Phillips Exeter Academy - Experiences & Questions

musisat
Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:33:53 +0000

As a senior, I have dealt with the college counseling office, and they are generally helpful no matter what kind of colleges you’re looking at. They take care of sending a lot of your school forms to colleges and helping you set up interviews on the Exeter campus. They encourage students to apply to colleges of a variety of difficulties, because they know that almost no one has a sure ticket into the college of their dreams. I applied to a couple of ivies, a couple of high-acceptance schools close to where I live, and a few schools in between, on both coasts.

As far as I know, the boys dorms have a pretty good mixture of different kids. There is one dorm that is seen as somewhat rebellious against the school but very close among themselves. They are so close partly because of traditions which may be considered on the verge of hazing, including rituals to initiate freshmen. According to an Exonian article from last year, what happens in this dorm is not “seniors beating up preps. It’s more of a service type thing, like a senior asking a prep to turn on the TV.” The article goes on to say that there were some harsher rituals that in past years “may have happened pretty frequently, and been an accepted and expected part of dorm life… but in the past two years, [a dorm member] is unaware of any preps forced to undergo such treatments.” I think that the faculty and deans have done a pretty good job of looking out for hazing, and I don’t hear of anything happening anymore. In meetings between deans and dorm proctors, the deans make it clear that they won’t tolerate any sort of hazing rituals.

There is also one boys dorm that is traditionally a “jock” dorm, but I have heard that the deans are trying to mix up the kinds of kids that they put in there. Beyond those two dorms, I don’t really notice any stereotypes besides maybe “the dorm that plays video games all the time,” but I’m not that close to the issue.

I can tell you that houses are for new uppers and seniors, and a couple of new lowers. Sometimes people move into houses after living in a dorm for a year or two. I live in a house, and I have mixed feelings about them. They can be quiet and peaceful, but I think they are a little bit too small for new students who would rather meet a lot of people.

Sorry for writing a book there.