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I was at Andover for 11th and 12th grade during the mid-1980's, 10 or 12 years after George W Bush was there.

It was academically challenging enough for me: I was able to take enough AP classes that I cut a year off of college. I had a number of good teachers, some of whom I remember fondly. No teachers that I remember being bad. I remember being frustrated, though, that I knew more about computer programming than the programming teacher. (But this was early in the PC age, and they weren't quite equipped for it yet.)

As a prep school, Andover naturally had an active college counselling program and my counsellor gave me good advice. ("If you don't feel like you fit in here, you should apply to MIT--you'll be right at home". She was right!) Andover was traditionally a feeder school for Yale (and Exeter for Harvard). A number of classmates went off to Ivy League schools, but it was by no means a guaranteed in. Lots of kids went off to respectably preppy state schools like UVA.

Keep in mind that these are schools for the upper class, not schools for the gifted. Andover and Exeter are two of the top prep schools, and they do have high academic standards: I remember my first day at Andover the headmaster saying something about my classmates being in the top 3% of the nation. So that is sort of normal gifted-program level of giftedness. It is not a school of HG or PG kids, but there are, of course, some there.

At 16, I was ready for, and enjoyed the independence of boarding school. But as a socially awkward and nerdy kid, I did not feel that I really fit in among the preppys. I wasn't an outcast, but I wasn't particularly happy, either.

The dorms did all have an adult living in them, and I suppose I could have gone to them for help or emotional support had I needed or wanted it. They must have checked in with me to see how I was doing at some point, but I have no memory of it, so it must have been kind of perfunctory. I would imagine that the 8th and 9th graders would have had more adult supervision.

The hallowed halls and academic prestige were a backdrop but teen life went on as normal, except with fewer adults around. My first roommate in 11th grade was a pothead whose father was someone important on wall street. That didn't work out, so I ended up rooming with someone more straightlaced like me. But then he took to partying with his older brother, and started staying out late drinking.

For 12th grade, I got a single room (no roommate) and that was a better situation for me. I lived directly above the guy who was said to be the coke dealer. Other dormmates included a guy who owned oil wells and had his own holding company and the son of the president of a Hollywood movie studio. He was a nice guy, and let me play with his CD player and Macintosh computer back when those things were brand new expensive high-tech. He seemed to decide I wasn't cool enough near the end of the year--around the time that he started spending the night in his girlfriend's dorm...

Hope this helps!