My dd is applying to Choate, Milton, Andover, Concord, and Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn for 9th grade. Choate is probably her first choice as she had a great interview and tour, we know some happy students there, and we understand it to be balanced but leaning toward the humanities/arts which is her strength. Somewhere I read if Lawrenceville is a PC, Choate is a Mac :). So I was really surprised this week when the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards announced their regional Gold Key winners of which my daughter was one. Here are some top schools and the number of Gold Key winners they had. School sizes vary but Choate is a reasonably big school. Any opinions on whether this is meaningful? Have we mischaracterized Choate’s culture or student body? I really think my dd would benefit from a school with creative, ambitious types so I could use input from knowledgable sources. Thanks.
Congratulation and thanks for the information. About 7~10% of entries win regional gold keys. So it’s not super selective. But then they don’t select winners by grade, so a middle schooler winning gold keys might be more valuable. I certainly hope so since my 9th grade applicant won some in arts too.
Mine submitted 3 pieces for writing too. They were class essays for her college English and History courses that she got A’s but still she only won a silver key. I am guessing that your dd is a very advanced writer!
I wouldn’t worry too much of how many gold keys each school wins. It can hugely depends on each school’s writing / arts teacher’s encouragement. Some kids single handily win many and contribute to the number too. In my West Region-at-Large, I think I saw a kid winning ~10 gold keys. Mine won 5.
Thanks SculptorDad. Congratulations to your multi-winning kid and good luck. My dd submitted three personal essays and won a gold, silver, and honorable mention. I agree with you the number of winners from a particular school has a lot to do with teacher encouragement; I saw a small, public high school in the mid-west that had 23 gold winners! On the other hand, my daughter was the only one at her school to win, and likely the only one within a 50 mile radius to enter since academic competitions are unpopular here. Anyway, I would have expected all these elite schools to have many self-motivated creative types pursuing these honors even without encouragement, but obviously not. It certainly couldn’t have been lack of talent, but rather lack of interest or other priorities. I’m almost tempted to ask someone in the writing department but if I do, it’ll be after M10.
Now that they posted all regional gold key winners in one file, I see overwhelming about 18,000 gold keys. But searching for “junior high” and “middle” returns less than 1,400 combined, a less overwhelming number.
Oh, and it seems about 10% wins a national medal. There were about 2,200 national medal winners in 2013.
I don’t think you can sort that way reliably bc many (private) schools around here at least don’t have the words “junior high” or “middle” in the titles; they are often K-12, plus there’s the home school contingent. Over the last few years they’ve frequently publicized receiving “over 300,000 entries” which would put 18K gold keys at 6% (close to your estimate of 7-10%). That jives with the attached article saying national winners represent under 1% of the total entries.
You are right but that was a rough estimate. National winners list does show grade of each student. By searching for each grade on 2014 national medal winners, I see as following;
7th + 8th are 12.5% so probably there are few hundred more middle schoolers in addition to the 1,400. But probably not too much.
Final national medals = 2,200 / total entry = ~300,000. So clearly they are under 1% of the total entries. Seems like the article is accurate on numbers.
Please let us know if your dd is one of the lucky winners on March 14th.
So smaller, less artsy Mercersburg has as many Gold Keys as Choate…
But seriously, don’t worry about the school’s “culture.” Every school you are considering will have a significant contingent of “creative, ambitious types” and a significant contingent of excellent teachers.
I have found that school culture places a bigger or smaller importance on awards and competitions for students and I’m thinking that is likely to impact the number of awards far more than the school’s program or the caliber of the students. Even regionally with local schools, some field serious math teams and science olympiad teams and others have equal rigor and SAT scores, but focus more on other aspects of learning than competition. As another example, my children attended a school that forced participation in many activities – arts competitions, science fairs, etc. It wasn’t that the kids were any smarter, but they couldn’t avoid entering the competition, so the school had many awards. For the OP, it was my impression that Choate had many artsy students and many happy students as well.
I found looking at the writing in the student newspapers and if available, the student literary magazine, gave me a good sense of the quality of writing in some of the student body.
Andover has a great English program, that is not only pure writing centered, but also provided opportunities for discussions both in and out of class. Additionally, Exeter will go on and on about how great the Harkness table is, and you should know that Andover uses this teaching method for every single English class as well. Every year we have a few top notch authors/poets come and give talks. And there is always an author-in-residence who teaches a class, so there is the opportunity to learn from a published author who is currently working on another novel. The only drawback is that you really can’t take any English electives usually until senior year, as Andover first wants you to master the basic 3 year writing sequence(which is still extremely challenging/interesting). As a senior, some excellent English offerings are available, tailored towards those who want to focus and writing, or those who want to focus more on reading and discussion.
I would not base my opinion on the strength of the arts/humanities at a particular boarding school on the number of gold key winners. These sorts of outside competitions are more popular at some schools than at others for a lot of reasons. If her first choice is Choate you have a lot of info at your fingertips.
Agree with other posters that a school’s newspaper can be an excellent source of info on many aspects of the school. Almost all boarding schools have their newspapers online (“The News” for Choate) and the archives go back years and years. Not sure what specific area your daughter is interested in, but you can also peruse their full course offerings in the arts/humanities on their website under “Academics.” I am pretty sure they offer an Honors Capstone Program in Creative Writing for sixth formers that is pretty selective.
They also have a Slam Poetry Club that I understand is very popular, and the annual Fringe Festival where the students actually write their own plays and then perform them. I am told those performances are sold out, so clearly this is a campus that values this sort of thing.
Congratulations to your D on her accomplishment and best of luck with the applications!
We couldn’t see much of students art works at Choate. The art room was closed, and the student exhibit was not open yet. But I am guessing their works would be just as good as other similar schools, especially with Choate’s Art Concentration program. We were surprised by student art quality at all schools we saw, and I believe that each could collect hundreds of gold keys if they wanted to.
If a school has a student naturally producing massive amount of work and doesn’t mind submitting them, does it make the school amazing?. My single student private school has 5 gold keys in art section. Next time, Sculptorkid can submit 10 or 20 instead of 5. If a school wants to massively boost number of their Scholastic gold keys for the next four years, they know who to recruit. wink
