University-preparatory school

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A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (usually abbreviated to preparatory school, college prep school, or prep school) is a private secondary school designed to prepare a student for higher education. Some schools will also include a junior, or elementary, school. This designation is mainly current in North America.

1 North America
2 Europe
- 2.1 France
- 2.2 United Kingdom
3 External links

[edit] North America

There are three types of preparatory schools in the United States and Canada. Some have facilities in which students reside (known as boarding schools); most are day schools, and some boarding schools also admit students who reside locally, but who seek the benefits of prep schools. Some admit students of only one gender; others are co-educational. Prep schools are highly selective, academically challenging, and largely independent of state and local controls. The existence of such controls, which are a primary defining characteristic of public, government-operated, elementary and secondary schools, have contributed to the support and growth of prep schools, because these controls are widely viewed by preparatory school proponents as an unacceptable burden on the educational process, and on student outcomes such as university matriculation. Parents of students in the top tier of preparatory schools pay fees that are comparable to tuition at Ivy League universities. Among the principal benefits of preparatory schools is a very low student to teacher ratio, resulting in much smaller class sizes than in most public schools. The tuition money allows the schools to hire highly qualified teachers and to retain them for long tenures. These schools often have significant endowments which finance scholarships that allow for demographic heterogeneity and financial aid.

Preparatory schools place a strong emphasis on sports (see the Independent School Leagues or Ivy Preparatory School League). In many private schools students are required to participate in some one of the school's sports teams. University-preparatory education is also often associated with the preppy subculture.

In Canada, preparatory schools blend the American and British traditions. Upper Canada College is often regarded as Canada's foremost university preparatory schools, as the school focuses on all aspects of the "well rounded" man; including rigorous academics and athletic programs. University-preparatory schools also focus on many other opportunites such as elaborate plays and musicals, and many other clubs and leadership opportunites that prepare the younge men for University.

In the United States, prep schools are typified more by an exclusively American tradition. Some notable former prep school attendees include U.S. Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and other prominent figures such as John Kerry, Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy Jr., William Randolph Hearst, and Dan Brown.

Prep schools are, by design, academically oriented. Low student-to-teacher ratios (half to less than half that of public elementary and secondary schools), excellent facilities, and superior faculties contribute to invariably higher university matriculation rates (on the order of 98% or better). Thus, prep schools are, because of their differing mission^{[citation needed]} as compared to public elementary and secondary schools, both academically dissimilar and academically superior^{[citation needed]} in both method and substance to public elementary and secondary schools.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Europe

[edit] France

In France, some high schools offer special postgraduate classes called classes préparatoires, equivalent in level to the first years of university, for students who wish to prepare for the competitive exams for the entrance in the Grandes écoles. French classes préparatoires are exceptionally intensive and selective, taking only the very best students graduating from high schools but generally not charging fees.

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom the concept of the college or university preparatory school has never had currency; schools are classified in other ways instead. However the term preparatory school, more commonly "prep school" is used in a different way to describe schools which prepare students under thirteen for prestigious fee-paying Public Schools.