Our son’s public school pulled out all the stops trying to keep him; retention is an important metric as they lose money when they lose students. For him, though, there was nothing they could do to convince him to stay. We would have loved to have kept him home, but there was no comparison between what the very best of our local schools could offer and what the boarding schools offered. If the programs had been even remotely close, BS would have never come up. College placement didn’t figure into our reasoning as we believe that when the HS education is strong, college takes care of itself and, as @skieurope always wisely points out, “Colleges admit students, not high schools.”
Congrats to you on keeping your daughter with you for at least another year.
Good idea. I’ll get that started. It’s been a bit frustrating, I personally felt that we had a great pick/fit but I want the decision to be joint vs me “sending” her to my pick of school.
I went to boarding schools myself and have friends who felt “sent away” to school and have seen first hand the adjustment and familial issues that arise from that. I’m hopeful we can avoid that while finding her a school we are all happy with.
Ours is private and has waiting lists and a lower admission rate (about 15%) so I didn’t expect anyone would notice our exit.
My conclusion is that my daughter wasn’t as sure as we were about her options. Once the dust has settled I hope we’ll have a honest conversation about it. She seems focused on certain schools this go round and I think she understands that sophomore year will likely be her last opportunity to make a move.
I guess by that I mean, Exeter, Andover, Choate, Groton, Lawrenceville et al. There’s usually a culture of zero-sum competition typically present at these types of schools that I’m hoping to avoid. I know Loomis is up there but I personally don’t think it is at the very top academically. Maybe I should? I’m open to anecdotes that might help me get a real picture there - but when we did a deep dive into its stats academically it was identical acheivement-wise to the school we are in now, with ours beating them stats-wise in some years. Culture wise it was pretty similar with an emphasis on balance. So by tippy top I guess maybe I mean “Higher pressure academically than where we are now”.
That said I still think Loomis has pretty distinct advantages when it comes to athletics, college counselling and the breadth of their academic offerings that our school cannot match currently. I don’t know much about St. Pauls yet. My daughter got that reccommendation from a friend from school that will be going there next year as a sophomore. If turns out to be an academic pressure cooker as well, it too will be off her list.
I’m looking for a school that will provide the best environment for my specific child so I’m not making decisions based on a school’s reputation alone. Athletics, especially strong programs in her chosen sports matter, location and proximity to airports matter, academics matter especially when considering the school’s approach to facilitating well rounded kids that are well prepared for college level work, extra curricular opportunities matter, and financial aid matters. Being the top most selective school does not matter. That means I am willing to look at schools that some may deem “above” or “below” certain criteria. Some of our choices may be top selective ones some may not. In the end, the choice has to make sense for us in all those ways.
Just a side-note on comparing stats: some day school populations are more invested in test scores than are BS communities.
For example, at a day school near me, almost every student had a test tutor, with some of them starting to prep the summer after freshman year. Parents pretty much convinced each other that this was what one did, and they exchanged (or guarded) the names of the best tutors.
Down the road, at the local BS, a few parents asked if the school could offer a test prep class on the weekends, which they did, and fewer than 10% of the kids signed up. It just wasn’t a “thing” at that school. No doubt a few kids did more test prep, but not to the extent of the school down the road.
Every school will have its own culture around this. This is simply to say that lower standardized test scores may reflect more about that culture than the abilityvof the students or rigor of curriculum.
That aside, I think you’re on the right track in finding the right level of “amped-up-ness” for your D. Some kids find a very competitive environment exciting and motivating while others find it anxiety-producing or demoralizing. These are really important years in any child’s development and they shouldn’t (nor needn’t) be the latter.
I agree, and would add that a school’s average SAT score is probably a very unreliable indicator of whether a school is or isn’t a pressure cooker.
If you were comparing two very similar schools in terms of size, location, family background, domestic/int’l mix, etc., then that would be a different story.
But comparing the average SAT scores of a day school to those of a boarding school without controlling for any of the other variables feels meaningless to me unless you’re talking about differences of perhaps 100 points or more.
Even then, you’re choosing a school for your child’s individual experience, not the experience of the average student.
I think you need to research these schools and their cultures in much greater depth before deciding which to in/exclude.
As a parent with two outstanding students at one of the highly competitive/academic schools that OP mentioned, I would not have expected them to have a fundamentally different or less competitive experience at Loomis or St Paul’s.
There are competitive students at every school that’s worth applying to, and those kids are going to compete vigorously for the best grades, awards and college placements at those schools. Lower average SAT scores are more likely an indication of the quality of students that schools bring in to round out the class than they are an indication of the target students for that school.
