Hey guys. I was wondering what this community’s general consensus was, on the IB diploma program.
And how does it compare to academics at elite prep schools like Exeter, Andover and Deerfield?
I get that those schools provide much better course flexibility and often go beyond the scope of the average high school and IB syllabus, teaching even college level classes but other than that..?
They will both provide the rigor required to get a student on a great path. The choice as to if the experience provided by a boarding school is the best fit/experience for a given student is a individual decision.
Understand that no school or program is a guarantee of admission to a top US college. Focus on having the best HS experience possible in every respect (academically, socially, ECs, etc.).
Well, what else do you have in mind?
If you are asking about highly-selective US college admissions, the evidence I am aware of suggests the availability of those even-more-advanced-than-AP/IB/A-Level classes is probably not playing a huge DIRECT role. Like at a certain point you are going to be considered academically good enough for even the most selective US colleges, and then further getting an admissions advantage from academics is extremely unlikely. Instead, the evidence I am aware of suggests the applicants from those “feederish” US private schools benefit most in college admissions from being much more likely to get very high NON-academic ratings.
That said, there may be a bit of an INdirect relationship in that teacher recommendations can play a meaningful role in getting those very high non-academic ratings, and lots of niche advanced classes may be associated with developing the sorts of relationships with your teachers that could lead to such recommendations. An IB curriculum is not necessarily inconsistent with that, but there might be some correlations.
Finally, a lot of people, at least here, focus on college admissions advantages. But realistically, I think there is much more available in terms of college preparation advantages. Like, if you have actually taken some high-level organic chemistry in HS, this won’t show up in an AP credit or whatever, and it may not make a material difference to where you end up being admitted. But you may well have an advantage by the time you are, say, a pre-med taking Orgo with a bunch of other people who are seeing it for the first time. That sort of thing.
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
The academic offerings at those specific schools are beyond IB in both depth and breadth.
And course rigor is just one part of holistics admissions review.
Consider the peer group, the athletic facilities, and the general awareness of various opportunities and pervasivr culture of elite achievement that leads to a very highly developed college admissions profile for even the average student at these schools.
The BS my kid attended offered the IB. It also emphasized the importance of choosing the right path for you, and it offered higher level (than HL) classes for those interested.
Many very smart and ambitious kids completed the IBD. They tended to be the ones who wanted a more balanced, well-rounded course of study and/or those likely to matriculate to uni outside the US. You should know that every school gets to decide which courses it wants to offer to allow students to complete their diploma, so “IB” is not necessarily the same from school to school. (Take a look at the list of courses/exams on the IB website vs what your school offers to get an idea of this.)
Many very smart and ambitious kids, especially those with an interest in taking a LOT of STEM classes or who did not want to take more FL classes, took some IB classes (and exams) along the way but did not do the IBD. This route allowed them to double up up sciences and leave out many of the time-consuming IBD reqs.
Both sets of kids were considered to have taken the "most rigorous " path. Both did well in college acceptances. But they tended overall to have different goals and interests.
The distillation of this is that it will depend on what you want, what the school offers, and how much flexibility you have to create your own experience.
Elite prep boarding schools (those you mentioned and several others such as Groton, St. Paul’s School, Hotchkiss) offer students total immersion in the learning experience 7 days a week, every week of the academic year.
Students learn to relate to highly intelligent, motivated, diverse students and faculty and administrators on a fairly intense level. This is an important part of a boarding school education.
IB programs vary in terms of which IB courses are offered SL versus HL versus both, or at all. So they are not all the same in terms of how well they fit for a given student’s academic interests.
Elite high schools’ academic offerings also vary from each other.
Elite high schools also offer what is likely much better college counseling than other high schools, at least with respect to colleges that are common destinations for their graduates. They also likely produce better letters of recommendation (with respect to quality of the recommender, or availability of recommenders at all, given the problems of access and rationing of letters of recommendation at many regular high schools).
If they do, it is most likely due to the college counselors at elite boarding schools having fewer students assigned to them each application cycle and due to greater familiarity with the most selective colleges and universities in the country and abroad.
However, a major factor regarding college advising for students at elite prep boarding schools is the advice and guidance of their parents.
I think most (public) schools that offer IB decide ot do so as a way for students to get a good balance of depth and breadth in a straightforward curriculum. They need to think about things like sections, master schedules, staffing, percentage of kids in advanced placement options (for school rankings), and accessible curricula for teachers who teach up to 6 classes and over 100 students a day. Elite boarding schools can offer that and more without following the IBD guidelines, and many choose not to offer them to give students a broader choice of options and be able to quickly pivot and offer exciting new courses as interest and need arise.
