way, his friends would be totally capable of these things if their parents backed off and made them, or let the, do it on their own)
No more parental social engineering! It was so nice to get away from parents doing all the social planning so their kids were on the “best” teams, in the “best” classes, had the “best” friends.
That my kid would find mentors that he will keep in touch with for a lifetime and how they are people I would want DS to look up to and emulate.
That he would have teachers and other adults in his life that knew him not just as a student but knew everything about him. What he likes, what motivates him, how he learns and what he values. I’ve actually learned things about DS from these people.
I’m not surprised at his independence (he’s always been a very independent and capable kid), but I have learned to trust his ability to navigate his academic decisions. I used to try to manage and direct him, but I’ve learned that he really does know best in these situations. Kind of hard for a control freak mom to accept, but definitely better for both of us.
How little I would care about the piddly stuff being discussed on town FB pages. Now that it doesn’t affect us, I don’t have to give it any headspace.
How he feels about himself as a student. He loves learning and never feels like he’s doing work just for a test. He’s really learned about how he learns best and how to reach out for help (which was a major goal of ours when we sent him). That his love for learning is still intact is what I am happiest about and makes the entire BS decision worth it in my opinion. Note: We spent a lot of time finding a school that aligned with our educational values and goals.
How much more involved college planning would be. (both pros and cons).
Pro - He had a full semester college planning course. I loved that it wasn’t about showing him what schools were good matches for him, but focused on figuring out what you want in a school (and that it would surely change as you got further into the process) and how to really research schools. He has weekly (or more) meetings with his college counselor where they chat about where he is in the process, explore schools together, discuss how he’s feeling, etc. By contrast, his sibling met with her guidance counselor once during the process and then once to request paper work.
Con: Visiting colleges is tough when we are on different vacation schedules and each visit requires me to first pick him up 2 1/2 hours away and get him back.
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Our experience has been similar and i echo what you have said.
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I understand that your experience has been different but now that my kid is older I’ve seen plenty of athletes get heavy pushback from coaches because of a <4.0 gpa.
Will it matter for my kid? No, not at all. Did it matter for yours? I understand from your comments it did not.
But frankly, yes I do think some Groton kids suffer in college admissions. The non Ivy legacy kids, who had a 4.0 at the public highschool, end up at places like Babson and Regis. Do I think they suffer in life, no of course not. But I think it’s a little disingenuous to argue that there’s not a solid portion of kids who take a couple steps down the college prestige ladder when they switch from public school to a school like groton.
I don’t happen to believe that your college matters all that much to your success in life. But I do think a lot of people still have lots of assumptions about how their kid will do once at BS and I think being honest about the grade deflation is important.
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I would quibble with the idea that there is grade deflation at boarding schools, at least at the one my child attends. Yes, few students seem to get an A+ in every course. But there are few grades lower than a B+, as well. It may be more accurate to say there is quite a bit of grade compression at boarding school. There’s a huge hunk of the students with GPAs equating to the range of high B+ to A-minus. But it seems to be as difficult to get a B as it is to get an A+.
I also think there is a misconception that virtually every kid at a tippy top boarding school is super smart and likely deserving of tippy top grades. According to my own child, there is perhaps 15% of his class that isn’t super bright or hardworking and that he would rather not, for example, be paired up with in group projects, etc. Plenty of brilliant, super-advanced kids, but plenty of kids in the “bright-normal” range as well, and a few lazy ones, etc.
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Depends on the school….this was covered a year or two ago with a good comparison of grade distributions…check out earlier thread on this.
The grade situation should not be a deal - breaker, just know that some schools have different distributions and our school had a mandated mean for 89, hence “Mr 89”.
What I wish I knew…
Well, I really knew nothing, but in a lot of ways am glad! Like I didn’t know about this forum, or that you are supposed to apply to 15 schools, not just 3 HADES. I didn’t know what HADES was, I didn’t know about “repeats”. I am thankful we knew none of that. My kiddo is currently at a HADES school, as a repeat, starting her 2nd and final year. We are an FA family. Significant FA. But we are not poor, which is why she didn’t apply sooner. We thought we were not rich enough or poor enough for her to attend boarding school, we were wrong. There is unbelievable wealth at these schools. Once she started friending people on Instagram after acceptance we realized that from the vacation photos! Also realized that probably those would not be her people. But she wasn’t worried about making friends. She hated her public high school. She found her group in her extracurricular, which interestingly includes many non-Americans, and they have been the most welcoming, and become her closest friends. She found her first boyfriend, a smart, quiet, kind, introverted writer, who is from one of those crazy wealthy families but you would never in a million years know it. They aren’t all snobs. She found teachers who care, and give excellent feedback, and seem to know her and like her, even if they don’t give her the grades she was used to barely working for at her public school. Is there drinking and bad behavior? Yes. But it is at every high school. And my kiddo, not being naïve here, is just not into partying, drama, etc. and easily avoids it. I can see how less mature kids would struggle. Her former classmates at our Blue Ribbon public school graduating class of about 300 just posted their matriculation stats. The valedictorian is going to UVA. Her top 10 friend is going to Wharton U Penn. and one is going to Carnegie Mellon. That’s it. The list doesn’t compare in the least with the list from DA. 30% of that class has over a 4.0. So I really am not worried that her lower gpa is going to hurt her. Overall, so far, the experience has been everything she has hoped for. The biggest thing I wasn’t prepared for was, as someone above said, the long weekends and returns to school starting on Tuesdays or Fridays. Lots of 9 hour trips each way, hotel expenses and time off. Luckily her dad has a pretty flexible schedule.
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I think both GPA observations are correct. Over the course of the last 5 years at our school, there WAS grade deflation initially and NOW there is grade inflation. And the latter is getting worse.
It seems to be a reaction to worse that usual college matriculations among those not in the top 25% or so. Most colleges are now evenly comparing GPAs from BSs and public schools, so there’s no credit for the difficulty of BS. As a consequence, I’ve heard of a number of students considering returning home to their public school this year…something I never heard of before.
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Source?
Unless you have more evidence than hearsay, I disagree.
It is true, however, that a high performing kid may do better with college matriculation as the valedictorian, e.g., from a public school, than being in the top 20%, again e.g., at a boarding school.
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