25 Great Reasons To Attend Choate

Just the right size. We are a boarding and day school of approximately 850 students and 122 teaching faculty. The average class size is 12. Our student /faculty ratio is 6:1.

A rich curriculum. We offer 240 courses with honors sections; we have advanced placement in 26 areas.

Talented faculty. More than two-thirds of our faculty hold advanced degrees; 90 percent live on campus. Faculty get to know you not just in the classroom but on the playing fields and through the many club activities they advise.

Centers of learning. Our 458-acre campus has separate centers of learning for the humanities, sciences, languages, mathematics, the arts and the environment.

Opportunities to get involved. Our students care. Each term, more than one-third of our students do community service from Big Brothers/Big Sisters to Adaptive Swim Program to tutoring in local elementary schools.

See the world. Approximately one-third of our students study abroad in France, Spain, Italy, or China at some time during their years at Choate.

Become fluent in a language. Choate offers instruction in 7 foreign languages with in-depth study in: Arabic, Chinese, French, Latin, and Spanish. We offer courses in Intensive Beginning Greek and Italian. Steele Hall, our languages building, has a 32-station digital language laboratory featuring the Virtuoso System by Sony. Last spring we had 17 medalists in the annual COLT Foreign Language Poetry Recitation Contest.

The Right Stuff. A traditional powerhouse, Choate’s Fed Challenge economics team has won the New England District Championship in 11 of the past 12 years. In 2009, Choate’s team won the national title. We also have a State and New England Championship Math Team and an award-winning Robotics Team that captured First Place in the 2011 VEX FUTURE Foundation Design Challenge.

Shining Stars. The Class of 2011 had 8 students advance as Finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Competition. Two students were named Semifinalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search Competition and one advanced to the finalist round. And in 2011, Choate had a Presidential Scholar and a Gates Millennium Scholar. Annually, more than 80 percent of students score a 4 or 5 on the college-level Advance Placement Examinations

Finding the perfect match. We have five full-time college counselors who work with our students to help shape the best possible college match. The most popular colleges from 2007-2011: Georgetown, 48; New York University, 36; Yale, 36; Boston University, Columbia University, Wesleyan, 29; George Washington University, 28; Boston College, 27; Cornell, Princeton, Trinity College, UPenn, 23; Tufts, 21; Brown, Dartmouth, 20.

Capstone program. Finish your Choate career with a Capstone project. Seniors may create an individualized program, which typically includes two related courses in both the fall and winter terms and an independent project (the “capstone”) in the spring term. Some recent capstones include international economics, historical trends in American foreign policy, China/U.S. Relations and creative writing.

State-of-the-art Fitness Center. The Johnson Athletic Center has been renovated and expanded to include a fully-equipped fitness center, an aerobics/dance studio, athletic training and rehabilitation facilities, additional international squash courts, and more.

Try a new sport. Including football, soccer, and ice hockey, we offer 80 interscholastic teams and opportunities to play at every level. Most have varsity, JV, and thirds teams; sports choices include crew (rowing), lacrosse, squash, archery, water polo, and more.

Golden Opportunities. Bob McVey ’54 was the School’s first Olympic medalist as a member of the 1960 U.S. Hockey Team which brought home the United States' first Olympic Hockey Gold Medal. Since then four more female graduates have played Olympic Hockey. Four-time Olympian Angela Ruggiero ’98, three-time Olympian Julie Chu ’01 and Olympians Kim Insalaco ’99 and Hilary Knight ’07. Ruggiero brought home the Gold Medal from the 1998 Nagano Olympics while she was still a Choate senior.

A Green Learning Environment. The Kohler Environmental Center, to be completed in the summer of 2012 and in operation for the 2012-13 academic year, is a one-of-a kind residential facility dedicated to interdisciplinary environmental study and research. Study at the academic center will provide the opportunity for students to pursue environmental science in preparation for further study at the post–secondary level.

Good food and conversation. Hill House Dining Hall with its round oak tables is more than a place to eat our great food; it’s where students and faculty gather to discuss the day’s events and life in general.

Learn about journalism. Besides The News (published continuously since 1907), we have weekly student publications ranging from The Press, a twice-weekly summary of team results, to Horizons, an academic review of student essays. Our graduates have gone on to write for: The Yale Daily News, the nation’s oldest college daily, and professionally for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker.

Highbrow, lowbrow. We have a 96-year-old literary magazine called, what else, The Lit. But if DJ-ing is more your thing, our FCC-licensed, student-operated radio station, WWEB, has been on the air since 1969.

Bruce Springsteen sang at the PMAC. Our I.M. Pei-designed Paul Mellon Arts Center has an 850-seat theater with proscenium stage, an experimental theater, a recital hall, music practice and production studios, art studios and art gallery, and dance and film studios. You can study digital video, playwriting, directing, and technical theater as well as acting.

If music’s your thing . . . We have a Festival Chorus, Gospel Choir, male and female a cappella groups, ensembles, chamber chorus and chamber orchestra, and jazz band. You’ll find them all among our many arts extracurriculars. Just in the past two years, our chorus and orchestra have toured throughout Europe and the chamber orchestra performed at a Christmas celebration at The White House.

Students Help Students. The Student Council, Judicial Committee, Peer Educators, and Prefects are opportunities for student government and leadership. We even have a club called Students Helping Students, which raises money for financial aid.

Speaking of which, the School awarded more than $10 million in need-based financial aid for 2011-12. About 34 percent of our students receive financial assistance.

Great location. We are located in Wallingford, Connecticut, just two hours from Boston and New York. New Haven, only 12 miles away, is a major stop for AMTRAK (including the high-speed Acela train) on the New York- Washington, DC-Boston run. A major airport is just 45 minutes away. New Haven and Hartford also offer concerts, theaters, museums, and restaurants.

Feel at home. Our students come from 39 states and 46 countries; 31% identify themselves as students of color. Our student body represents the great religious traditions of the world. Our Campus Ministry includes Protestant, Jewish and Catholic chaplains as well as student worship groups, Buddhist Meditation, Christian Fellowship, and Hillel.

Deerfield Day. The Wild Boars get to strut their stuff against rival Deerfield Academy. It is one of our great traditions. We have many more!

Hear from some of our students on why they decided to choose Choate.