Thank you all for the amazing answers I have received so far!!
You can’t generalize like that. Our DS got into Loomis and is not strong in sports. It depends on what you particularly offer. Holistic as I said
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Okayy, my bad 
Thanks for the clarification!
Adding my two cents here as another parent whose child went through the process last year. She researched about 30-35 schools, visited about 13, and ended up applying to 6. Those 6 were the best-fit schools for her. She really thought about what she wanted in her high school experience and what was important to her in terms of academics, social life, support, overall experience, etc. Then she actively researched with those things in mind. At the end of her research, she only had one GLADCHEMMS school left on her list. At the end of her visits, they were all gone! They just weren’t the right fit for what she wanted.
I think she was so successful in her admissions last year (she was accepted to all six schools) was because it was clear she had done her research and had things at each school that pointed to what she really wanted. The fit for her was clear to the schools in their review process.
I will say, she had to do four of her interviews virtually and it was so hard for her to establish a connection. She did much better with her in-person interviews. I say this to ease your fears over a bad interview perhaps “ruining” your chances at admission. One of her interviews was 20 minutes long and she literally said she had no questions when asked at the end. 
That’s like the one rule of interviews - you always have questions prepared (and she did - this was her last interview and she had done well in all the others). The interviewer also asked if she had anything else she wanted to share . . . she said no. She hadn’t covered any of her extracurricular interests or achievements at all. She just completely forgot all the prep she had done! And, she was admitted to that school even though she barely showed interest in the interview. So, it’s not the end if you make a mistake.
Something that the admissions people at a lot of the schools spoke about was our daughter’s kindness/character that was clear from her activities and her recommendations. I think that probably helped a lot. Her current dorm parent has also called that out on her report cards each term.
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Ditto. Our son’s Loomis interviewer was totally not interested (also a coach). Our son is a very strong lax player, drummer and student. Once we mentioned the others schools he was interested in (SPS, Deerfield, Hotchkiss), the interviewer just stopped paying attention… literally was looking out the window and checking his phone. We walked out and all said… NO WAY! My son is happy at SPS!
Sounds like he got Coach Moore. That guy stayed at Loomis long enough to upgrade the football team, but then went off to be an assistant coach at UMass. He’s at Tabor now.
Oh I heard about him when we went to tour Tabor. No, we actually go an AO that graduated from Tabor. He was an admission fellow. You would think they would look at the applicants profile before matching them with a AO 
You would think, but in reality, they are trying to get everyone an interview and balance the workload in admissions, so sometimes, they’re just matching time slots, not interests and personalities.
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Huge thanks to everyone who replied!
We had an amazing interview, had the hand-written follow-up note from the head of admissions talking about how amazing DS was, and got rejected. So weird.
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Omygosh thank you so much! This thread answered so many questions as I was FREAKING OUT over how I was starting applications really late compared to most everyone I saw. This is the first time anyone in my community really has even tried applying to boarding school. I didn’t know if a lot of people had better chances because they finished applications earlier in the season. Best of luck to everyone though! Also, does anyone have tips for conversation in Admissions Interviews? Im in the process of getting one set up and I don’t really know if its mainly questions or how it works.
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