Chance my son: repeat junior at a boarding school

KatieBeth1
Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:43:55 +0000

Hello, my son is a high school junior at a private school in NJ. It’s a good school but a tier below the top ranked ones (eg Lawrenceville, Pingry, etc) He has generally been happy at the school for the first two years but his brother is currently a PG athlete at a high academic boarding school (and his father was a boarder at one of the HADES schools) which has increased my son’s interest in going away himself. In many ways, we think he would thrive in a boarding school environment— he is friendly, mature, funny and independent and would likely develop strong relationships with teachers and other kids if together 24/7 (he’s especially interested to be surrounded by kids from many different countries/cultures).

But the problem is that he has ADHD, which has negatively impacted his grades (nothing terrible but mostly Bs and some As in subjects that interest him more such as history and English. He also has no APs since he fell a bit short to qualify at his school but he takes several honors level classes, instead), and he recently took the PSAT for the first time and scored poorly (around 1000) without any prep.

So the question is whether he could get into his brother’s school (which we all love) as a repeat junior next year even though it accepts fewer than 25% of applicants and it requires applicants to submit their test scores. Unfortunately, he is not an athlete like his brother, but he is very involved in tech theatre and the debate club at his school, he is entrepreneurial (has his own eBay business where he does quite well — makes much more than at his lifeguarding job ;), and we think his teachers would give him strong recommendations because he is an engaging, happy kid who works hard (when interested in the subject — again, the ADHD can be a problem but he has scored very highly on cognitive tests). We also would be full pay, which I believe helps.

Please share thoughts/experiences about applying as a repeat junior. Is it even possible at a strong school when not an athlete and the academics/testing are also a bit low? In other words, how much might sibling preference, full pay, relatively strong extracurriculars and teacher recs, good interview and personal essays, etc help? He has an interview at the school coming up soon and we are trying to decide whether it’s even worth the time and effort if his grades and test score (we realize he could prep now and retake but not sure with his test anxiety that it will improve much) will make admittance near impossible. Thank you for any thoughts!