Chilton assignments

My experience might not matter, since I didn't go to school in the U.S. I did attend an all-girls private high school with uniforms, entrance exams and interviews from 2008-2012. We were the second highest ranked school in the city (capital of the country, so we were a big deal). And among the TOP 5 most expensive, and probably the second most demanding school. Compared to my high school experience, Chilton is like summer camp. Again, totally different circumstances (Asian education system AND it was about a decade after Rory's experience).

Our curriculum was like this :

The school held a science and technology seminar every year. Every freshman and sophomore year student was to participate in these. Groups of people would work on different research projects, publish the research on our own and then present it at the seminar/conference, in front of college recruits and industry leaders. They actually came to our school, and not all of them were parents of students attending the school. We would usually have all year to work on these, since the seminar was usually held in March or April.

Junior year, you had to pick a subject for the Olympiads (for me it was always Math and Computer) to participate in. We would have classes on weekends from 12-6PM, and it was a lot of work. If you didn't want to participate in these exams, then you had to take review classes.

Senior year, you could do whatever, but it was usually all about colleges and standardized Tests.

We also had a lot of those memorizing facts and dates for classes like Literature, History, Chemistry... but since I was more of a math/science girl, I was never one to spend my time studying other subjects. I was too busy studying college level calculus. I honestly wish I had tried more with other subjects, though.

The entire school body was filled with competitive and mostly really wealthy kids. Almost every single one of my closest friends traveled Europe on their own (not backpacking) after high school ended! We had a lot of famous people's, usually government officials, senators, famous actors' kids attend our school. Seeing body guards was no big deal.

The school was extremely strict about the uniform and our appearance in general. Back in 2008, I was just coming out of my emo phase; had dark black hair and wore black eyeliner and lots of black and white. I got in trouble for this a couple of times. Lots of detention for this. Also, I ended up getting suspended for a day because I called one of my teachers an old turtle after she gave me an unfair grade. So they were really strict about these things, and I don't remember Chilton ever being so stern when it came to such things.

I was in the drama club. We put on a few live performances, mostly made up and sometimes for credit. Never had to do plays that were 50% of our grade for an English class. That would have been way too easy. We mostly had to do lots of papers, research, memorizing entire poems/monologues for credit. We didn't have debates like Chilton did, but we did have a lot of free discussion classes especially for religion and history. They almost never ended well.

My school didn't have a paper, which was a shocker. The student body put out articles on the school website, but it wasn't a full on newspaper or anything. Again, I think it's just because it was a different time. We were much more interested in Facebook and other social media than school newspapers. We did get to write articles and post them on the boards around the school, but no one paid attention. Most of my classmates wanted to be Engineers or Doctors, we didn't have that many aspiring writers or journalists.

So Chilton was a lot like my school, but the assignments and the whole vibe just so much Chiller than what I experienced in high school. I transferred from public school in the first month of school as a Freshman, and I receive the same speech. "Failure is not an option." and "We're watching you!" Except, the school I attended was really hard compared to Chilton. But I always just thought that's how most American schools are. It's much more about doing and having fun than having to study study study. I mean, I put in 50 hours a week studying to maintain my 4.0! Rory has time to do so much more! I barely had time to finish all the homework.

I went to a Catholic private school so they made freshmen do a baby project with a toy baby but not a chick(this was for a religion class so the purpose was don't have sex). I just think the writers have no idea what a school like Chilton would have for the curriculum and they probably could've researched or hired an advisor for those moments. Chilton was focused on the most random assignments. The scene with Rory and Paris answering questions was just them blurting out dates that they memorized. Then the whole interpret the Romeo and Juliet scene the way you want didn't seem like an AP English assignment. We spent most of our time answering multiple choice questions for the exam and writing essays.

"When life gives you lemons"
Jessica D: sleep with their fathers and have secret lemon children 

It's going to depend on the type of prep/private school. Any school where the kid lives on campus is going to the main issue as those kids are forced to manage their time on their own in addition to the 24/7 slumber party aspect of living with your new friends. A typical "Magnet", HADES, or charter school might emphasize or specialize in a certain area - ie be more math, science or arts based. A Catholic school is obviously going to have more required theology classes A boarding type school is going to be more like a mix of a traditional public high school kids and a charter school where there is going to be really smart kids, and kids who would be lucky to get into a state college. A typical Chilton type prep school is going to have a college-like set up, like Chilton did on the show, and their entire goal is to make you as well-rounded as possible - which means forcing you into athletics as well. So Rory playing golf is semi-realistic, but they obviously never followed up on that after that one episode. Given the running joke on the show that neither Rory nor Lorelei are keen to physical activity and exercise, there should have been more Rory angst on that matter.

