I don’t know when my kids would fit tutoring into their schedule even if I wanted them tutored. Mine are a bit unusual because of the sports I suppose but they have almost zero free time.
Really depends on the school. I think tutoring is fairly common at Hotchkiss, based on what we’ve heard from the one family we know there. Not sure the tutoring issue depends on location.
We are glad outside tutoring is discouraged at our kids’ school. Policies really vary and it is worth asking AOs or reviewing the Student Handbooks.
@one1ofeach - fair enough for weekdays but I reckon most tutoring will happen during the weekends where the kids can always find a few extra hours.
@CaliMex - Thank you. I wonder how the schools that frown upon outside tutoring police it.
My kids both play outside sports so for example my son has school Saturday morning. School game Saturday afternoon. Sunday soccer practice morning, basketball practice afternoon. So actually zero extra hours. He’s doing home work Sunday but wouldn’t have time for tutoring too. Unless the tutor was doing his homework with him I suppose. His school says it’s basically not allowed but I have no idea if kids are doing it.
@marvelcomics I think you really misunderstood my post about day students and local boarders, it really is more of a social thing about parents coming to games and taking kids out to dinner after than pulling them off campus to have them tutored. If you need a tutor, you get one on campus. There are tutoring guidelines most if not all schools have (tutors can’t do homework, write or edit your essays/labs, they are supposed to explain concepts and give general suggestions on structure etc. ). As long as you don’t break the guidelines there is no issue. And while I have not seen it much with freshmen save for kids who are struggling, by junior year it is very common. We have friends at Deerfield and Hotchkiss and they say tutoring is common there too, in spite of remote locations. Most kids have tutors for test prep and I am told it often spills to other assistance as needed.
As for day students, your kid will have a big leg up on them in other ways, no commute, and repeating 9th grade means he will be significantly older with more serious academics under his belt. Day students rarely repeat and coming mostly from public school are often on the younger side to begin with.
What confuses me on the outside tutoring giving an advantage concept is that at bs you have the teacher right there at your disposal. Don’t boarders have an advantage if they can just stop in anytime, and get the help directly from the source?
@CateCAParent , I tend to agree with you. In the one instance where DS needed help beyond consultation, the teacher arranged for another teacher in the department to help him (hoping that a different way of explaining would help.) And yes, this all happened on campus.
But the students who get tutoring often get help with their homework and papers, at least at the day schools I know. Many do this via Skype at a pretty high frequency so I would guess that a student at BS could do the same if allowed.
@CateCAParent It may vary depending on the school, but at my kid’s boarding school teachers have designated hours for extra help, which from what I hear is much more like office hours at college than a personal tutoring session. Particularly during the midterm/final or other test weeks, there are always a bunch of kids there. So you may be able to get a couple specific questions answered, but you won’t get the concepts you don’t understand re-explained. Some teachers will also see you at night while on dorm duty but again, time is limited, it is only once a week and you are rarely the only one seeking assistance.
I always assumed that tutors were breaking honor code and heavily editing essays or helping with homework. Otherwise I guess I wouldn’t see the point (but that obviously varies by school). At my kids school if there’s something not understood they go to the teacher as much/often as it takes to understand so a tutor wouldn’t be necessary unless I wanted essays edited to perfection.
Our kid could see any teacher whenever they both were free in addition to the times scheduled for consultation. And they had cool software to find those times. The problem was never teacher availability. Desire of the kid to do it? Different story altogether much of the time!
Our kid seems to still not understand that to have a productive meeting you actually have to be prepared and go over the material ahead of time. He showed up before the test thinking that teacher would somehow give away what would be on the test. That did not happen so now I am being told that the extra help is worthless, and he is not going to bother.
Hotchkiss parent here, I know of no one with outside tutoring, so it certainly isn’t rampant!
Hotchkiss has a learning center where kids get free academic help, and tutoring if needed. My kids always went to the teacher if they needed extra help; one struggled with French and so had outside tutoring in addition to the teacher, in order for him to earn a C+ ( in other words, for him tutoring was a matter of survival, not to move from an A- to an A. As I recall, his French tutor worked as a security guard at the school.
Just because some parents are misguided and over the top doesn’t mean you have to be. Have faith that your kids will do just fine.
This is the fourth most prestigious thread on CC, but I’ve seen rankings as high as second but Niche put it at 14th. Cough…still…
Most rankings, in any field, have some basis in reality. Objections to the ubiquity and use of lists is futile. Even non-snobs are going to use them as a heuristic to shortcut evaluating a gazillion schools. Maybe I should have looked closely at Suffield and there is the perfect math teacher there would have been number one on my child’s top thirty list. I didn’t have time to exhaustively check them all out, sorry.
