Hotchkiss has a supportive culture, though I also can’t speak to the "girl culture ".
Yeah when I went there I told my daughter it felt like the hustle and bustle of the city, and she loved it. The girl’s culture is only a problem for her now because she attends an all-girls school.
Crackers, you don’t need to apologize for having to deal with your feelings and issues after a divorce. And you CERTAINLY don’t need to be defensive in explaining your D’s sense of loss after her Dad moved out. Which is sort of my point- your D gets to have her own feelings about her home life, her school life, her social life, the bullying, without someone else’s feelings having to come into the picture. Hence- counseling. Someone who is not her friend, teacher or parents who gets to listen and provide some help navigating challenging situations and feelings.
Drawing is a great hobby and a nice distraction/ release. But it won’t always get the job done. And you misunderstood my point about the lack of privacy at boarding school- it’s not about people walking in on you in the bathroom, it’s about the need to be “on” even when you want to be “off”. There is less alone time, fewer hiding spaces, less unprogrammed time than in her current life. And so that’s the trade-off- a more academic culture, less of some of the other things that have been helping her maintain her equilibrium. Is there bullying/being made fun of at BS? Absolutely. In my observation, the Quaker schools and some of the smaller schools do a better job- not of saying “that’s wrong” or punishing the social Alpha’s who often cause the problems, but in crafting a more respectful environment from the git-go.
You might want to contact some families who have transferred out a school before you put down your deposit. Contrary to popular opinion, the kids are not all drug addicts who were asked to leave…
Ok so I’m going to let my daughter type a post, and maybe she can understand what you guys recommend. Here she is:
Hi, I’m a 15-year-old girl from NJ. I go to an all-girls school right now. I’m a sophomore looking at junior year. My school is not an ideal place currently for me to further my education. I’m looking at Andover, Exeter, Hotchkiss, Kent, Deerfield, Choate, and Cate. I have Asperger’s syndrome, according to my therapist and I’m getting a second opinion. I get mostly As and A-s in school. I got in the 95th percentile for the Junior PSAT as a sophomore and in the 98th percentile for the Freshman PSAT as a freshman. I swim on a club team and have been for 8 years. I sing in a choir and can play 3 instruments at a fairly high level. I’m in my school’s STEM Endorsement which you have to apply for to be accepted. It gives me opportunities to go to a lot of STEM conferences. I’m part of CTY, full advanced eligibility. My teachers really like me and probably gave me really good recommendations. My favorite schools were Andover and Exeter but I liked all of them. I love to do engineering-related activities and designed a prosthetic that worked and allowed people to write when I was 13.
I want to go to boarding school because I like being away from home and the schools I’m applying to have a big focus on independence and are academically rigorous.
All boarding schools foster independence. Most have very rigorous academics.
Some boarding schools work hard to foster a more positive/welcoming culture and community. Others let kids figure it out themselves with little scaffolding. Most are somewhere in between.
Being comfortable socially during a 1-2 day visit is very different from being comfortable being surrounded by peers 24/7 for months at a time – especially peers who have already formed friend groups or cliques.
If the point of this thread is to assess chances, then the answer is YES: You have a shot at admission at these schools.
But I would read through the thread (and other posts on this site) before choosing a boarding school. There are lots of insights here about what different boarding school cultures are like (academically competitive vs. cooperative, status-conscious vs. not, varying attitudes and policies toward alcohol/drugs, etc). It would be wise of you to pay attention to the opinions of those who have more experience with boarding schools.
I suppose, but I chose these schools specifically because I was interested in their STEM and Arts program. STEM is a passion of mine and so is theatre and music. Also, I can’t really change which schools I apply too at this point anyway. I also don’t really care at this point about my social experience, it’s just that my school is not very good and is, unfortunately, looking to be on a track to closing in a couple of years. I just need a boarding school with a good atmosphere and strong faculty.
Oh and if you want to talk to my mom send a message because I won’t look at those but she will. She’s really overprotective so if she’s getting defensive that’s why.
