CorkKid made his decision and will be a Thacher Toad in the fall. But that decision was far from a slam dunk. For all that DS can be a scatter brain, he’s a reflective chap and needed to process all three revisits… and the collective experience of each school in his own way and time. The choices he had were each excellent and very different. Mercersburg is so well-funded, the opportunities that endowment is creating for kids on campus and off is quite remarkable. The school has so much heart it’s almost palpable. That plus a very generous scholarship offer made it hard to turn down.
Peddie’s size, the breadth of its science and engineering offerings, and it’s faster, more urban-like pace, also appealed. CorkKid liked the fact that kids could so easily fit a half dozen sports/clubs/extracurriculars into their day and many did. The school just makes it easy. My husband and I liked the place enormously, liked the fact that the facilities (with the exception of the spectacular science building) were humble and well-worn, but the academics rock solid and the programming outward looking. He was also granted a partial merit scholarship - if only these places knew kid still shoves dirty socks and underwear under his bed, making it a very strong contender all around.
Thacher has fewer academic and extracurricular electives, but what they do have runs deep. Kid loved the classes, the teaching style, and the level of engagement he saw. He liked the natural rapport, the humor and the rigor that was present in the day of classes he attended. I think he also felt a greater natural affinity with the kids he met. Over the course of our revisits, we created an informal metric that we called the humor index. And while very much tongue-in-cheek, it came about because Kid - who has a very dry sense of humor - commented purely by the by, that at one of the schools, the kids didn’t really get his jokes. He just mentioned that in passing, but it became a light-hearted extra gauge… what’s the sense of humor level among potential peers, what do they find funny…etc. Anyway, he found the Thacher kids to be into some of the same absurd, silly stuff he was. Beyond that, I think he liked the intimate feel of the campus, the fact that teachers and kids all know each other, regardless of whether you’re in their class, and there just seemed to be a level of mutual respect that he found refreshing -he could see that this was a place where deep connections could be made and where you’d really get to know faculty and advisors in a meaningful way. The school has a very strong, authentic culture and the kids just seemed happy. Kurt Meyer, the math dept chair and robotics leader, was away at a conference, so we didn’t get to chat, but Kid did talk to one or two kids in the robotics program and came away satisfied. The horse riding will be a hoot. Thacher does not offer merit scholarships, so naturally that would be the school Kid would choose to attend. This means we will not have to worry about retirement planning since we will never, ever retire.