Though we plan on going to revisit days, we would like to know which might be a better option for non-athletes with no hooks: Lawrenceville or St. Pauls in terms of academics, extracurricular support, research opportunities, and college matriculation.
i think st pauls because st pauls is more focusing on academics and Lawrenceville is very big on sports
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My daughter is not an athlete and thriving at lville. There are tons of options for non athletes. We considered both schools. I am happy to share our experience and thoughts on lville. Feel free to co tact me directly.
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Hi, current IIIrd former here! In terms of research opportunities, there are many research programs that are internal, and very competitive in science, social justice, english, and history. Furthermore, there are many classes that are research based and students can present findings at Lawrenceville’s research showcases.
I personally can’t speak about Lville in terms of what extracurriculars they offer, but I know at SPS there are lots of options for people who don’t play sports, such as theater, orchestra, community service, robotics, fitness, etc… and club sports if your kid is willing to try that out! Unless you are a senior you are required to have an afternoon activity every term.
We have a research program called ASEP (applied science and engineering program) where you have an opportunity to intern at a college research lab of your choice during your 11th grade summer. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions!
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Both are fine, but St. Paul’s School offers a 100% boarding student body and may still have Saturday classes. If both are still accurate, then this creates a great environment for students as almost all remain on campus during the weekend days.
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Or they leave campus to go to someone’s home where there are no rule enforcers… 
Lawrenceville '23 alum here. Congrats!!
Lawrenceville focuses very heavily on Harkness, and it translates even into the STEM classes—they are reliant a lot on the exchange of ideas and student participation. I personally have had an incredibly strong foundation while going into college, although I will say that large lecture halls have been very disappointing compared to what I’m used to. The general sentiment online is that humanities is better than STEM at Lawrenceville, but I feel like the STEM departments were definitely significantly improving throughout my time there, and some classes, like the fly-lab course, are absolutely life-changing.
I held a lot of leadership positions while in high school, and one thing that appreciated was the high level of guided independence faculty advisors gave us. When I was the Head of X, I was fully managing it; all the logistics were my responsibility, I was in control of what was included, and the faculty advisor was there only to deal with things I couldn’t do, like spending money—at the same time, he wouldn’t ever let anything slip through the cracks and made sure I was doing my job properly. I think that has set me up really well for managing commitments in college.
I was in one of the scholars programs, and it was an incredibly enriching experience. That said, they are very competitive, so you do have to get fairly lucky in order to get in. There are two science-related research classes, including the fly-lab I mentioned above, and they are absolutely game-changing: my mother, whose entire academic background is in biology, told me that she didn’t get to the type of stuff we were doing until grad school. I know classmates of mine who were able to leverage that experience into lab internships in college, and my name will eventually appear on an academic paper!
A school’s college matriculation is not your college matriculation. That said, the scattergram for Georgetown (at least while I was there) showed a 100% acceptance rate for students with above a 3.8 GPA, so take that as you will.
This is not true. There is no athlete/non-athlete divide at Lawrenceville; I have close friends from there who now play football, run track, and row crew at D1 and D3 schools alike. Aside from the lacrosse and football teams, the sports teams aren’t particularly special anyways, and the school definitely cares about academics much more.
Dang, did Lawrenceville cut away Saturday classes? Those were the reason why I was so engaged with the campus community as a day student—I was pretty much always there. The same was true for almost all of my day student classmates, by the way; I don’t buy the “day students dilute a campus community” argument, as due to the House system + Saturday classes, we were essentially fully integrated. I hope it stays that way in the future…
Feel free to DM me with any specific questions!
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