Hello! Hope your day is going well. On M10, I got accepted into Deerfield and Taft, and had a few questions about them and boarding schools in general.
Which school is more academically challenging(DA or Taft)?
When people talk about bs grade deflation, is it only a couple points difference, or a lot more than that?
What is the town surrounding Taft like? I never got the chance to tour the school, so is Watertown more towny suburban style, or a lot more rural country-side?
About how many hours of homework to kids usually get at boarding school(in general)?
Is there an online app or some sort of website where we can check our grades throughout the semester? Or is it like we don’t really know what our grade is in the class till the end of the semester. For example, my school uses an app called StudentVue where we can check our grades and teachers put in assignements/tests in there.(in general, but also DA and Taft).
Lastly, what do teachers are bs usually grade students on? Participation at harkness tables? Homework? Tests? Are tests/pop quizzes given frequently?
lol sorry for so many questions. Thank you so much!
Visit the schools and feel the vibe and assess which is a better fit. Here are school profiles for you to assess the rigorousness. Grades is based on all of the things that you mentioned at both these schools from our conversations. 3-4.5 hrs of homework daily.
Taft Does not have grade distributions. You may want to talk to current students
Congratulations on your acceptances! My son is in his first year at DA as a sophomore and I will try to answer your questions for DA to the best of my knowledge.(I would not know about Taft) Apologies in advance for the long post
My son is academically advanced in STEM and he is taking Multivariable Calculus and Electrical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering as a sophomore in DA. I could see that there are many courses in Humanities and STEM where it is not too difficult to place at your level, even for the most advanced students. There are options for research and independent study courses if you exhaust the curriculum, and the graduation requirement of DA is very flexible allowing you to take multiple courses in science or math (or history or classical languages) in one year if you would like to - For ex. my son has a friend who is a taking 4 STEM courses in his senior year (he got ED to CalTech), since his language requirement was met before he joined DA (They allow you to skip foreign language if you pass AP Spanish, AP Chinese or any of those by the time you join). That said, everything depends on your individual preference and even though my son has met his language requirements, he has the option to take classical languages like Greek and Latin so he is continuing with that (I am almost sure all boarding schools discussed in this forum will be similar). The school also allows you to take a 6th graded course if you are able to manage the course load for 5 courses + 1 compulsory EC (theatre, dance or sports)
No idea about grade deflation at all, I keep seeing that mentioned about DA in the forum. When I look at my son’s grades in DA info, there is a chart showing Averages and Quintiles along with it, which shows the distribution in each grade - Much more than the actual grade number, this shows where he stands academically in DA and maybe that is what the colleges would use to read his grade?
You might have toured DA and would know that the town surrounding DA is very charming, but very rural. My son talks about long mountain biking rides, swims in the river, visit to barns, the rock etc, and mostly the community more or less includes mainly DA faculty, their families including kids and dogs. He finds it very pleasant and enjoys the opportunity to babysit the children of faculty at community hour. There are enough clubs, dances, activities and trips to Springfield or NYC to fill his weekends.
DA has only 3 subjects per day (block schedule), so that homework could be managed better by students. Also, there is a restriction on homework time for each subject - for ex. 50 mins per subject is the maximum that can be given to sophomore, and teachers do say that if you sincerely work for 50 mins and find yourself stuck, please do stop and let them know the next day. So that amounts to maximum 2.5 hrs of homework per day, and they have a study hall from 7.45 to 9.45 where students are supposed to be inside their rooms working. My son says if he uses that time effectively, homework is very much manageable. (But he is an average 15 year old in time management so he is still learning to avoid the last minute rush) He does 1 hour peer tutoring per week which is during this time so he has to manage his homework for that day. But there will be time before 7.45, during weekends and as break between classes. He finds that some subjects take less than 30 mins to finish his work, but some takes up to 1 hour, so it all balances out. My son’s experience is that teachers are very understanding, gives tonnes of extensions and generally make it very convenient for students to finish their work.
My son says that it depends on the teachers. His Latin, Math and Science teachers updates grades live in their Canvas app, so students can see their grades throughout. For English, she does not update it frequently in the app, but she has a record which is shared with students everytime they ask. For history, my son can see the grades for his written work all the time, but the teacher updates the grade for participation (which constitutes 30% of the grade for his history paper) only by the end of semester. For students taking graded art courses like acting, it is more difficult since those teachers don’t update in the app. So it depends on how tech savvy the teacher is, I guess.
