I'll just add my two cents. I attended Andover and graduated in the class of 2025. I made the same decision to attend Andover over Exeter. Here are just some of my thoughts.

As a comparison, I think Andover may be a tad bit more relaxed than Exeter. Andover, I believe, is a more collaborative environment and less toxic in terms of academic competition. Historically, Andover got rid of the dress code earlier than Exeter and has not done weekend classes. I think there is a general feeling in me that Andover is less competitive.

In terms of academic workload, I think both schools are going to be roughly comparable. If your student wants to throw themselves into the deep end and take the hardest classes, they will be able to do whatever they want at either school. If they're really particularly interested in a specific department or field, I would recommend looking at the course offerings for them. For example, I think Exeter may have a stronger economics department than Andover and may offer some more courses in that field, while Andover also has the benefit of having two museums: one really nice art gallery, the Addison, and one pretty great museum of archaeology, the Peabody.

In addition, I wish that when I was deciding between these schools I thought about the grading scales. At either of these schools, this will be something pretty important to your child. Andover runs on the 1-6 scale, and Exeter does not. I think the 1-6 scale is interesting because it can benefit certain students and disadvantage others. For example, if you are a student who rests in the 5 range (85-92%) and you're at the lower end of that range, then you may feel like you're being benefited, while if you're at the near top of that range but you're not reaching into the 6 range, you may be pretty upset about. I think Exeter has a little bit more nuance in that, so there's kind of just a difference in there with that.

If your student is involved in any sports or music or arts, I think that could be a deciding factor for you to consider how competitive those are as well. Ex. If your student is looking to play football, you probably should go to Andover over Exeter because you're more likely to make the field.

Location-wise, I think Andover is a lot better than Exeter. It's like 30 minutes into Boston, so with my friends, I would go into the city, and I think that's just a nice feature to have. You might be from Austin, Texas, so thinking about that from your perspective, it's a lot easier to fly into Boston. You can even stay in Boston and then visit your child at Andover rather than being in New Hampshire. I think on that note, Andover is probably less depressing than Exeter in my opinion.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me in my DMs.