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Germantown Friends School

School rating 4 / 5 by

31 West Coulter Street Philadephia PA 19144 United States
Day
K to 12th
Gender
Coed

Academic

Germantown Friends School review by .

Germantown Friends has an engaging faculty and is pretty strong academically across. Undeniably, their specialty is writing. Anyone coming out of GFS will have a leg up on their college counterparts in that department. Math and Science are less strong, but there is a brand new science building with really nice equipment, and math offers a lot of different levels. I really enjoyed my advanced physics course even though I'm mostly a humanitites person. Classes are all very small and very intimate. Participation is expected. This was really nice for me. I became very close with many of my teachers, and I felt all my teachers knew me well. It can get a little competitive.

College Counseling

The college process starts in the middle of junior year. Everyone is given a college....

Sample insights on college counseling

  • They have contacts at most of the major universities and feel perfectly comfortable picking up the phone and advocating for a student to get accepted somewhere they feel is a good fit for that student. However, these counselors are certainly not magic bullets. They cannot guarantee that a student will get into an Ivy League university...
  • For those wishing to move on to Oxford or Cambridge, the provision is second-to-none. In the months running up to application and interview, every subject faculty offers classes (often run by former Oxbridge tutors) exploring further areas of their subject as well as offering advice on personal statements, interview technique and more...

Admissions - Getting Accepted

Admissions is interesting. Most all rich people get in. A lot of kids come in....

Sample insights on admissions

  • For the interview, dress conservatively. Try to be very clean and put together. Also, I was a tour guide for two years and at the end of every tour, we were asked to evaluate the candidate so if you think the tour is not apart of the process, you are very wrong. Ask questions and be interested. Also, tip for the parents: the kids speak on the tour. Do not ask their questions for them...
  • Most younger siblings have an easy time in the admissions process. I can only think of one case of a younger sibling not being admitted. About half of the students who entered with me had come from public schools. The remainder came from private K-6 schools, or had transferred from other New York private schools The Elizabeth Morrow School and St. Bernard were two of the larger feeder schools...

School Life

I made many great friends at GFS. There is not much discipline, it is a super liberal school and you can do pretty much anything there. Overall, things can get kind of competitive, but I had a blast. ...

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