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!
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.
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.
Used to be that getting 4’s and 5’s were sufficient to get a look by all of the top schools. A 6 (A+) was rare and nobody got all 6’s. At the same time, my observation is that the workload is a lot more than it used to be. These kids are working a lot harder and have more work than back in the day. In retrospect, I’m wondering if 4 hours is light. 4 hours for freshmen feels right, based on my observation, but the intensity ramps up after freshman year. I don’t know what the other schools do about pass/fail freshman year to provide an easier glide path (I think Exeter does first semester all pass/fail, and maybe Milton as well). Andover does not, which may add to the stress.
Word is, Andover took a more generous path to 6’s and 5’s post Covid. Word is also that those days are over, with teachers being more heavily scrutinized about giving out 6’s than years past. The school profile over the next few years should reflect that.
But I’m not sure a lot of students getting a lot of 5’s and 6’s is the right barometer of academic intensity. If the expectation is that you should get a 5 or a 6, it actually puts more pressure on you to do so. But none of that speaks to the workload assigned to and expected from the student, which is what OP is trying to measure.
I’m not denying your premise, but just want to mention that Andover’s mean SAT score is almost assuredly higher than 1410. It was 1446 in 2020. I don’t think Andover is publishing standardized scores anymore, but it is likely higher now than in 2020, as it is at some peer schools.
One of the complaints about the school is the heavy core requirements gauntlet you have to run through. It’s pretty directed and so there’s not that much choice/flexibility until mid-11th grade, unless you come in quite advanced in certain areas.
I have two kids currently attending boarding school (one at Andover and one at Lawrenceville). I can attest to the point that the kid at Andover does have a heavier daily workload for homework. I don’t know that 4 hours every night is accurate, but over a week, that doesn’t seem too far off. My son seems to average around 2.5 on school nights, with a heavy workload on the weekend spent catching up or getting ahead (depending on where he is in the term). The assignments aren’t terribly difficult, but do seem to reward working and reworking writing. He reports feeling like a 6 is achievable in all the classes he takes, with some to moderate effort. (This is a change from Days of Old, where my husband assures me that there were some classes where that 6 was just never on offer, and certainly not every class across the board.) He reports that grading is transparent and he is rarely surprised with what mark he receives on an assignment for class.
My daughter at Lawrenceville, on the other hand, has a lighter load during the week. It feels like she is averaging 1.5 hours a night, with less over the weekend catch up/get ahead work. (Seasonally, of course, it can get rough. The drama productions, for example, are time-intensive and she regularly preemptively asks for extentions.) The grading there is more unpredictable and opaque, especially in the A/A+ area. She’s gotten A+s in classes she was certain she was going to get an A- for the term and As in classes where the feedback was that her work was outstanding.
I do wonder how much selection bias and priming affect this question, though. At least in my family, the kid who wanted a slightly “warmer” school went to the school that seemed slightly warmer, and then also sought out activities that fostered that experience. My son, who also had the same choice of schools, went to the school that he perceived as “harder edged” and has pursued that experience there. I know some of the kids at Lawrenceville are real hard-edgers who like the grind and go to Lawrenceville grinding all day every day, but would be happy at Andover and the same (but reversed) at Andover. Boarding school is a land of contrasts?
For the Andover stats on the SAT: You have to go to the Andover website (Andover.edu), then Learning, then College Counseling, then “For College Admission Officers,” then School Profile, then bottom of page 2.
The 25-26 are out! Thanks for the heads up. Been waiting to compare GPA deciles vs. past years.
New format. Good info here. No “Impact of Covid…” qualifier and also noticing that besides the SAT info, they’ve done away with reporting deciles altogether. Only showing top 20%. Given that the Class of ‘26 needed a 5.76+ to make 20th percentile vs 5.83 the previous year and 5.82 in ‘24 indicates that the targeted grade deflation is beginning to be reflected in the scores. Suspect they will be even more obvious next year.