You Should Flunk Prep Year
By KAYLEE GONG ‘28
Every year, around two hundred egotistical preps arrive at Phillips Exeter Academy. With their proud parents and middle school valedictorian awards, these 14-year-olds think they can take on anything. They walk into their first week of classes with fresh minds and maximum effort. Their books are beautifully annotated. They complete every single assigned math problem and work hard for a perfect set of prep year grades. However, despite their initial efforts, they will likely eventually end up like most Exonians: with not enough time, no sleep, burnt out, lonely, and bad grades only a few months or years later. So, with the inevitable doom, what if flunking prep year is the right thing to do?
Before my opinion accidentally causes kids to actually fail, I need to preface what type of “flunking” I’m supporting. At Exeter, that weighty word is often mindlessly thrown around. Some walk out of class with an A- or 10.5 GPA claiming they “failed,” while others genuinely receive E’s on their tests. For each individual, standards and abilities may vary, but in a general sense and for the sake of my argument, “flunking” is defined as around one to two full letter grades below your very best.
Exonians care too much about their grades. We spend countless sleepless nights crying over our assignments, sacrifice friendships and opportunities, and center our entire lives around a report card and this school. I won’t deny that getting into a nice college with a clean Exeter transcript is crucial, but I’m going to be quite frank: colleges don’t care that much about your freshman grades. Instead, colleges tend to search for an upward trend and focus on your upper-year grades.
At such a rigorous school like Exeter, it is nearly impossible to graduate with all As and no imperfections. So instead, admission officers search for signs of growth and adjustment. They understand that you are going to experience setbacks and hardships, excusing A- ‘s or below that many Exonians hold meltdowns over. In many cases, a hard first year to a successful fourth is chosen over a report card with stunning first to fourth-year grades with the inevitable dips and downward trends. Furthermore, there is no denying that higher courses are harder to succeed at. The US History sequence is much harder to receive all As in than a 200-level course, hence the award received. So, to achieve a truly “college-admissions-worthy” report card, you need to make sure you give yourself an upper-year leeway and don’t peak in prep year.
So, with weighted importance on grades throughout high school in college admissions, flunking prep year not only doesn’t have a tremendous impact but also prepares you better for the year that actually matters: upper year. By then, despite any past performance, everyone will be trying their hardest. So, if upper-year effort isn’t directly affected by freshman grades, then how can you best prepare yourself for that crucial time?
Student A, who got nearly perfect grades freshman year, is in a state of exhaustion and burnout. They lost their motivation. Exeter continuously fed endless opportunities to their hungry freshman determination, but after unsustainably pushing themself too hard, they have reached the end of their stick. Student A can barely keep up with the perpetual cycle of Exeter grinding, and now they also find themselves with no true friends, no sense of happiness, an unhealthy lifestyle, and no life.
On the other side of the spectrum lies Student B. Student B wasn’t very diligent prep year and fell into my category of “flunking.” They didn’t try their best, and their grades reflected it. However, after a few years of learning and adapting, they still found themselves with the same upper-year grades as Student A. Now, they try their hardest and have an impressive story of development, a happy and motivated mindset, wisdom from previous experiences, an appealing upward grade trend, and a strong system of support and friends they made along the way.
When you first arrive at Exeter, everything seems to happen in a split second. Workload, Harkness, new friends, teachers, dorm community, clubs, sports, and all aspects of your life are thrown at you with the expectation of figuring everything out smoothly. However, it’s hard to find calm in the chaos of boarding school and balance on a long list of to-dos. Many don’t find this equilibrium until many terms later, and immediately after arrival, you understand that you need to prioritize. Is school, socializing, sports, or sleep most important? What even is the point of Exeter? Too many Exonians respond with a cookie-cutter answer: “School is the most important, and even though I won’t admit this out loud, I’m attending Exeter to reach the light at the end of the tunnel: a great college.” Consequently, just for a material goal, we all fall into the endless loop of sacrificing happiness for good grades.
On a broad scale of your life, prep year ends up as just a brief blip of time. When you look back, it becomes a time that you wished you cherished more. You realize that you were young and energetic, but you could have been happier. Because when you arrived at Exeter and naively fell into the common trap of focusing too much on grades, you lost your spark, possible friends, and your ability to stand out.
That’s the problem with Exeter: too many of its students reach their best too young and finish burnt out. We all start as young students with bright possible futures ahead of us; that’s why we were admitted. However, with the common eager Exonian mindset and the extreme difficulty of the school, we push ourselves over the edge and waste our potential for a perfect set of grades. So, stop caring too much. Stop letting Exeter beat you down. Stop worrying about your grades, and go enjoy high school.
