STEM at Groton and Deerfield

RandoParent
Mon, 10 Nov 2025 03:15:42 +0000

one1ofeach:

Many of the kids at a school like Groton - and the colleges they go on to - are excellent/outstanding students in both stem and humanities. Kids also change their minds, some a lot, some a little.

So true.

My STEM-focused Groton kid chose to go there instead of a certain dream school for STEM kids (especially on this site) because Groton was a school that would force you to grow in every direction.

As a result, the kid who was clearly clocked as a math-heavy STEM kid by all the schools that said kid applied to as an 8th grader, will be graduating Groton with APs in two languages (one being Latin), an insane amount of writing from the English curriculum and the student paper, multiple theater and music performances, and captain roles in two varsity sports.

This kid’s STEM creds will still be top-notch – including organic chem and independent study beyond linear algebra – and colleges will probably look at this application through a STEM lense.

But to my (biased) eye, that’s a much more interesting education than we likely would have seen had our kid chosen that other school. We gave up maybe one or two niche STEM electives in the final year but gained four years of growth in every other dimension – including (but not exclusively in) the humanities.

That’s the magic of this small school: physics kids who read Pliny’ letters in the original (without AI), math kids writing magical realism, chamber orchestra kids soaked with sweat after their first seat race for crew.

Groton isn’t the best school for any of these things; but it’s an amazing place for the kid who wants all of the them, or even just more than one or two of them.