Reply to Holton, NCS, Sidwell, Maret, Visitation or Stoneridge?

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[quote=Anonymous]To Anon 00:16- Yes I do realize that I could be easily identified by my posts. If an NCS student does identify me I won’t really be bothered. What I’m saying is hardly new news to those within the NCS community and I never tried to hide my opinions about the school from the administration or other students even when I went there so I hardly think that anyone who did know me would be surprised to see this.

To Anon 15:17- I think that NCS probably was too traditional for me. What was especially frustrating to me personally and what led to me staying at the school for so long (and what is the cause of my personal dislike of Kathleen Jamison) was that the school tried to make it seem like it was changing. My parents met multiple times with Mrs. Jamison to discuss their worries about the school and the way it was run. Every time she would assure them that they were trying to change things and make the school more accessible for more progressive students. More than once she promised that she would me with me to personally discuss my problems with the school from a student’s perspective. And every time? I got nothing. She never actually followed through. The school remained exactly the same. Eventually I got tired of waiting and just decided to leave myself. I chose to leave of my own will. I was a strong student in all my classes(except for in physics…) although my best subjects were definitely history and english. However, I feel as if the feeling was somewhat mutual. I think the school was a little tired of my penchant for not being just another obedient gear in the machine as well as opening the eyes of other students to the problems within the school.

To Anon 14:19

I would be more than happy to answer any specific questions about the school. Below are my answers to your questions.
1. Religion plays a fairly large factor at the schools. We attend a weekly Friday cathedral service as well as a weekly chapel that is run by a reverend and the student vestry. On more important religious holidays (easter, Christmas, etc…) the cathedral services are sometimes longer. As an atheist, it was somewhat annoying to attend these but it is one of the trade-offs of going to an Episcopalian school. Also, in general, all faculty and students are quite respectful of different religious views. The only time I can recall something coming up is when the director of the middle school tried to force me to sing a hymn (I usually stand silently). When I refused he tried to push the point and then dropped it when he realized I wasn’t going to sing. 
2. Until middle school the two sexes are pretty much kept apart. In 8th grade there is a mandatory co-ed Ethics class. In high school there are a couple of co-ed classes but I am fairly sure they are all electives. For the most part, during school hours, there is pretty much no contact. However, those girls with boyfriends often find ways to see their counterparts during free periods or at lunch. 
3. The only reason I knew about Eric Toth is because my parents pointed out an article about him to me in the Post shortly after the story broke. I don’t know if they talked about it at Beauvior at all but at NCS it was never mentioned except by students gossiping. 
4. I think the NCS math curriculum was something of a disaster. At B-CC I am currently in a class with mostly freshmen taking Algebra 2 while all the sophomores I know are taking Precalculus. Students who came in from other schools to NCS were universally placed into the highest math track or even moved up to the next grade level because their own grade was behind. There are some very difficult math classes taught at NCS (I don’t think anyone would deny that BC Calc is NOT an easy class) but I think that the system should probably be restructured to work out some issues.
5. No. That is really the short answer. Racially, definitely not. The people are predominately Caucasian, with some African-Americans, and a few Asians.  There are some students who are very wealthy but mostly I would say that the students are middle-upper class. Then there were a few students, such as myself, who fell solidly into the middle class, and relied on financial aid and scholarship money in order to pay NCS’s exorbitant tuition fees. In my eyes the school seemed pretty self-congratulatory for what little diversity they had. Most of the student body seemed to view it as a joke when the school would have celebrations of the school’s diversity because of the lack of it. 
6. It’s somewhat hard to judge an elementary school like Beavior. I pretty much enjoyed my time there and I think it is a decent elementary school. At NCS it is much more divided. Some students love it. I would say that those people make up a very, very small minority of the student body. I think very few of the students who attend NCS would have nothing negative to say about it. Within my group of friends there is a lot of negativity toward NCS but it is hard to say whether that is a representative sample of the entire student body. I think that a lot of the students who have overachieving parents feel forced to stay at NCS because they believe, or their parents believe, that it will get them into a good college. A lot of students talk about switching to other schools but there is a lot of competition between the private schools which results in a lot of negative opinions and some nasty name calling. (GDS= general drug school, NCS girls are sluts, Landon “knows” boys, Field students are dumb etc. etc. etc.) I think a lot of the girls are unhappy at NCS. 
7. Yes. Unfortunately this is one stereotype that was 100% true. Not only that but they are allowed to bend or even break the rules in ways that wouldn’t be tolerated for other students. I remember one incident in particular in which a wealthy girl verbally taunted the athletic trainer and, after the trainer threatened her with detention, left a tack on her chair (I had a sprained knee at the time so I was witness to this) the trainer found the tack, luckily before she sat on it, and shortly afterward I heard her on the phone discussing the incident. She said something along the lines of “Yes I know who did it but unfortunately she’ll never get in trouble because of her parents.” Her parents had just paid for a part of the athletic center. 
8. I would go to B-CC. I really like it there. If I was going to go private then I’d probably choose Sidwell. Sidwell is known for it’s tolerance and I’ve been impressed with students and graduates alike. They are also known for taking students based on merit rather than money which is a quality I appreciate. I have a few friends who go to Maret who love it and that would probably be my second choice but they have pretty weak athletics. 
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