<p>I have direct experience with DA and anecdotal (friends, childs friends) experience with Lville. Unfortunately for you, both schools have a big sports component. Fortunate for your kid, since it really is ut mens sane sit in corpore sano. From what I observed ( my knowledge is a few years old, my DA kid is in college now) Lville kids came back to the City almost every weekend bringing non City BS friends with them. So between a large day component and city kids going back, weekends at Lville arent that full. DA kids dont do that on a regular basis. Its a more enclosed and even experience. We have a saying when a kid has a choice between Lville and other similar schools and goes to Lville that the parents are afraid of kid going wild since Lville is not a one strike school. Academics are equally strong . I believe that true independent research is difficult at any boarding school. While this seems that I am biased against one school vs. the other, its not. We had a choice between several schools including Lville and those were the comparisons we used to rule it out. At the end of the day its an extremely personal choice. Go to both revisits and keep your eyes extremely open. You have wonderful choices.</p>