The Preppification of Catlin Gabel

Recently, Catlin decided to revamp its image, and we hired a marketing company, Crane Marketing, to boost our image. As a result of this, they updated the admission materials, and changed the website to match the new colors. My first reaction upon viewing this website was that it had a frightening resemblance to the stereotypical Prep School website. What mainly bugs me is the addition of the two photos at the top. They just bug me. I recently got to take a look at the new admission booklet. The book is basically what I expected, all of the photos are posed, and the writing is slightly over the top, as in the following quotation:

Watch the students arriving in the morning.

The youngest children follow the trail of bronze honeybees into the Beehive.

First- through fifth-graders swoop past the Paddock and the Fir Grove into their own set of buildings clustered around the Lower School.

Middle School students rush through Schauff Circle to the imaginative, welcoming atrium of the Warren Middle School before arriving at their classroom-lands of Treasure Island, Fenway, and Narnia.

And the oldest students swarm into the Upper School quad, surrounded by the Science Center, Miller Library, Dant House, and all the buildings in between.

This is Catlin Gabel: a village dotted with groups of learners at work and play... [sic] and wonderful litle niches for students to work independently.

The part on the Middle School particularly amused me. That isn't what I remember.

The various quotes sprinkled throughout the felt weird as well, especially the one apparently by a cute Beginning Schooler, “Look where the blue and red touch—it's purple.” It's not that it isn't cute when kids learn, it's that something like knowing colors seems like it could happen anywhere.

I was talking with my Computer Science teacher, who said that it seems weird to me because it was written by non-Catlinites, for non-Catlinites. Still I wonder if it would be possible to write a marketing brochure that would not only impress prospective parents, but would preserve what makes Catlin Catlin.