I agree with you and @gardenstategal about the school stats which is why I warned my daughter about focusing on that. As I mentioned, Loomis is the most similar school to her own culture-wise and that’s right down to the school’s stated mission and its approach to education in general. When it comes to athletics and options in the curriculum, it is superior. Size wise, Loomis and most of the schools on this list have more students as well.
Our school is in an area where private high schools are like you describe. Hyper competitive and very focused on stats and college placements. Our school is one of the top three and is the only co-ed option of those. Ergo, very selective and ends up with a critical mass of a certain type of family. Most kids, including my daughter have tutors starting in middle school and it’s all they can do to keep up with the workload in addition to their extra curricular activities which pretty much every child has at least one or two of in addition to whatever volunteer or elective commitments they have from school.
It is very normal for the average middle schooler’s day to start at 7am and end at about 9pm and for the average high schooler’s day to end much, much later. High school students that have sports/extracurriculars must have a very high tolerance for stress and solid time management or they will fail. Practices and games often end after 10pm on weeknights. Failure in academics typically means being off the team which, given the time commitment can be socially disastrous because most kids form their friend groups around their activities. Getting cut from a team/club can very well mean losing your friend group.I have found this culture to be present in our high performing public schools as well (these tend to be in similar neighborhoods with the same type of families as the privates). The school offers SAT prep starting in the spring semester of the sophomore year but most kids have started private SAT prep by the summer of Freshman year.
Our school has tried to clamp down on some of this by first eliminating then limiting AP Exams and offering a very tight curriculum that does not recognize or give credit to outside courses. They don’t rank students and only disclose the middle 50% ranges of SAT scores. They frequently hold seminars for parents and kids alike on balance and the importance of Students’ mental health… but I’m not sure it makes a difference. Because in the end they love to tout their selectivity, college placements and graduation rates, and the parents, who have made a significant investment in their kids’ educations want to see results-which for most of them means selective college placement, and colleges, including our state flagship are becoming more selective every year.
I’d like to move my child away from that to the extent possible without endangering her chances at good college/career options. I want to avoid more of that culture because while our school is relatively collaborative and friendly about its competition, I have witnessed several drawbacks some with tragic results. I can only imagine the boarding school version of that being worse especially if the school actively touts/encourages the behaviors that lead to it.
Can my child handle the pressure? So far yes. Should she? I say no, and I’d prefer it if her next four years were appropriately challenging without wreaking mental havoc on what is still a developing brain. There’s plenty of time in adulthood for rat races.
This sounds like a really grim way to spend 4 years of one’s life, and it makes sense that you are looking for alternatives. This is not something I would have wanted for my child. In my experience, this is generally parent-fed (but often agreeably consumed by the students), so it is very tough to resist if you live in that world.
I don’t think any BS that is a good fit could compromise your child’s college admissions success although it is possible that the hyper-competitive parents in your current school have drunk a different Kool Aid and wouldargue that!
Would you consider Hotchkiss or Taft? Hotchkiss has a strong swim program and is also closer to NYC/Hartford. Taft has strong crew team and is similarly located. (I can’t speak to their field hockey programs.)
If you are excluding schools that are far from airports and that have top academics, then I’m surprised that both DA and SPS are on your list. Both schools are relatively rural and far from major airports (Boston and Hartford); they also have competitive student bodies. It sounds like you and DD have given this some thought, so I’d stick to your priorities and don’t waste time with schools that borderline meet your criteria.
At our school (and other area schools) it is definitely parent fed and the administration has tried to put up a fight but in the last few years seems to be losing (AP exams are back for instance). My daughter has an attachment to the school and doesn’t know any other type of environment. But I do think it’s detrimental especially since after all that, admission to top schools is still nowhere near guaranteed and many people, and dare I say most people with huge accomplishments in life have never set foot in an Ivy or the like and some that have (her advisor for instance, a princeton grad) choose very normal paths through life. I like to say “Einstein didn’t go to Harvard”, to bring my daughters and her friends back to earth when they, as eighth graders, start stressing about their future college prospects.
I’m trying to keep an open mind. The logistics of getting to and from school are a priority because she will travel unaccompanied a good amount of the time. If getting a ride to the airport requires hours and an act of congress then it may not be a good fit for us. Mercersburg is back for the strong swim program and because on paper it seems like an environment I’d like for her. A visit this summer will confim or reject that assumption. Deerfield is probably off the list this time. SPS is so new to us we are still gathering information (so far, not great, sounds like the type of culture we are trying to get away from). We are considering Taft but not Hotchkiss which has too low of an acceptance rate for our threshold. No school is strongly on or off at this juncture but we have a set criteria and are favoring schools that meet that as much as possible. We do plan to stick to a shorter list this time that we’ll engage with more. In the end, any school we apply to, will have to have logistics we can live (and not struggle) with.
