2015 Revisit Day Experience

carymom
Sat, 11 Apr 2015 11:50:33 +0000

Lawrenceville Revisit Experience
Basic Format fairly well described by TheStig2 above. Will say that when DS and I arrived we were very impressed that multiple people from admissions knew who we were and welcomed us by name before we got to the nametag table. Very different from the experience we had the day before at a NE Boarding school.

Student Match Up. DS got along extremely well with the student he was matched with. A lot if thought seemed to have gone in to the process as he was matched with a boy who plays the same three sports our son plays and is also the first child in his family to decide to go to BS. Also felt they were an academically solid match. The previous day at different school he liked his buddy but said the classes were not taught at the level of his current day school. At L’ville he sat in on English (same course as day before) and felt the L’ville level of discussion was more nuanced and interesting. Also later in the day when we were walking around athletic areas on our own, after current stats were off doing their own thing in prep for sports, we happened to walk by the boys JV lax bus and both my son’s buddy and another student came off the bus to say hi to DS and to ask if we had any more questions and to stress how much they hoped DS enrolled. Nice touch and completely unprompted by adults.

I sat in on a required 10th grade course in the world religion and philosophy department and was blown away by the discussions about the current pope his background and rationale for choosing his papal name. The discussion was great, students were highly engaged and it was a great example of Harkness at its finest.

Did the revisit confirm interest
Absolutely. DS is enrolled for next year over several other options.

Things we learned
I had not paid quite as much attention to course requirements until we got to campus. Liked the fact that they require 9 terms each of English and Social Studies and another 6 in World Religion and Philosophy. Had no issues with their requirement that students all take their math and science regardless of previous courses. Very very pleased to see that they do not seem to ascribe to the current trend of reclassifying, i.e. encouraging children to repeat grade 9. Other schools we went to had 60-80 percent of lax and hockey players who had reclassified. L’ville definitely had some PGs but not close to the same number of reclassified students. Since DS has no interest in repeating a grade but is very interested in playing hockey and lax while in HS that was appealing.

Food: my expectations were not high and what we were served was perfectly fine. They did a different lunch for the students DS very much enjoyed the grill out that was given for them and loved the sliders, he said he ate 5 and that they were great but that he was aware it was not the normal lunch.

Things we did not learn that we wished we had:
Did not get a chance to meet JV lax coach who was in hospital, clearly not something anyone can control. Perhaps could have been more structured in the approach to the extra curricular fair in the gym. The way they structured the day in that regard could use some tweaking. It was a little chaotic and while DS did get to talk with debate and student leadership kids he never did find Model UN.

Specific things that pushed us to enroll:
The Students, wonderful group completely embraced DS he felt like he was at home from the minute he went off with his buddy. Loved the house system. I actually like the fact that there is a solid day population because it enables parental involvement to a greater degree. Campus was beautiful and again the fact that there was not an over abundance of students choosing to repeat 9th grade. Also liked the way courses were taught and really liked the house masters we met. Feel like DS will be well taken care of both academically and socially emotionally.