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Horace Mann School

School rating 4 / 5 by

231 West 246th Street Bronx NY 10471 United States
Day
PK to 12th
Gender
Coed

Academic

Horace Mann School review by .

After Horace Mann college was easy. At 13 and 14 I learned organizational, time management, and study skills that many of my peers were still struggling with in their senior year of college. Admittedly, I was pretty miserable while these skills were being drilled into me. However, over the long term, the work ethic I learned at Horace Mann has been extremely valuable. Horace Mann has a strong academic program in the humanities and hard sciences. Performance and visual arts are views as 'fun' activities rather than real subjects. This distinction says a lot about the student body. HMer's are interested in traditional styles of teaching and learning. Anything that seems in anyway 'alternative' or new aged is quickly dismissed as fluff. Generally, classes are 12-20 students. In certain subjects, such as foreign language, classes are often as small as 5. On average, I expected an hour of work per subject each night. Since most students take 5 classes that meet 4 times a week, 4-5 hours a night is a reasonable expectation. However, I also remember having courses with only 10 pages of reading a night. The ninth grade writing program is definitely a highlight. This program gave me a solid grounding in expository writing. You can never write TOO well, so you might as well start-out writing a bit well.

College Counseling

At the beginning of 11th grade we met our collage counselors. They provided both individual....

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

I entered Horace Mann in the sixth grade. This is the beginning of middle school,....

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

The typical HM student is from a wealthy, Jewish, professional family and lives on the Upper East or West Side of Manhattan. This background affords more students with the benefit of nannies, tutors, and psychologists (for the timely ADD diagnosis just before the SATs). There are certainly HM students who come from less privileged backgrounds, but the culture is definitely dominated my the rich Manhattanites. Horace Mann provides excellent library and technology facilities. A student who had trouble studying a home could certainly find amble resources at school....

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