STEM at Groton and Deerfield

RandoParent
Tue, 20 May 2025 13:48:06 +0000

tiandou:

Regarding matriculation, do most students go on to study Humanities at university? And do they tend to have an advantage when applying to college with a focus on Humanities over STEM majors?

It’s impossible to speak about the entire graduating class of ~90 kids, but, anecdotally, in recent years, most students appear not to be positioning themselves as humanities students when they apply to college. STEM and quantitative social sciences are much more popular. But that will be the same at any peer school; it’s a generational preference among kids these days, as you probably know. I don’t think you’ll find any meaningful differences among peer schools on this point.

Also, per my prior comment about pursuing STEM interests through a faculty-sponsored activity (FSA), a current Fourth Former just won a Top Award at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair Awards, which he did as an FSA: https://www.societyforscience.org/press-release/regeneron-isef-2025-grand-awards/

There is certainly a place (and plenty of support and resources) for students like that at Groton and similar schools, but those experiences are the exception rather than the norm at these kinds of boarding schools. Groton and similar schools would be thrilled to have a few students like that in every class (they’d be crazy not to), but that is not the student that these schools are built for. You can’t build the community and life/learning experience that these schools cherish if every student is peeling away from campus to do their own extracurricular, no matter how amazing those accomplishments are.

If I were one of those students who planned to be wholly invested in my own pursuits – whether that be engineering or club swimming or ballet or whatever – I would find an amazing day school close to home and keep following my passions.

If you already know what you want, then there’s not much point in turning your life (and your parents’ lives) upside down to go to Groton or any similar school – no matter how great the school’s name sounds.

But if you want an amazing and well-rounded education, and a community of kids, faculty and staff who will help you discover new interests and push beyond the person you were when you applied, then boarding school is a great place for you – and Groton especially so.

Lastly, if you’re curious about college matriculations, Groton is small enough that they actually print a list of every school that the most recent graduating class (not the past 5 years of graduating classes) actually attends (not acceptances). The dots next to the school names tell you the number of kids attending. It’s in the Groton School Quarterly (Fall issue, if memory serves).