Each course has its own grading criteria. Some of the courses are designed by the professors teaching them, and they decide how it should be graded. If you are taking an AP equivalent course, it might also be in alignment with College Board’s criteria for grading that course. His Engineering courses are mainly project based, not much of written exams or tests. For electrical, he had many projects and presentations. For Civil, they had an accessibility at Deerfield project as well as another one where they simulate work environment (like corporate offices operate) , and assign roles to each students - some will be engineers, some project leads and evaluate on how effectively they perform their roles. His English included - as copied from the teacher’s comments - “Your midterm grade currently consists of your apartheid film project, several reading and vocabulary quizzes, your personal narrative, one seminar, and several minor completion-based assignments.” - His history as I put it, included 30% in participation and the rest in writing assignments and projects. Again, the criteria would keep changing each semester. Math again, the criteria for Multivariable Calculus would be different from AP Calculus BC course. From the conversations I had, I find that the teachers are more relieved if it is not an AP class since they have more freedom to focus on learning as they put it, than sticking to a fixed grading criteria.
This answered loads of my questions. I’m glad Deerfield has an app where we can check our grades. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these!
As a student, you can log into your DA student account to see your grades in each subject at any point. As scarlett_aries pointed out, it’s up to the faculty member as to how they use it. Unless you give your parents your log-in information, parents cannot access this info.
My kid’s math teacher (unsurprisingly, since it’s math) has a very clear track of grades to date for both homework and tests plus their associated weights. My kid knows to the hundredth place what their math grade will be for mid-term and end-of-term report cards before they get published (DA doesn’t give GPA, it gives grades as a percent of 100).
However, my kid’s history teacher is all smoke and mirrors and grading is shrouded in mystery. The end-of-term grade is a bit of a surprise (not quite a random number generator but kid does NOT appreciate this at all).
Some teachers do not update the grades very often. But my kiddo preferred that and liked not feeling like she had to check her grades constantly. My D23 started at DA as a junior. Her first English paper was returned to her with no grade just a note “not bad”. There are some classes, mostly humanities, where it is very difficult to get above an 89. But if you look at the matriculation lists, it doesn’t seem to hurt. My kiddo loved all of the teachers and the way that classes were interactive and conversational. It is an amazing place.
Congratulations.
Hey guys! I have one more question. So suppose you’re in the waitlist for a school. Can you email them with new info(like an achievement or a good grade on an essay) in order for them to sway their decision? I feel like this has been answered before but i don’t remember where. Thanks!
But it should be something that improves your application, like sn achievement or improvement in grades. Iow, something that changes your original application for the netter.
I’ll answer a few questions as related to Taft. I’m a parent so translating from two daughters who attend. Taft is a strong school academically and will present a challenging curriculum to all but the most advanced students. Having said that, if you’re entering freshman year having already mastered multi-variate calculus, are a highly experienced coder or want to conduct detailed independent research in a particular field, then you will outgrow the curriculum. It’s simply not as extensive as some of the other schools, though there’s an interesting relationship with the NY Botanical Gardens if botany is your thing. On the other hand, if you will take Pre-Calc or even Calc as a freshman then you’ll have room to continue growing … multi-variate calc, differential equations, linear algebra, etc. Their humanities offerings are more extensive than their science and engineering offerings. The course catalog is accurate … they do actually teach the classes every semester if there’s an interested student.
Real life average grades from 1st semester: Honors US History: 89; Honors English (11th grade): 91; Honors Calc: 91; Honors Bio: 90. You can make the call on whether that’s grade deflation/inflation. Regarding homework, this is student dependent. Work that takes one student 30 minutes will take another 60 minutes. The workload in Honors classes is heavy, more like 4-5 hours a night across all courses. That’s junior year; freshman year was not as bad. Grades are based primarily on homework, papers, grades, etc, though in class participation does influence an instructor’s perception of you and, therefore, how they grade things like essays.
Go visit both schools. They are different and in more ways than their academic focus.
The immediate area is suburbs …and the school is very walkable to the town center, though I don’t know rules for students.
There are a few restaurants and and CVS (walgreens?). Google maps will show you in detail…it isn’t a posh town by any means, but is in a town, not rural area away from anything.
Kind of a late reply, but Deerfield is a great school! I will be applying to it later this year, so I haven’t gone yet haha, but my older cousin goes there and absolutely loves it! (The community, teachers, everything) Best of luck to whatever school you choose!
Thank you! Good luck for your applications! Deerfield seems AMAZING but what’s giving me second thoughts is the tough grading scale(grade deflation and stuff like that). I know people say it’s not that bad, but it alarms me when I hear stories that even when people do amazing on tests and participation their grade doesn’t go up. Part of me doesn’t want to see a grade that doesn’t truly reflect my efforts. Don’t know the full scope tho
