hey guys! i’m happy to announce that I’ve been accepted to woodberry with great fa. i also got WL at st.george’s, milton and pennington.
if you have experience with woodberry or heard about it by someone, please share it with me! in particular, i am curious about campus life and the fact that it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’ve been living in a really big city all my life(and i like it), so i was alittle bit scared that i can get lonely. if you know smth about trips and towns nearby, please share it with me!
also, wfs doesn’t have AP program, so i was curious if it’s a bad or a good thing for college admissions. i’m also interested in how successful WFS is at sending kids(especially international students) to top colleges.
The school is not too far from Charlottesville, VA (where UVA is located), I’m guessing they do trips on the weekends etc. It’s a small city, but has Target and lots of good restaurants and some entertainment options. Many prep schools no longer offer AP, they do their own advanced courses that are designed to not teach to a test, but offer rigorous preparation that is likely better than AP and you could still take exam - colleges are very familiar with these schools and classes and it will not disadvantage you.
Many elite independent schools don’t have AP courses, so college admissions are aware of this.
You can find information about where recent graduates of Woodberry Forest got accepted in the college counseling section of their website. One important data point that is missing is the number of WBS recent graduates that enrolled at any particular institution. However, colleges accept students, not schools. If your stats at the beginning of your senior year are similar to people from WBS who have gotten accepted at top colleges, then you are more likely to get into a top college.
You will have access to more information during the spring of your junior year. However, even if you school’s data indicate that all students with your stats who have applied to a given school have been accepted, that is no guarantee that you will be accepted.
I know little about WFS, but not having APs should not be something to worry about in terms of college admissions IMO. This isn’t rare in many independent schools (and even many top publics have either none or very few). Colleges know and understand the curricula of the HSs…they send a document that explains their school and their offerings…
WFS offers the atmosphere of a country estate and, of its domestic students, tends to enroll Southerners. It’s overall ambience might be regarded as diametrical to city life. In any case, I wouldn’t under-regard such an opportunity. Best of luck to you in your decision.
thank you! i heard that the school isn’t far from charlottesville. do you know something about nearby town and if students can walk to these town on their own?
It’s not walkable - I’m guessing they have shuttles on the weekends. Charlottesville has good restaurants, shopping and a small airport - but its not a big city.
At nearly two hous by foot, Orange doesn’t appear to be within conventional walking distance. I’m not entirely certain as to whether or not there might be another town of some type nearer to campus.
Orange isn’t walkable, and there really isn’t much worth doing there even if it were. There will be occasional trips to DC, Richmond, Charlottesville, but it’s best to give up on the idea of connectivity to cities if you enroll. WFS is remote and they’d view that as an integral part of the experience. It’s 100% boarding, and other than occasional weekend getaways with parents or more local friends, kids tend to stay on campus and take advantage of all that it has to offer.
There is typically a lot to do on campus to keep students occupied, but it might be helpful to ask about what a typical weekend looks like at all these schools. WFS is the most rural of the schools that you’ve listed, but that may not be a negative as it could mean that more students stay on campus on weekends.
I would also ask about cultural differences between the schools as Milton and SGS have more New Englanders as students.
Finally, Milton has a high proportion of day students, so campus is quieter on the weekends.