Reply to Landon vs. Georgetown Prep Upper School

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[quote=Anonymous]I am very familiar with Landon and have an outside picture of Prep.  I know if you asked Landon kids, they would say they are very similar to Prep kids except Landon kids go to Landon and Prep kids go to Prep.  The amount of Landon-Prep friendship varies from class to class.  There are a significant number of Catholic kids at Landon.  There are also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and non-religious kids there.  Landon's religion is not Lacrosse, it is the Honor Code.  Given the recent publicity, that may sound ironic, but the Honor Code is the foundation of the school and plays the role I suspect Religion does at Prep.  I would echo the comments of some of the posters that Prep has recently behaved boorishly at Landon-Prep Games.  Generally there are Landon Administrators at Landon Prep games to keep the Landon kids classy.  (side note, after Gonzaga's great win over Landon in lacrosse this past spring, the Gonzaga fans yelled "We sodomized you."  and "You got sodomized" not exactly behavior you want to hang your hat on)  
Landon's academic program is very good.  Kids have honors options freshman year in Math, Science, and Foreign Language.  As sophomores they have honors options across the board except in English and  AP options in U.S. History and Science.  Junior year they have the full slate of AP options throughout the curriculum and the same for Senior Year. Junior year is noted for Humanities - a team taught combination of English and History that is basically a Western Civilization course- Great Works of literature in English and Philosophy from the Greeks to the 21st Century.  Kids at Landon universally say Humanities was difficult but enlightening and phenomenal preparation for college.  Many kids at great universities say they expended more mental energy in Humanities than most of their college courses.  Landon's class sizes vary but usually top out at 15 or 16.  Some foreign language classes have as few as six or eight students.  Freshman English classes have about 12 students per class.  The rest of the English Dept has 14-18 students averaging around 15.  I cite English because every student has to take English so it will generally be the biggest class and a good indication of class size.  Landon reduced the size of freshman English classes to improve writing skills.  The Math progression from freshman to senior year is Algebra II, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus.  Not everyone makes it to Calculus, but everyone has to at least get to through Pre-Calculus.

The vast majority of  teacher/coach/mentors in the upper school have a master's degree in their academic subject.

In the past ten years Landon has had three presidential scholars- the best male student from the state of Maryland.

The Music program at Landon is phenomenal.  The director is a former road manager for Aretha Franklin.  He knows his stuff and almost all of the music instructors are local session musicians.  Probably every two years a kid goes to a serious music school to play the violin. 
 
The art department, specifically painting and ceramics are very very good.  10-15% of seniors submit AP art portfolios.

The college list is probably not quite as good as St. Albans but something like ten kids got into Ivy League Schools and half the kids got into colleges whose selectivity is rated the highest - Duke, Kenyon, Davidson, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, etc.

If you consider the co-ed schools, most of the time their GPA's, SAT's, and College Admissions are brought up by the girls.  I suspect Landon's numbers compare favorably to the numbers of boys at any other school in the area except St. Albans and Sidwell.

A boy doesn't have to be a super athlete to fit in at Landon.  (the idea  Landon and Prep are Athletic factories is absurd- there are very few kids from either school playing college football, basketball, baseball, or track.  There are a lot of kids playing college lacrosse from both schools, but lacrosse is a boutique sport).     A boy will be respected at Landon if he works hard and has integrity; it is helpful to be good at something- Academics, Athletics, Music or Art but character is most important.  Life may be easier for a 9th grade phenom lacrosse player, but everything evens out by junior year and hard work and integrity become most important.

Last year's student body president was an African American boy who was a role player on the basketball team, but he was an actor in the play and a phenomenal singer who won a singing contest in New York.  There are a fair number of Landon kids who get Financial Aid.  You could probably find the number on the website.

To the prior poster who conflated the school's founding in 1929 to rising Naziism in Germany, Landon has had a minority Division Head for at least the last thirteen years and I think the first minority student was admitted in the sixties.

From my perspective, the biggest difference between Landon and Prep is the size of the schools.  Landon has 340 students in the upper school.  It is small enough for every student to be known by any teacher who takes an interest.  I think Prep has 440 students and might be going for 500.  At Prep's size, some kids can be more anonymous which I think leaves more room for kids to wander off the righteous path.  Kids emboldened by their anonymity might explain some of the boorish behavior at athletic contests.  I think Landon's academic program is better than Preps but only slightly so, but Prep has so much money, I suspect they can change that if they want. (if you put the top kids from either school they will be very similar- I think Prep's bottom kids would also be very similar to Landon's, but just a few more as a result of the size of the school.

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