Exeter, Andover's twin in terms of size, endowment, and number of Harvard admissions, is also suffering, although apparently not as badly. Exeter accepts about 30 per cent of its applicants, and three out of every five boys accepted to both Andover and Exeter choose Exeter.
Two smaller schools, Groton and St. Paul's, are apparently not as badly affected by this decline in interest. Although Groton's director of admissions, David Rogerson, noted that "the competition isn't as stiff as it used to be, and the classics scholars are getting worried about a decline in intellectual
According to one source, the University prefers to build student and faculty housing on the Treelands-Bindery site because it is one of the few pieces of land in Cambridge zoned for high-density housing. High-density housing permits more people to live on any one piece of land-in this case, 2.25 acres.
"The University hopes, by building quality." applications have not dropped too noticeably at Groton.
St. Paul's admissions director Richard Sawyer maintained that admission figures "look about as they did five years ago," although he appeared unwilling to talk about the exact numbers. St. Paul's, a traditionally upper-crusty church school, will go co-ed next year. but Sawyer feels that this will not have any significant effect on the number of applications.
Desperate
Mt. Hermon, a large school lacking the protection of tradition and endowment, is suffering so badly that it has resorted to the sure sign of desperation-advertising for students in the Harvard Alumni Builetin.
If the boys' schools are worrying, the girls' schools are running scared Farmington, an old and prestigious girls' schools, has had a large drop in applicants. Miss Hall's, a notch down on the academic and social ladder, is also having trouble filling its beds. St. Timothy's, a school of Farmington's stature, accepts over half its appellants, and applications are "considerably down" at Westover, a middle-echelon school.
Even Concord, a school that sits at the top of the pile in terms of popularity, is experiencing a decrease in applicants for the first time in a decade.
While the boarding schools have been suffering, the day schools have been enjoying a marked increase in applications. Day schools appear to parents and children as a happy compromise between high school and boarding school, offering the academic quality of a private school without the restriction and isolation of a boarding school.
In Boston, for example, the Belmont Hill School has experienced a sharp increase in applications, probably at the expense of surrounding boarding schools such as Middlesex, St. Mark's, and Brooks. At the Riverdale School, outside New York City, there has been "quite a swelling of applications," according to admissions director Cleaver Foubes, who added, "Hardly anybody goes away to school anymore."
Ten years ago, the Collegiate School, a twelve-year day school in Manhattan, saw 75 per cent of its eighth grade go away to school. Last year, only four out of 45 decided to leave Collegiate for boarding school.
Despite the occasional note of optimism voiced by admissions directors to placate their alumni and salve their wounded spirits, the outlook is bleak for the prep schools. If the economic squeeze isn't damaging enough, the growing rebellion of once awed or indifferent thirteen-year-olds should be enough to doom a few schools and hurt, if not cripple, many others.