Hotchkiss Boarding School/Lacrosse

Question

I am applying to boarding schools for 11th and 12th grade, I'm going into 10th. I am a male and need a change. I play lacrosse and consider myself a tad above average skill wise.What negatives and positives does Hotchkiss have..and could you reccomend another school in the PA/MD/NJ/NE area. I really want to go to Johns Hopkins or Georgetown for pre-med. Hotchkiss has a good reputation and will only make this more achievable. I slacked off and got a 3.6 gpa. ANY FEEDBACK ON HOTCHKISS?

Answer 1

I'm just going to tell you now that colleges weigh a higher GPA over the reputation of the high school that you attended. If you are positive that you will do well at Hotchkiss, even though the curriculum will probably be more challenging, by all means, go for it. But if it's going to bring down your GPA, I would advise against it. It's better to stay at your school right now and just get 4.0's.

Answer 2

Hotchkiss is a great school. Other good ones in the states you mention are:

Hill

Peddie

Lawrenceville

Episcopal

St. Andrews

These schools are all very hard to get into for 11th grade, they take very few. If you slacked and have a 3.6, you'll need to have a very high SSAT or PSAT score for Hotchkiss and Lawrenceville and a good one for the others.

Do not go to any of these schools if you think they will help get you into a top college. JHU should be OK, it's not much in demand from those schools. But the ivy league schools and top LACs are very much in demand and top boarding schools will HURT your chances at those. Simply, the competition is brutal. Each college will only take so many from one high school and at the top boarding schools your competition will be legacies, the kids of the very wealty and connected, recruited athletes and the Country's top minorities--and they all want in at the same few colleges. The unconnected will stand a much better chance applying from their local public school.

Answer 3

Look into Peddie School in Hightston, NJ.  That was a good lax boarding school when I graduated in 2002.  There are many good schools in PA for lax that are prep schools rather than boarding schools (i.e. Malvern Prep, LaSalle, Haverford School, Penn Charter).  Many friends of mine who went to those schools attended D1 schools including Hopkins and Georgetown.  Sorry, I don't know much about Hotchkiss.

Answer 4

Chriss is right when it comes to the GPA issue. Going to a boarding school with a good reputation, but having an average GPA, will not go over well with universities, particularly Johns Hopkins or Georgetown (with 24% and 21% admission rates, respectively). I remember reading an article quite some time ago about a top college advisor, the article included a bit of information that was a little disturbing to me at the time. One of her client's had been to a top boarding school and she was afraid this would damage his chances of getting into his top choice university (because of the long-standing, but currently incorrect, stereotype of boarding schools as centers of elitist snobbery). So she recommended that he focus his admissions essay on how he grew up in a humble atmosphere. So basically, the point is that universities are getting more and more criticism that they are not accepting enough students of lower-income families and enough minorities. So right now the top universities in the U.S. (obviously including Johns Hopkins and Georgetown) are looking for smart, "poor", minority students. However, smart students from academic-oriented boarding schools are also prime candidates for admittance into university.

The biggest downside of Hotchkiss is that it has one of the lowest boarding school admission rates in the country, and sometimes, it has the lowest (varies from 18%-21%). The plus side is that if you're lucky enough to be admitted, then you will be at a school with a $423 million endowment (massive for a boarding school) and a school with an established record as one of the best boarding schools in the world. If you're looking for other schools similar to Hotchkiss, then it would be best to look at the other 9 members of the Ten Schools Admissions Organization (see list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Schools... ) These are effectively the academic elite in the country.

Johns Hopkins and Georgetown pre-med are some of the most competitive programs of any type in the world. It would be much more important to establish yourself with a very, very strong GPA and an amazing extra curricular record than it would be to go to an established boarding school and make average grades. Making average grades at Hotchkiss would hurt badly. You're also competing against some of the smartest young minds in the world, so class rank would also be an issue to consider.

But, if you have a strong desire to go to boarding school and you know this is right for you, then you should do it. Boarding school is one of the best experiences possible in life, I know it was for me. Best of luck.