Germantown Friends is a well respected Friends School located in Philadelphia. The Campus takes up much of a city block in downtown Germantown, a neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia. The school is supervised by the Germantown Monthly Meeting. Quakerism and a very liberal atittude help define this urban private school. Many of the students come from Northwest Philadelphia ( Germantown , Mt. Airy , Chestnut Hill ) and are from middle class to affluent families. The school also has a Community Scholar Program that helps bring in minorities. This program has successfully helped integrate a school that was not alway diverse before the program. In fact GFS is a school where Quakerism and school ties to the Germantown meeting run deep. Although Quakers make up maybe 5% of the total student body, they and their families tied into the Meeting have a great say in how the school operates. It's also a school where you can find generations of families attending the school. There is quite a deference (openly or not) to those who's families are tied into the School.

GFS is an excellent academic institution. The quality of the education is first rate. It ranks #10 in Philadelphia Magazine's Elite 40 Private schools, highest among it's Quaker Friends School League peers. The school offers strong academics , quality athletics and some strong extracurricular programs. GFS students are known to be workaholics and/or flakes. They also go onto top notch colleges. The school competes across the board in athletics and has won more overall Friends School League Titles than any other school in the League. They have done so while playing some of the more competitive area schools, even when they havent had teams that have measured up to these better teams. GFS's biggest extracurricular program is the school Choir. They perform a Christmas program and annually travel abroad. GFS also has a number of programs that take place annually and are part of the School Exeprience. The school is very liberal, very much a left-leaning idealism based on Quaker values. It makes for a bit of a unique School experience, something that doesnt quite encorporate things you'd find a more traditional H.S. ( like not having Class Validictorians or allowing Juniors to take a month off to do Independent Projects out in the "Real World" then have them come back and report on what they did). GFS isnt one of the older Friends Schools but it is one of the more distinguished in the Philadelphia area and it's very much rooted in Germantown. For more on the school check it out on wikipedia.com. Someone connected to the school must have written the review because it is quite detailed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germantown_Friends_School