I have been accepted at Deerfield, Choate, and Hotchkiss.
Although I would like to be challenged, I do want to maintain my GPA of 4.0 to assure I can attend a strong university.
Which of these schools has the most grade inflation or is the easiest while still being challenging?
Congrats on your acceptances thats rlly cool
I hope you understand it will be extremely hard to maintain a 4.0 GPA at any of the schools you’ve mentioned. If you can, go to their revisit days to see which one you like the most. You will be challenged at any of these schools, and you may not always have a 4.0. A’s will not be easy to get if you’re challenging yourself.
You also don’t need a 4.0 to get into a strong university btw
None are easy. Prep school is about a lot more than grades. If you want an easy 4.0 then maybe stay in your local school and save the money. But the advice above is good: go to revisit and sit in on classes - maybe that will give you a better idea.
@ShirjilDavwa1 this may sound harsh but I imagine the schools that accepted you might have second thoughts if they knew your question and your feelings. Move to the Bronx get a 4.0 and a 2350 on the SSAT and you are golden
As long as you have a 3.5-3.6 from these schools, and especially if you have 3.75, you’re good, so don’t create pointless stress for yourself when thzre’ll be real reasons to be stressed out.
You might as well accept the fact that you probably won’t have a 4.0 GPA. 95% of students at these schools graduate with less than a 4.0 GPA, and they still manage to go to fine colleges. I went to a top boarding school similar in rigor to your choices. I did not have a perfect GPA and still did quite well in the college admissions process.
There will be plenty of things in life to stress over - this is not one of them.
Call the admissions office and ask them to send you a copy of the “College Profile”. This usually lists the GPA distribution. You can get a sense of what the average GPA is at each school.
As others have said, don’t try to compare GPA from boarding school to a GPA at a public school. The colleges are aware of the differences between the two.
Fun Fact: Never in the history of Exeter has a student got a 4.0. One student came close many years ago, but he had one A- in English, and now that student is a Latin teacher here.
Maybe that’s just urban legend, but no student in recent memory got a 4.0. Even so, Exonians end up going to some pretty good colleges. Colleges are aware that boarding school students are in a more rigorous grading environment, and they keep that in mind during admissions. Like @skieurope said, if you go to a boarding school, you might as well accept that you won’t get a 4.0 (but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work hard.)
The school profiles are easily found on their websites where you will see grade/GPA distribution.
There are couple of points to mention;
P.S.
Getting A’s are of course good, and I am on the side of believing that one should try his best to get them. DD never chose a course that she has no realistic chance for an A. There was always a plan, although it often didn’t work as we hoped. And there are often last minute surprise curving and extra credits that raise the final official grade to A, if you don’t give up til the end.
But if she chose courses that she is very likely to get A only, she wouldn’t have learned as much, and more importantly, wouldn’t have acquired great study skills, and what waste of opportunity it could have been.
There are great schools and bad schools and everything in between in each and every category of schools. Is that a point that’s worth repeating over and over on a prep school forum? Is it worth making in a thread about Deerfield, Choate and Hotchkiss vs a PS?
Why don’t we focus on OP’s question and start discuss which of Deerfield, Choate and Hotchkiss has largest grade inflation and/or is easiest to maintain all A’s?
Why do so many threads keep getting hung up on the same discussion?? Remember the thread about wanting to encourage student and new posters? I don’t think repeating the same argument all the time helps that aim.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/1860906-less-applicants-more-parents-more-tension-p1.html
Perhaps the right question is to ask @ShirjilDavwa1: How rigorous is your current school where you have achieved a 4.0? Did you choose to apply to boarding school to increase your academic rigor? Or are there other reasons why you applied?
I don’t think OP is really asking if he can do well on BS and seems debate between BS and LPS superiority is irrelevant to this thread. He has a practical and specific question regarding grade inflation and distribution on three specific schools.
Look, OP. Once you first get to BS, you are going to wonder if you really are that smart. You’re going to be around kids who grasp the material faster than you. You will get a bad grade on a test. You will be relieved to receive a B in a class. Once you start getting the hang of things, you’ll realize that while you have always been pretty smart, you are much smarter than you were when you were asking this question. You’ll realize that looking for the school that is “the easiest while still being challenging” makes no sense. Go to the revisit days. Talk to alum. Peruse the Courses of Study. Fall in love with one of these schools, and commit to it and yourself and working like you didn’t know you could and achieving like you didn’t know you could. No matter which place you choose, you are going to change and grow so much in the next year and get much more out of it than a perfect GPA, if you can believe it.
Long story short, get some new criteria.
That’s true, @SculptorDad, but I doubt anyone can answer that question for the OP because I doubt anyone has first hand experience at all 3 schools.
@SculptorDad is right - guilty as charged! However I don’t know enough about the 3 schools academics to provide a helpful comparison. One thing OP can do is ask students how much homework they have on average, how many classes do they take at one time, are there honors level and AP level classes etc. to begin to make meaningful comparisons. I know many moons ago my life at Taft was made much more challenging because play rehearsals were during study hall and I was not disciplined enough to do my homework in the theater -" difficulty" is very individual and there are quite a few variables beyond just rigor. congrats on 3 very fine acceptances as well!
You can easily see a class profile of each of the three schools the OP has been accepted to and see the average grade distribution. For example, Deerfield only has 2 students in the highest percentile, Hotchkiss has 8 and Choate has 64.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I have mentioned this several times on another thread, but College Confidential is not a debate society. Why does it seem that the same 3 posters feel the need to rehash the BS vs. LPS debate on every thread? If one of those posters wants to start a conversation about the topic in the Parent’s Cafe, be my guest. Here however, when a 13 year old kid asks a question, please either give your thoughts on the question asked or move on to another thread. Thank you.
@skieurope THANK YOU!