At Chilton, on the few occasions where there was actual student/teacher interaction, largely only in Max's class, what were the questions and discourse? All memorization/fact based exercises, from what I recall and he was an English teacher, right? Sooo... For a school that was purported to be a top prep school in the country, there would certainly be more emphasis on critical thinking, problem solving, and "process" based exercises as opposed to basic memorization. Process is a key word in the classroom at those types of schools.

Also realistic to the show is Rory's purported workload. The workload is rigorous, and it's not uncommon for kids to get 6 hours of sleep per night during weekdays. You're not going to get a lot of busywork because they expect you to know that stuff already and they try to get you to come up with your own studying habits and "process" of learning/absorbing material on your own in addition to your time management. For non-math classes, there aren't a lot of graded exercises off of busywork. The homework is almost always think-based exercises where the teacher is going to pay close attention to, once again, your process. How you arrived at your conclusions and the path that brought you there. There are a lot of papers. Especially in the humanities, English and foreign language classes. The tests, however are also the death of you. As the result of fewer graded busywork exercises, your test grades are going to weigh more heavily on you in the same manner one of those 300 or 400 level college courses that have 3 grades the entire semester often will. You might have a midterm exam, a major research/thesis type paper and a final exam in senior level classes.

Chilton type school kids would on average take twice the amount of humanities, foreign language and computer science based courses as opposed to public schools. Math and science courses probably aren't going to be much different between private and public schools outside of the material that the school's curriculum may be specializing in. Although my experience is that of the 90's so it may be different now. Public schools are going to force the facts and stats down your throat because otherwise how are you going to learn them? The biggest differences are going to be the obvious ones. A lack of diversity at school in general, smaller classes, and more one on one interaction with the teacher. That part is realistic to Chilton, although in their case, it's so they don't have to pay extras. There was no carrying around a baby chick, a doll, an egg, or any of that stuff. I thought that was more of a 7th grade/junior high thing along with dissecting a frog. That's part of why Chilton was written so ridiculously and why I started the "what's the point" thread. Only the basics they show are realistic. Paris and Rory certainly would have had so much more academic competition. That Tristan, Louise or Madeleine would be at a school like Chilton would be unrealistic unless their parents bought their way in, and if that was the case, then Chilton wouldn't be the school it's purported to be.

The thing is, in the manner of which Paris and Rory were written, in regard to their general intelligence, they would probably get the label of being the type of smart kid who is generally smart, but maybe it's partially because they work so hard at it as opposed to someone who is naturally brilliant. An academic-grinder/overachiever if you will. Rory especially often came across as either being incapable of working through things on her own which runs opposite of what a school like Chilton is supposed to instill in them, or she would succeed solely because she applied herself. Not that being an overachiever is a bad thing, but at these type of schools you're going to have kids like the character that Val Kilmer played in Real Genius, ie a seriously gifted smart kid who got by only on his natural intelligence, and then you're going to the have the Rory & Paris type of driven overachievers. There were no truly gifted students shown at Chilton, so that's unrealistic. The writers could have had a greater dynamic between Rory & Paris had they written Paris to be more a naturally brilliant/gifted thinker who could be a bit of a lazyass in her studying habits simply because she was so naturally bright. It's almost stunning to me that they wrote both Paris and Rory so similarly that the rivalry they shared was almost more of sibling rivalry than that of two highly competitive classmates.

I can't provide you with any prep school insight, but my impression was that Chilton and its curriculum wasn't exactly thought through at all. We see in s1 that Rory takes English literature with Mr. Medina, and the big test is about the Elizabethan era.

A year later, she has another Shakespeare class (the one where they do the Romeo and Juliet play). The writers wanted to do this, and it makes no sense to me why Rory would be "stuck" in the same period for a year.

So whatever seems odd to you, is probably odd because the writers didn't care.

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