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the being away from home part is bad in the sense that your parents aren't there to watch over you and, as such, you can end up making some pretty dumb decisions. the house parents or whatever aren't like parents; they usually do little to nothing because they're either younger people who still have lives, or they have families.
mainly though, it's just bad. the students are some of the snobbiest, most elitist, over-priviledged brats you could ever imagine; either that or they're hyper-competitive, cutthroat, straining-in-my-seat-so-the-teacher-sees-i-have-my-hand-raised grade-grubbers. the teachers aren't that much better than you'd get at a decent public/private high school; most of are snotty 23 year old ivy league burnouts who are taking "a few years off" between applying to graduate school or whatever. as far as personal freedom goes, it's basically like the military. you do what you're told when you're told, you have almost no free time and your comings and goings are strictly monitored.
the admissions advantage is way overstated. the numbers look good on paper, but keep in mind that the average sat score at these places is about 300-400 points above the national average, and that the average kid comes from a wealthy, east coast family, so of course more are going to go the ivy league. take out the minorities, recruited athletes and kids with big connections (mom is on the admissions committee, dad built the library) and there are no big surprises: kids with 3.8 GPAs and 1550 (or whatever on the new test) SATs get into decent schools. the only thing i can think of is that the classes are pretty hard, so you're better-prepared for the ap, but they have books for that.
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