S23 went into his major at college with some classes that aren’t offered in any public schools in the country, and was ahead of some of the juniors in his knowledge of GIS and bioacoustics. These skills became very valuable in securing research positions as a freshman, and he never would have had the chance to study them had he been in a more limiting IB program.
I’ll disagree with that statement. The parents, if they attended university in the US, likely graduated 30+ years ago, and the admissions landscape has changed tremendously in the intervening time. Unless they shepherded an older sibling or spend time on sites like this one, they likely are clueless about today’s landscape.
I think you’ll find many BS parents are much more hands-off than non-BS parents when it comes to the application process, simply because their tuition covers great college counselors who facilitate that process.
Disagree. Parents are more involved in the college selection process than ever before (especially those with advanced degrees or professional degrees such as engineering & business). Information regarding colleges is, seemingly, everywhere. Information regarding colleges is available daily in print media, television/cable news programs, websites, travelling college and university admissions officers events for parents and students, etc.
Maybe college counselors have superior working knowledge for the nuts-and-bolts of the application process, but not regarding school selection.
Students at elite prep boarding schools are there because of how highly the student & the student’s family regard education. Both students and their families invest heavily in education.
College counselors’ main function is to assure that all students who want to pursue higher education at a college or university get accepted somewhere in line with their basic interests and obvious qualifications. Elite prep boarding school counselors are not charged with getting students admitted to the most prestigious colleges & universities, rather, they seek a basic fit.
As for parents being unaware of the college landscape regarding admissions, all understand the importance of grades, standardized test scores, and special talents and abilities; it is not rocket science.
More articles regarding higher education admissions, college guidebooks, standardized test prep services, as well as athletic,science,math,writing camps/programs exist today than in the past.
Parents who invest in prep boarding schools and elite private schools tend to be very well informed regarding colleges and universities in many aspects. Yes, leave the basic nuts & bolts and basic guidance to the college counselors, but targeting particular colleges & universities is often driven by the family (parents & student).
We live in an age of information; in fact, we live in an age of information overload–especially with respect to higher education. Difficult to find a parent with no knowledge of US News rankings and other higher education ratings & rankings services which also provide an overabundance of advice with respect to college admissions.
College counselors do serve a useful purpose for the student who wishes to discuss the college application process (nuts & bolts basics such as timelines & staying organized & on schedule) in order to stay on schedule, satisfy application requirements, and,maybe, to relieve stress.
P.S. I cannot recall the number of times that I have been asked by professional parents (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) which pre-school is the best feeder school to the most prestigious private schools in the Atlanta area as well as for other large east coast cities. And, almost always, they are targeting a specific school for kindergarten, then high school,and, of course, colleges. Yes, they really want to know which pre-school is the top feeder to School XYZ’s kindergarten.( Anyone familiar with NYC private schools have encountered this as well as unsolicited advice to pre-register one’s child at birth for certain schools. LOL)
Regarding private day schools, educated/degreed parents in the Wash DC area, NYC, and Boston tend to be very well informed.
Not to mention parents financial awareness about the costs of higher education and various financing alternatives such as lottery funded scholarships.
P.S. Parents are so heavily involved in the college prep & application process that a term “helicopter parents” was created & popularized.
I know many parents of private school students who are heavily involved in the college app & selection process, but do not share there involvement with the student’s college counselor (for obvious reasons). Especially true of elite boarding school parents whom I know well.
Somehow, I think I graduated from high school more recently than you. That parents are understanding that grades, test scores, activities, accomplishments, etc are important is common, true. They also know what the top colleges are.
That said, even at these feeder schools, the number of parents who think that by Little Johnny simply attending one of these schools, even with a 4.0/1600, will mean an automatic admit to HYPSM, is surprisingly high.
If by “basic fit,” you mean one that aligns with their future plans and is achievable based on qualifications, then that’s fair. If you mean they’re not charged with getting the unqualified Little Johnny into Harvard, then that’s a good thing.
My observation as a non-boarding school parent (but who knows and works with many) is that their secret sauce is convincing kids who are hellbent on Dartmouth (but don’t stand a chance) that they’ll love Colby or Ithaca, or persuading the kid who is quadruple legacy at Yale that Trinity, Conn College or Lehigh is a much better “fit”.
The boarding school counselors understand the landscape- even a quadruple legacy who is way below the bar won’t jump ahead of the 12 classmates with stellar, “Yale-like” qualifications. So they are experts at the pivot.
