Applications, fees, and recommendation forms.

URMtop5
Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:07:39 +0000

We’ve made a spreadsheet with a list of boarding schools and want to make sure we have all this correct. My child will be interviewing in January. My first question is, it appears it is necessary to fill out the applications and PAY the application fee NOW for each school she wants to apply to, correct? We were kind of thinking it would be great to tour and interview all the schools (write essays for the ones she is fairly certain she thinks will be a “fit” before visiting and putting off the essays and paying for a handful of them until “After” the interviews in January. It appears that is not an option, correct?

Next, I want to make sure I have this correct regarding applications. Some will take Gateway Applications, some will take SSAT’s SAO application, and some require their own applications. What this means is if a child is applying to schools on both the Gateway and SSAT list as well as some that require their own applications, my child will need to give her current English and Math teacher a good 5-6 reccomendation forms to fill out etc, correct? I do recognize that many schools have supplements on top of the Gateway or SSAT’s application.

My main questions in this email are to confirm that 1) Yes, we need to go ahead and pay the application fee in order to trigger the recommendation forms from Gateway, SSAT, etc, 2) Yes, there will need to give English and Math (and some other teachers, coaches, arts, etc) the recommendation from from Gateway, SSAT, and each school she is going to apply to that has their own forms.

I have the list below…

Gateway Forms ok- Hotchkiss, St. Paul’s School, Andover, and Deerfield
SSAT Forms ok- Loomis, Taft School, and Middlesex
Require their own forms- Choate, Exeter, and Milton

Thus if she decides she wants to apply to all of the above, her English and Math teachers will need to fill out 5 different recommendation forms (not to mention the other teachers that will need to fill out forms as well). Not sure how well this is going to go over. Plus, I assume we do need to pay the fee to each one of these schools NOW, correct? Ie. We can’t simply wait until after interviews and tours to narrow it down, correct?

Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks