Interesting conversation.
I recall a few years ago there was a survey on homework hours, and Andover and Groton came out on top, if I recall correctly. Maybe it was also Exeter there too? If I recall, Groton was the tippy top, driven by the Latin requirement, which I understand may have changed a bit after covid.
In any case, how one defines “rigor” really varies, as we have seen.
But I’ll address the homework component of rigor.
As someone who has had the exact same daughter attend two different boarding schools – one of which being one of the above mentioned “high homework load” schools – I feel like our experience very clearly showed us that homework loads and study culture are absolutely different across schools. It was FAR LESS a “function of the student” as some have hypothesized than it was of the school, in our specific experience. Same student; different schools; different results, in our case anyway.
That said, there is plenty of rigor available at the “lower-load” school where my daughter is now, and she takes all honors and advanced courses. Interestingly, after changing schools, she indicated that she found the class conversations more robust at her second school because there was less of a culture of worrying about “sounding smart” in class discussions so more people spoke freely. To be fair – this was the impression of a 14 year old kid who is super social, loves extracurriculars and sports, and probably had no business joining a school that openly told us 4 hours of homework each night freshman year was typical. (We naively thought: “oh surely she will just get used to that?” OR…“maybe they are exaggerating?” bless our little 2019 hearts…) In any case, I can a thousand percent confirm that the nightly homework load truly decreased (so this wasn’t an executive functioning skill issue), and for her that meant feeling more invigorated in class, and more connected to her school as she had time for her sports, and for just hanging out sometimes with friends. In addition to less homework, the scaffolding and support at the “lower load” school was completely different, making the rigor feel more doable and less “sink or swim.” so when she DOES have a ton of homework or questions or issues, she has places to go; people who see her fully.
Anyway…for my next daughter who applied to BS, I learned to ask without any apology: what is the typical nightly workload for a typical, non-finals week, for a freshman?
thanks for the conversation!