Most Reliable Ranking of US Boarding Schools

Prep School Admissions
41

Even if the grading curve bottoms out with a B, there is still a lot of info for an AO to use – especially with a weighted average to go along with the regular GPA. What often distinguishes the students are how many advanced courses they take, not the grades they get in the classes.

Someone who is taking advanced language, math, history and English will have a very different GPA than someone who is in the standard classes, even if they both get Bs. And someone who is taking all of the advanced courses, working their butt off to get Bs will look different than someone who soars through them with As. You can also tell if someone is lopsided in their skills and interests based on their courses.

The down side is that you can really only compare students within a school re: GPA, not to students in other schools. Grade inflation matters more in schools with fewer advanced course options.

42

Unless your BS doesn’t weight GPAs…I thought most did not? I guess I thought that was a public school thing.

43

Ours does not weight. Everyone is expected to push themselves where they can/want. There is no benefit to taking the easy path for better grades.

And really, college acceptances seem completely “right”. The recs also tease out what is great about each kid.

44

Agree with

It really depends on the school. It certainly didn’t work that way at my kids’ school. The equivalent of a B+ would probably have been more the midrange.

I don’t remember the name of the assessment test but our public school would give a yearly assessment in elementary and middle school (maybe high school as well but my kids didn’t go there). It wasn’t timed. Students could take as long as they needed. One of my kids was usually the last one done but absolutely would rock it every time.

Not all jobs require speed in thought process as much as ability so I’m with you on this.

45

Niche’s lists top ten in the following order:

  • Andover
  • Exeter
  • Choate
  • SPS
  • Deerfield
  • Milton
  • Noble and Greenough
  • Groton
  • Middlesex
  • Loomis
  • Hotchkiss
  • Taft
  • St. Marks

*Lawrenceville isn’t even on the top 10
*Loomis over Hotchkiss

  • Choate #3 over SPS/Deerfield/Groton
    *Noble and Greenough (isn’t even a real BS)

I would have thought the proper list would be as follows:

  • Andover
  • Exeter
  • SPS
  • Deerfield
  • Groton
  • Lawrenceville
  • Milton
  • Middlesex
  • Hotchkiss
  • Choate

Please advise.

46

@marvelcomics: Your list of top 10 boarding schools seems reasonable, but better to list as a group of ten rather than ranking them in a particular order. All are great schools academically.

47

Agreed. Don’t see the point of trying to rank within that top ten. What is there for us to advise you on? If you get into any of those schools pick the one you feel the most affinity for. Any of them will yield a great education.

I do think the niche list is somewhat absurd but whatever.

48

MODERATOR’S NOTE:

We’re not going to get into a debate on the exact ranking. It’s been discussed on lots of earlier threads. At the end of the day, all these schools are excellent. Which is the best for your situation is a personal choice, and one that will be decided for you, in part, by the schools themselves as they release decisions.

49

List makers change the weighting of the criteria each year to have something newsworthy to promote and to limit the gaming of the rankings. So movement up or down a list says very little about a school.

50

I get you are in a bind if being asked for first choice but picking based on these rankings is pretty silly. We only saw a handful of the schools from this list but even then you see that you can get great education at any of them and ought to be able to choose based on criteria important to your kid and yourself rather than to some ranking company. I am sure you can come up with a few. And being at JBS, I would assume your child has their own list as well.

51

At the risk of validating the whole list thing, I looked at the Niche site. The 2020 list is more like the one you made, not the first one (not that they were all that different to start with). Lawrenceville is #4. Not sure where you got the first list.

Point is, it is all arbitrary. Lawrenceville is exactly the same school no matter where it is ranked. It is #1 for most of the students who go there.

52

Interesting about the weighting. That’s another way schools differ that is worth researching. I thought it was an everywhere thing.

A weighted gpa is only really helpful if you also get the regular one to compare it to. And vice versa, imo.

53

@CateCAParent - Thank you for the clarification. However, Niche’s 2020 list as you correctly stated above is missing both Groton and Milton (two perennial schools) from the top ten list which again makes me question certain rankings from Internet sites including Niche.

I am thankful to everyone who have commented and given their advice. The core take away is that “fit” is the most important if and when DC gets accepted into the most highly selective schools. I totally agree with this take away.

However, as many have stated here on this thread, it is very difficult to ascertain and to measure accurately “fit” unless a child is a recruited athlete, musician, artists, dancer, etc and is only looking for certain sport facility, music hall, dance program, etc.

Of course, a big school vs a small school is an important point (my DC is performing very well at JBS because it is nurturing and provides more connections/relationships with faculty). However, I think the DC can perform equally well at a big school…
Otherwise, it comes down to a gut feel IMHO.

Unfortunately, if a gut feel is all I have to fall back on, then I was hoping an unbiased ranking focused on the strength of academics (NMS?), IVY+MIT+Stanford, etc matriculation and endowment size could be an arbiter in this case (hence my original post).

54

Ok. I see what you’re talking about BUT out of that top ten my son only applied to two. He did not like the others. My daughter, 3 years ago (4?), only applied to three. They are different enough to make it very clear, even without being an athlete, which 2/3 you might want to attend. Both my kids were recruited athletes.

My daughter walked through nobles, a powerhouse, and said “no freaking way.” Refused to look at tabor, another powerhouse, because of kids from her club who had been accepted (they were not smart). This is just an example - that was HER personality! I know people irl who love both those schools.

