Tiers and Rankings

ThacherParent
Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:14:15 +0000

I spent the first part of my life in Philadelphia. The city, like others, has a magazine, Philadelphia Magazine. Every year, they publish a Best Of issue. It is their biggest seller. It never ceases to amaze me how important it is for such a large population of people to have third party validation of their personal preferences. Whether or not their school, or local restaurant, or doctor, or neighborhood etc makes the Best Of list either puffs them up with pride or sends them into a funk. And to make matters worse, the Best Of list often changes peoples’ minds! Someone might like their school very much, but they like other peoples’ approval even more and will frequently change their allegiance for that reason, although never admit it. I’ve often wondered if the kids and parents on this site would choose their boarding schools differently in the absence of rankings and acronyms.