<p>
Exactly! Get a list of schools with high admit rate, and find the one(s) that best fit your needs in location, size, course/sports/extracurricular offering, etc., and that’s your safety. Just as what you do to identify your matches and reaches. Market value of a school dertermines whether it’s a reach, match or safety. The good news is that in each category there are a variety of schools for you to choose from so you can find a fit.</p>
<p>My son is a history/English/languages ‘type’ and we always have a chuckle after a school visit that includes the ‘brand new state of the art science and/or math center.’ He says he now associates the oldest, musty buildings with the English department. So it is a running joke in our family that the first time he tours a school with a brand new English/history center it will truly be **the **match. </p>
<p>That being unlikely - we are primarily focused on people and programs. Buildings are just brick and mortar.</p>
<p>@mamakiwi: I can just hear the tour guide now, “And the last stop for today is our 50 million dollar English/History center…”. ;-P</p>
<p>That’s funny. That would be better than the same tired musty room they keep showing at Bulfinch. Do they even have more than one English room at Andover?</p>
<p>I appreciate that boarding school is expensive and gleaming facilities are all the rage. Still, there is something wonderful about musty old buildings that have seen countless scholars wear away the hallway floors, windows that you have to throw open on hot days, old water boilers that groan and complain in the cold of winter, strange nooks and crannies where weird stuff is stored and never retrieved again. What is better than brilliant conversations, laughter, academic struggle and triumph set against that background? It’s history, great history! There should be a minimum percentage of wizened old halls on every campus. English majors should wear it as a badge of pride if that’s where they get to study. Leave the slick and gleaming facilities to those soulless math and science majors. :)</p>
<p>Parlabane, I agree! There’s a lot more soul in those old buildings…</p>
<p>Par–it is funny that your thoughts are exactly what I experienced at parents weekend. We were sitting in last period, english class as the students discussed a character in 1984, the old radiator started knocking. The parents smiled, the students giggled as though they heard those sounds last week. The radiator was old, but it made me think, how many students had sat in those same chairs, discussed similar stories and heard the same knocking. It is now part of their history, their heritage.</p>
<p>Wow!</p>
<p>The best part of the marble steps in the Academy building at Exeter is not the marble that is there, but the marble that has been worn away, leaving those depressions.</p>
<p>My daughter was particularly impressed with the study hall at Groton and all those rows of old desks. The marks left by former students are what give schools their character: the plaques at Middlesex, the names in the panels at SPS, the worn steps…</p>
<p>I agree with Parlabane,
</p>
<p>That ‘study hall’ in Groton, although beautiful, is used by kids whose grades aren’t quite up to par. Nice facility but seems used for punitive reasons, no matter how the AO’s describe it. Wonderful room next to it, with signed portraits/letters of the US Presidents.
The Exeter marble is really neat. And even if it’s worn, it’s still kept shiny and clean.
DA has a great dining hall large enough to comfortably seat 700+ at one time.</p>
<p>I don’t see mandatory study for kids who are slipping to be punitive. If they were chained to the desks and it was in a windowless basement, that would be punitive! ;)</p>
<p>I was always under the impression that that main room in the Groton Schoolhouse was kind of the hub for 8th and 9th graders…pretty sure you have to be there on your free periods for those grades.</p>
<p>Worth perusing:</p>
<p>[What</a> do the best classrooms in the world look like? - By Amanda Ripley - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/id/2271733/]What”>What do the best classrooms in the world look like?)</p>
<p>As for BS facilities, my son and I have visited many of the top NE schools: DA, PEA, THS, PA, L’ville, Groton, Choate, etc. For what it is worth, he and I found no building more magnificient than Elfers Hall/Music Auditorium at Hotchkiss. As for overall campus, he and I thought that Andover was the most stunning…again, for what that is worth.</p>
<p>Still, buildings don’t make schools; people do. And all of the great BS’s have great people.</p>
<p>Seven
Having had kids at both types of schools, the answer is east. The facilities are just window dressings. At one school with large endowment and beautiful buildings, the kids were rich and heavy EtOH and drugs and some of the faculty were legacies (one had building/field named after her family) and would not have been hired by any other school.</p>
<p>The other has adequate facilities but wonderful, caring faculty and the students reflect that.</p>
<p>Your d/s is going to spend four years there. Go where you think he/she will learn the best values, etc.</p>
<p>You’re child will be living there! My vote, hands down? People!</p>
<p>Additional note: once you drop off your precious cargo and drive away, what does your connection to the school consist of? PEOPLE, not facilities!</p>
<p>Well said baseballmom! We chose DS school based on how engaging, caring, knowledgeable the faculty was!</p>