So like others your list is a bit confusing to me. All the top schools are going to have tough academics. Not sure what you are defining as cut throat? While lville is challenging even for the brightest students, the kids are supportive. Academics and placement are competitive, but not directly in that the students do not boast grades or placements. They help each other study and learn together at the harkness table. All the top schools are going to have competitively bright students. Agree that environment is not best for every student however your list is off if this is a criteria.
Travel is a different beast. The concern is less about the kids traveling on their own as they will learn how to do it sooner than you think and for some part of the trip they might find ppl to coordinate with. The bigger issue is long weekends that are anything but long. It is harder for students that live far away to go home for 3 or 4 days. Sometimes parents travel to them, they meet in the middle or your child is welcomed into the home of other students that live closer. Travel is a real consideration but students come from all over the world and make it work. Of course every family has different needs. Really find the school that feels like home when you are there ( or at least at revisit day after the application nerves are gone). You and your child need to feel like they are going to thrive there. And even when it is hard or there are bad days, will they still be happy they decided to go there. Cast a wide net. It is too hard to rank schools at this point. I recommend making a criteria list of why you are chosing to go to boarding school and what you hope to get out of the experience. Revisit the list often to ground yourselves.
Logistics are a concern. That said I’m not eliminating schools based on that at this juncture. I’m aware of the schools on our list that have less than ideal locations. The pros will have to carry weight for those schools.
Challenge isnt the issue. Many would describe our current school as challenging. It can be, but a lot of that is driven by home. For BS I’m very interested in the schools’ approach to challenge because the parent influence is muted. Balance is key for me. A school can create a challenging supportive environment or it can foster a challenging toxic environment. In either scenario the kids can be high achievers. I’m not interested in the latter. If all the highly touted schools end up being these kinds of places, we are okay with not applying to any of them. That said I have not found that to be the case for all of them.
For us sports are also an important consideration so some schools will make it on our list for that reason. The 26’-27’ list is not final and we are still adding and removing but I’m confident that in the end we will have found a diverse group of best fit schools for us and we will focus our energy on putting our best foot forward with those.
Our reasons are very clear to us what is also clear however is that there isn’t one school that matches all our criteria. Its currently a game of creating a list with the information we have now, and a plan for a busy summer and fall of school visits. By the end of that period it should (we hope it would) be very clear to us where we would like to direct our energies.
No boarding school cultivates a competitive, toxic environment. Some schools are more intense, and fast paced, but they are not toxic. What is toxic is dropping the wrong kid into that fast-paced, intense environment. Schools try hard not to admit those kids that are wrong for that type of environment but they don’t always get it right.
The schools themselves are not cut throat, full of kids competing with each other. What is toxic for one kid allows another kid to blossom and flourish.
I strongly agree with Cinnamon. Schools don’t foster toxic environments, but not all kids will flourish in different academic environments.
Sounds like you’ve already got a good list (Loomis, Mercersburg, Kent, DA, SPS). Would you consider adding Peddie? It’s consistently in the top three of MAPL in swimming, finishing second in 2022, 2023, and 2024 and also close to NYC airports?
Let us know what you find out about DA and SPS and whether you think that they have the less competitive academic vibe you’re seeking. Finally, if your daughter is up for the challenging academic cultures of DA and SPS, then I would also consider re-adding Hotchkiss to the list (which you dropped due to competition) as it’s much closer to major airports and has a great swim team!
I’m going to push back a bit on toxicity. No school sets out to be toxic, for sure! But there are practices and policies that almost guarantee it’ll be toxic for some. Many have done away with practices like having class rank or special honor societies. Hierarchical structures can be toxic to those at the bottom, and let’s face it – nobody applying to these schools sees themselves there!
Some may do more to dispel that certain college acceptances are more valuable than others. Many of the schools that welcome a wider range of learners and interests give students more room to shine in their own ways and lift some of the pressures that can be toxic.
Technically, yes, it’s a bad fit that makes a school toxic to a particular student – and that can happen anywhere. But just as often, a practice, policy, or ethos at a school is what makes the fit bad. So yes, OP has to be sensitive to what that is for her kid.
Yes AND not everyone knows what to look for or considers how a system might be damaging to them.
Some policies are more likely to encourage competitive vs cooperative behavior. In corporate culture, for example, a company may celebrate employees who achieve things for the company even if they break the rules. That, btw, was Enron. That was cultural.
A school that routinely singles out top students for their accomplishments can create a culture where kids will step over each other for that recognition. Or feel demoralized because they are #2 in 3 arenas but not #1 in any.
I feel like the increased attention to teen mental health has caused many schools to reexamine and often step away from the practices that can cause this kind of “harm”.