The Dodgers are higher ranked than the Marlins by any number of objective measures as a baseball franchise. No baseball fan if asked “name the top five franchises” will say “Well, there’s the Yankees, Cubs, Marlins, Cardinals, Red Sox…” But hey the Marlins have won the World Series more recently than the Dodgers, indeed twice. You might like whatever about the Marlins as a destination for your free agent. Maybe they’ll get more playing time. If your kid really likes sailing maybe St. George’s is much better than St. Paul’s.
We also know that the presence of lists means a certain class of people are going to apply to the highest ranked schools solely for that sake. I bet Groton & Deerfield are good at weeding those people out, we don’t need to worry about them. (Oh, did I skip your favorite Phillips in that top 2 list…don’t worry about it. They’ll be fine.)
If rankings are driving too much of the process, the schools themselves are to blame. They could cut this off at the knees by no longer sharing admission percentages and their efforts to drive up the number of applicants who have zero chance of admission through marketing campaigns.
As schools blow through capital to have a marginally better swimming pool (excuse me, natatorium) than their peer group…well they’re all then becoming more like each other and this should open opportunities for other schools to compete on a different basis, make a different list. How about one choose to teach Italian, Persian and Urdu instead of fielding lacrosse and volleyball teams? Any school in the top 100 could do that – but it’s risky and they’re all looking over their shoulder at their peers and competing on commodity metrics. As long as they do that, well IMHO, more power to rankings.
A side note for the prestige-minded: if someone is looking for prestige in a buy-low, sell-high manner it’s a no brainer you’ll see George School and Mercersburg in the top ten of most lists in the next decade or so. They’re still digesting massive gifts that put them in the top ten of endowment-per-student which is ultimately the driver of every other list. Think about the legacy preference for your grandkids!
But the whole system might blow up in a generation since uber-smart kids can take MIT’s courses for free on EdX. Back to pensively waiting for March 10.
At our kids’ school there are lots of on campus resources for tutoring, including peers and teachers visiting dorms during study hall, holding office hours, or inviting kids over to work on something at the kitchen table , etc. There is no “policing” to make sure ppl don’t use outside tutors.
Then again, this is a school with a very strong honor code and a culture of doing the right thing even when no one is looking. They even trust students to take unproctored exams. I’m sure there’s some degree of self selection.
BTW: Comparing athletic team rankings (which are based on a single dimension: scoring in matches ) with BS rankings (which don’t even consider some of the criteria that might matter most to families) is downright dumb.
You can measure and rank schools by SAT scores, endowment per student, acceptance rates, percentage matriculation at Top20 schools, and other objective metrics. But none of those metrics increase the likelihood that your child will thrive socially, emotionally, or academically. And isn’t that what most parents want?
In terms of the general BS set, I think there are various types of parents. We found ( to no surprise) that there were many who thought their kids were one of a kind and were a little surprised to find other kids who were at the same level or above ( revisits and open house type things). This was worse at some schools than others.
@marvelcomics You asked specifically about Groton and Exeter (Two schools we looked at and one of which was #2 choice for one of my kids). These schools require a certain type of kid, IMO. Not only bright but willing and able to buckle down and do a lot of work. They also have to be pretty socially outgoing to discuss things in class and participate with other stellar kids. The question is, what else comes off the table? EC’s, social life, sleep? Mental health? Somethings got to give. I think what you are reading is the experiences these kids are actually having. Most kids going in don’t’ imagine they are going to be B students. But many are. The push by parents to get Johnny/Jane to excel at a handful of schools might be a mistake. Only a few are going to be at the top. This is true of every top 50 BS in my opinion as there are many smart kids who all expect to do well.
As far as tutoring, I have no idea if any kids are being tutored outside of the BS my kid attends. That seems odd as there are so many resources ( center, teachers, specialists at school). Why would they be needed? But if a kid is in over his/her head in terms of academics I could see a need. All of the kids in any BS are not going to be academically at the same level. And what is the downside to tutoring? My kids take academic things in the Summer sometimes. If my kid needed help I’d figure out some way to get them assistance. And many very smart kids ask someone to proofread important essays and documents. Getting input on written work makes writing better.
I seriously question very low rates of participation in drugs/drinking. And I don’t believe there is any substantial difference between boarders/day kids in terms of who is going to use substances. I do believe that schools with zero-tolerance or low tolerance will have lower rates of use.
Welp, I guess tutor culture is something worth asking about during the admissions process. schools clearly differ wildly.
I have a kid who will shamelessly ask teachers for help or just input. Even from teachers he doesn’t currently have. He will voluntarily swap drafts with other students to get feedback, too. And pick the brains of older students. And have study groups with students in his class.
Going to an outside tutor wouldn’t cross his mind, though. Thank goodness. Bs is expensive enough ?
