Apply to some schools for 9th grade, others for 10th?

HailuMu
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:13:19 +0000

As far as repeating the ninth grade, we did see some definite advantages. My daughter is applying as a repeat 9th grader. She made the decision based on a couple reasons, I agreed because of a few others.

Repeating 9th at a boarding school is not like repeating at most other type schools. My daughter is currently in all honors classes and an AP course at her current public school. She wont have to repeat any of her core classes at boarding school, she can pick up right where she left off regardless of what grade she enters. This means an additional year of classes that interest her most (physics, math, sciences) in a high school setting.

She wont miss out on things offered to freshman at many boarding schools, extra time for adjustment, time management support as well as bonding trips with her classmates. She will also be starting with a much larger group of “new” kids.

And for my daughter who is younger for her grade (no skips, just an early start) will graduate later and start college at 18 instead of 17. This was actually one of my reasons. I feel like looking ahead, the extra year can only be a plus for us.

Ive also recently realized through CC a lot of kids are starting even later, particularly international students. Some freshman are 16!

The downside of course is an extra year of tuition, air fare etc…

Its completely personal of course but these were a few of our reasons.

Now we just hope for acceptance letters :)

As far as applying for both, the only issue I see arising is the SSAT since its scored differently for each grade. Maybe you can request results for each. You can also talk to each individual school and see where they feel your son would fit the best.

edited to say that yes, I believe most kids would have a competitive edge as far as SSAT. They would score higher since they would have an additional school year. But, I dont see how they would anywhere else, they are still the same kid. They can improve their own writing, interviews etc but that is a subjective improvement and can only be compared against how well they would have done the previous year.