My son went to my daughters school and said “no freaking way.”

So there is plenty of choice in a top 10ish (even though yes niche gets it wrong which is why I say “10ish”)

Also, I wish people would listen when @CaliMex posts over and over again that the list makers screw with the data to make it interesting. Doesn’t that tell everyone something???

(Kids obsessed with Andover and Exeter im looking at you! ? )

55

There is nothing unbiased. All those factors affect one another, as do others. As I stated above, your individual child’s chance of going to a particular college will not be appreciably changed by going to a particular boarding school in that list, unless you are a member of a specific group with a specific channel that you want to try to use.

For instance, Lawrenceville sends about 10 students to Princeton each year. Isn’t their class about 200? Unless you are in the group that benefits from the connection (Princeton faculty, deep legacy connection, etc.), it is unlikely that your child will be the one or two admitted to Princeton just on whatever lucky combination of merit and whim that gets most students in there. The average parent who sends a child to Lawrenceville won’t have improved that individual child’s chance of getting into Princeton; in fact, he or she may have reduced it by putting the student in a place with more competition directed specifically toward Princeton.

The same applies to other schools that seem at first glance to have relationships with particular colleges. They have high rates of acceptances to prestigious colleges because most of their students already had a good chance of admission to prestigious colleges at the time they were admitted to boarding school and were partially chosen for boarding school on that basis.

56

We could debate the top ten list until we are blue in the face. When you look at any school, if you have talent in any area, you need to look at the school through the lens of that talent. For example, if you are an athlete and want to play Div I, then you’ll look at the coach, consider the team and see if you’d feel good playing there. IF you are a writer/ artist you would consider the national scholastic art awards. If you want to try lots of things and haven’t found your passion, you would look at schools where kids openly try new things. And so on.
Those schools which have strong connections to various schools might cut both ways. On the one hand, Princeton knows Lawrenceville students and their academic rigor and on the other hand your kid will be competing against legacies and faculty kids. Likewise, at many top schools, there will be more legacies than you think from the HYPM set. You may or may not be taking a back seat when it comes time to apply, if that’s your goal.

Or, if you really want to consider recent matriculation stats, you could single out only those schools which don’t take legacy into account ( MIT, and Caltech if your kid is into STEM), maybe U Chicago if not ( added because it recently became a heavy hitter so few parents will have attended-no legacies). Don’t forget to consider top international schools. Many BS have a large % of international students. Someone studying at the London School of Economics, or Oxford or many other world-ranked institutions wouldn’t be considered in your model but these schools would be very well known internationally. And honestly, if my kids wanted an international perspective, I’d happily send them abroad.

When I looked at lists, I thought of variations as being a good thing. Many kids going to the same place seemed odd, at best. Though it does seem like schools become more/less popular for various reason ( sports?).

57

FWIW Groton is a very small school & Milton has a small boarding population and both schools feed into the 9th grade as Groton starts in the 8th grade, but expands for 9th, and Milton starts with day students at a very early grade.

Seems easy to make meaningful distinctions between the list of schools based on what is most important to a family & student.

Also, several schools have significantly different aspects that make them readily distinguihable. Should be evident during an on campus visit.

58

In August, Niche published its 2020 ranking of US Boarding Schools, and it seems to correlate (broadly) with SSAT and SAT scores, matriculation to elite schools, and endowment. In terms of “prestige”, Groton and Thacher are outliers not being higher on this list.

Exeter
Andover
Choate
Lawrenceville
Hotchkiss
St. Paul’s
Nobles (not a true BS)
Deerfield
Cate
Middlesex
Groton
Cranbrook
Loomis
Milton
St. Andrew’s (DE)
St. Albans (not a true BS)
Concord Academy
Hockaday
Thacher
Peddie

59

For pure prestige, or “wow, your kids go there?” reactions, we have found the prestige reputation tiers to be (especially with International families):

a) PA/PEA
b) Choate/Hotchkiss/Deerfield/SPS/L’Ville/Groton/Thacher
c) Middlesex/Milton/Cate
d) Taft/Loomis

Academic intensity reputations (whether deserved or not) seem to be:

a) PEA/Groton
b) PA/Hotchkiss/Milton/Middlesex
c) Choate/Deerfield/SPS/L’Ville
d) Taft/Loomis

Regarding matriculation success - it’s not the school, it’s the kid. Sports, “genius”, outstanding “something”, legacy, wealth. Matric. stats may not provide a helpful picture of what awaits your child.

It goes without saying there are kids from all of these schools who were admitted to PA/PEA and enrolled elsewhere for any number of reasons: sports (driving logistics, coaching, position on the roster), geography (closer to home), music, drama, arts, concern about intensity/competition, rural vs. suburban, % boarding, small vs. medium vs. large, family ties.

Club or competitive sports requirements can have a big impact on a good-fit school choice, as can staying close to an outside coach, music teacher, etc. The point being, “reliable boarding school ranking” might not exist, and is unlikely to be that helpful a school choice tool.

60

It appears many in this forum and thread seem to knock PA/PEA for its competitiveness/intensity (i.e., academic competition and workload) and seem to view other schools as not as intense (perhaps materially less intense for it to be a swing factor in choosing over PA/PEA).

So, is PA/PEA so competitive and intense to a point for smart and overachieving kids to turn down offers from such schools?