@CateCAParent I wish my kid was more like that. Those are great skills. I especially love that your kid asks older students. Smart.
Thanks @Happytimes2001 — I often wonder What mutation of his dna happened in utero. That was so not me, nor my husband. But it is exactly why bs works for him. Especially Cate. He would be fine at the more “competitive” schools, too, but he soars in his current environment. the best part is he will pay it forward to the younger students. Just like the older students have done with him.
Sorry to hijack. Point is, the environment at Cate fits the way he learns, and has nothing to do with rankings. The tutor thing, the collaborative thing, plus so much more, can be sussed out with the right questions at a visit. Not that I asked them. I had stars in my eyes at every school. It was kiddo (Mutant dna) who had the good sense to figure out what he needed.
@marvelcomics : the top American boarding school prestige rankings are definitively as follows, at least in those certain clubby circles in Greater NYC, Boston, DC, Palm Beach, SF Bay/LA, HK/Shanghai/Beijing/Seoul/Singapore/Other Asia, and everywhere else in between where these things matter for some cultural reason or the other:
1 and 2: PA/PEA in no particular order (hard to imagine defensible dissent on this, although of course everyone and their brother has their 2 cents)
3 to 9: CRH, Lawrenceville, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, SPS, Groton, Milton in no particular order (I can imagine many equally compelling arguments for various rank orders within this list, so therefore they all cancel each other out–how’s that for fuzzy math!)
(Some may have the urge to attack me for not including Thacher, Cate, Taft, St. Andrew’s, maybe others, who knows, maybe they’re right to do so. Please forgive me, it’s not personal!)
Relevant nuances: Groton (which has 8th grade) and SPS are Episcopal (only kind of, it is 2020 after all), and don’t have PG programs. Milton is fully 50% day students, lacks a PG program, and moreover has a lower school as well, so it’s less of a “pure play” than the rest of the list. Deerfield and Hotchkiss attract slightly more NYC day school kids who want to attend boarding school. Lawrenceville uses SAO rather than Gateway making it painful to apply. All have all types of social circles. All provide ample opportunities for the clever middle class kid to grasp at the brass ring. In case you don’t already know, all of these schools can be trigger happy on disciplinary measures, which can be ruinous, so only well-disciplined, mentally stable kids who take kindly to direct orders (or at least can pretend to) should ever contemplate attending, IMO. Otherwise they should stay with their loving parents.
Size matters: PA/PEA biggest. CRH, Lawrenceville not far behind. Groton tiny. Others all in between.
Day population matters. Generally, it increases the academic strength/competitiveness of the school. The day students have myriad advantages related to completing schoolwork away from distractions, without bed times or internet restrictions, with the benefit of mother’s nutritious/delicious home cooking.
College matriculation: Early admission at Harvard (or P/Y/S) is not just a pipe dream or roulette spin if you “do very well” at any of the 9 schools mentioned, used your summers wisely for truly distinguishing activity relevant to college, and are in a special category (academic superstar with the prizes, publications, and scores to prove it, recruited athlete, child of involved alumni, child of serious current or potential donor or faculty/staff, URM with way above average stats, or ideally more than one of the above). Be warned: “doing very well” at the above 9 schools can be a cutthroat zero-sum-game business on a good day, without the banal troubles of teenage life, and extremely problematic on a bad day.
I noted an attempt in this (wonderful) online community to “erase” the reality that the above ranking is widely accepted in the circles I mentioned, or ascribe it to marketing budgets and so forth. Maybe this is a righteous undertaking, but who knows. I’m merely answering your question. What I will say is that the best attract the best (or at least the children of the best LOL) in a virtuous cycle, so over time these schools are getting only better and better (read: more and more competitive/excellent in all senses).
Day schools: The above boarding schools used to have the monopoly on prestige (a gentleman would go from Buckley to Deerfield to Harvard to Wall Street, or some variation thereof), but (as the world is changing very quickly) not anymore, not even close. On the best college campuses today, the best connected, most travelled, most cultured kids often went to America’s best day schools, and learned the art and science of being a skilled deipnosophist directly and daily from their worldly parents, had free reign and a credit card over a major urban area during their teenage years, and often took a gap year as well doing the “Grand Tour” in europe or asia or some other such very interesting thing. Contrast this with mostly hanging around boarding schools teachers and that group’s increasingly comical focus on fringe social justice issues for four years. Harvard-Westlake and Harker and Lakeside to Collegiate/Brearley/GA/Brunswick/etc. to Roxbury Latin/Winsor/etc. to St. Albans/NCS to St.John’s/St.Mark’s/Hockaday to Ransom, it’s a much longer list out there in “elite” American secondary education once you include day schools (and of course certain public schools, not to mention the whole wide world outside of America). But since prestige seems to be important to you, keep this point in mind.
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