Hello, I am looking at boarding schools for the next year and have an interest in Andover, Lawrenceville, Choate, Taft, and Deerfield. I understand that all these schools require a lot of schoolwork, but many say that Andover is more “stressful” than its peer schools. Is the workload, stress, and difficulty at Andover considerably harder than these other schools from your experience? How many hours does it take to complete homework at Andover vs these other schools?
I want to have a rigorous but balanced high school experience. I want to have some fun, which is why Choate and Taft seem to be interesting to me right now.
Hi! I can’t give a comparison to the other schools mentioned because I have never had a child attend them. I did have a daughter who attended Andover, and her experience was about 4 hours a night of homework. And to be fair, they told us during admissions sessions that 4 hours was about right. We were naive, I think, in that we sort of assumed that it would actually be somehow less, or that 4 hours would only be around exam time or only during notoriously rigorous junior year. Nope. It was 4 hours a night for my kid freshman year. (Note: I’m sure there are some “smarter” kids who did the work in a little bit less?) She got excellent grades, but knew by Christmas that this was not the right place for her. She is an explorer who wanted to try new things in high school, and the workload just didn’t leave her the energy or bandwidth to experience high school the way she wanted to experience it. She transferred to what had been her “safety school” during the original admissions process, and WOW…it was night and day for her in terms of her daily joy. She was plenty challenged academically with all the advanced options her school offered, and had space to try out new activities, new sports, and just to discover who she is. And, she ended up graduating and getting into her longtime “dream college,” and I’m sure this is because she had space to grow and find herself. Andover is truly an amazing place I think for the right student. But I would suggest: try studying for 4 hours in a row, every day for a week and see if that is invigorating or depleting. Wishing you well on the application cycle! it’s an exciting time for sure!
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The 4 hours is legit, but I would posit that its not four hours in a row. There are pockets of gaps where you can spread the work out. And depending on how you leverage Sunday, its not always an intense four hours of homework each night.
The stress bit comes into play insofar as you’re there with kids who are very bright and hardworking, creating an internal pressure to “keep up.” That is both academically and athletically, and I might say in the arts as well. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a kid who’s awesome at whatever it is you’re doing at the moment, so that takes some getting used to. Some kids adapt faster than others, but imposter syndrome is a thing when you first get there. Sadly, what kids forget is the thing that THEY are awesome at that may seem intimidating to others around them. Everyone’s great at something, and the good news is that it’s not a place that’s “competitive” in the normal sense. Kids are pretty supportive and the school has an abundance of resources to avail yourself of to do your best.
Again, a lot of this calms down after you’ve been there for a bit. Kids relax, establish their rhythm and take advantage of the wealth of opportunities the school offers. The place is pretty ridiculous. And there’s no lack of fun.
Can’t comment on the other places.
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I haven’t had a kid at Andover or even at the other schools you mentioned, but I suspect academic intensity has changed (i.e., decreased) at Andover from what even parents of recent attendees remember. You might want to take a look at the most recent Andover school profile, available on its website, and also search for Andover school profiles for recent years. You will see that grades have gone up (most kids have a strong A average) while SAT scores are no higher than at several of the other schools you mentioned. (The current Andover average is 1410.) While these don’t necessarily mean workload has decreased, it would stand to reason that with these statistics, the school isn’t necessarily harder than its peer schools. I know that to get very high grades at the peer school my own kid attended, the students had to work hard and efficiently.