I’ve seen colleges like Denison, Colgate, Hamilton replace whatever the former holy trinity was by the savvy counselors. The local public HS’s with an attitude of “apply where you want, just make sure you have a rock solid safety” don’t have the time to seek out the less competitive admission colleges, nor do they have the time to do the subtle but effective “look at the equestrian opportunities at Skidmore!” for their horse-loving students. Wake Forest- that’s a prize. These are all fine colleges, but would not have been on the radar of the BS parents whose top tier is HYP and maybe Northwestern….
Less disappointment. Everyone gets their first or second choice. Even the most academic/competitive BS knows that Yale isn’t going back to the days where the adcom and the BS counselor used a magic sorting stick to decide who goes where, and no “top 30” type college wants to promote their class comprised of 80% private HS kids or whatever the percentage was back in the olden days….
As the parent of a BS alum, the CC team spent a lot of time educating parents on the current landscape of college admissions. Presentations, workshops, materials, … Most of the parents thought they were pretty well-informed because yes, we cared enough about education to have run this gauntlet just a few years earlier. And most of us left these sessions grateful that we could contact our kid’s CC with all the things we’d begun to realize we didn’t know. And now, in the TO world, expert guidance is even more helpful.
Yes, the CCs are very skilled at helping kids construct a list that’s attainable for them but that also excites them.
But the OP was asking a different question, so we should pivot back to that.
The OP asked a very broad question: “other than that ?” meaning what are the other benefits of attending an elite prep boarding school such as Deerfield, Exeter, or Andover, therefore college guidance is a fair topic.
Many parents tend to be duck like (as Stanford students are often described) so their involvement in the process is not readily apparent beyond family or close friends/advisors.
Fair to say that college advisors at elite boarding schools are, on average, more helpful with guidance because they have fewer students to advise than do public high school counselors.
I think you are conflating elite day schools with boarding schools. You rarely have a helicopter parent at a boarding school. They’re not giving up that amount of control. In most cases, you also have parents who realize how important fit is over name. I know in our case, one of the early steps of the process was that we were asked our parameters (distance, cost, religious affiliations, etc), and we submitted a list, S23 submitted a list, and CC submitted a list. Of those lists, I’d say ours was the least important. I think it was to feel us out to see if our expectations were realistic or to open up discussion about what our expectations were. S23’s CC worked with him daily/weekly (depending on the time of year) while we only had discussions as things popped up (him asking opinions, us asking what we should be planning for visits, etc). By contrast, if he were living at home we would have been constantly asking him where he was in the application process, where he was applying, just add this to your list, etc. Yes, I’m sure there were parents who had attended certain schools, or wanted to attend certain schools, who pushed their kids that way, but it wasn’t the constant pressure one gets living at home. There is also a very skilled CC there to be a buffer.
OTOH, D22 was in public school. She had mid grades and no AP’s. Had she (or we) put Harvard on her list, her GC would have just gone along with it. We could have been pushing her every day and there would have been no one to step in to tell us we were delusional. IF she was in our local private school, they would have skirted the issue because it’s all about keeping parents happy.
No. Not conflating elite day schools with elite prep boarding schools. My comments do apply to both however.
The parents whom I know well are highly educated, successful, and heavily involved in the college admissions process, but many are reluctant to reveal this to the boarding school college counselors. (And, yes, we all understand that that the boarding school counselors will know to which colleges each student applied.)
Many private school parents (day & boarding school parents) are also reluctant to share openly that the family has hired a private counselor.
Additionally, it is not uncommon to have helicopter parenting at elite prep boarding schools. Probably seems otherwise to some because both parents & student do not advertise the parents heavy involvement.
I think we certainly start that way!
I also think if you start early enough with a willingness to learn, it is possible to move up that learning curve in conjunction with your kid, and provide meaningful assistance. Particularly these days, with resources like this forum available.
Where I think it gets tricky is how much it helps to have a good background in higher education and professional career development paths in the United States before you start that learning process.
And while I am not sure that is strictly necessary, I do think it can help.
I’ve noted this before, but my own experience was this was a sort of critical juncture for parents at feederish schools, typically coming at the point at which the college counselors first started seriously engaging with families. Some parents were willing to accept that things were maybe not what they had expected, certainly not what they had personal experienced, and were open to learning about the new realities with the help of their counselor. Others didn’t like what they were hearing, and basically decided to try to continue along paths they had determined in advance.