@CrackersCrayons good luck with your admissions results. I am sure you will end up at the right place for you. The right BS will allow you to make deep
connections with faculty and peers. Our kids attended PEA and found all that and more. If you guys have specific questions on PEA - feel free to reach out. It sounds like you are a strong candidate and we have met many quirky highly intellectual kids over our time there that have done extremely well socially and academically. Best of luck!
@vegas1 thank you so much. I hope I get into either of the Phillips Academy’s as they are my favorite.
OP: How well do you handle intense academic pressure ? The answer to this question might help in your school choice.
I handle it pretty well, pressure doesn’t bother me that much. I only have a bit of trouble balancing everything if I have a boxing tournament for a weekend. Otherwise, pressures aren’t too bothersome to me.
My 2 cents - because I find this thread interesting. I don’t mean to be harsh but am also in a rush so the tone may come out harsher than I intend and I apologize in advance.
- I really worry about a kid who wants to go to boarding school and doesn’t care about social interaction, or even care if she doesn’t have any social interaction, as long as she is not being bullied. As a BS alum, former BS teacher, and parent of a current BS student, I think the social interaction is probably the most important part of the BS experience. It’s the people and the relationships you have at BS that really define the experience and that is what really what students take away from their experiences at BS, more than any specific academic experience.
Even if this is what the child wants, as a parent, I would be very concerned about sending a child with this attitude to BS, especially if this was a child on the spectrum. I think that developing personal relationships is much harder for kids on the spectrum in general, but this doesn’t mean it should be accepted as the child’s preference. I think that these are skills that people of the spectrum have a harder time with in general and they need to work harder to develop them, and I would encourage this, whether at BS or at home. But if the child doesn’t feel this is important, then will she work on developing these skills in BS and will she have the support to do so? How kids on the spectrum define a friend may not at all be the same as others. And getting along with kids doesn’t mean they are friends. Just some things to think about.
While I don’t think a diagnosis of being on the spectrum will get an acceptance rescinded, I do think that a lot of what the AOs are looking for at BS is to build a community and a kid who doesn’t care about social relationships is probably not going to be a meaningful part of the community. If the AOs got a sense of this from your daughter in the interviews or the application (essays, recommendations, etc.), this may be a big negative in terms of admissions results.
- My personal feeling as a parent is that high school kids still need guidance. Your daughter is 15, and she may think she knows what she wants, but it doesn’t mean she is necessarily right. One of the things that BS are looking for are kids who are interested in being part of a diverse community, and hearing, considering, and learning from differing perspectives. What I see on this thread is really that you seem to be defending your perspectives instead of considering the other perspectives the other posters, including some very experienced and knowledgeable posters, are offering. This is largely how Harkness works. Even if your daughter is not open to considering the advice of some these parents offering their perspectives, as the parent, you may want to really encourage her to do so.
- One of the other things that BSs really encourage is kids learning to ask for help and to receive help. And all kids at BS, no matter how brilliant and independent, will need some type of help at some point. And again, I am concerned that from what has been written, that this applicant may think she doesn’t need help and won’t need help, and again, this is an attitude that may not mesh with BS.
Have you considered Stanford Online High School at all? Not BS, and I’m not sure what their application deadlines are, but they are extremely academically rigorous, and may be a good option for a kid and parent who do not care much about social interaction. We looked into it briefly for my child, mainly for the academic rigor, but what we perceived to be a lack of social interaction made it a quick no. She may be able to continue many of her current ECs that way and live at home and escape bullying.
I applied for OHS last year and was waitlisted and then accepted but by then it was too late. It’s not so much that I don’t care about relationships but I know how to develop them. I’m actually quite different than most kids on the spectrum and I have a couple friends who are Aspies at boarding school and love it. I already have friends and quite a few of them live in Mass and Connecticut. I ask for help only when I absolutely need it because I like to try things myself before I go to another adult. Otherwise, how am I expected to develop problem solving skills. I don’t like my mom helping with things because she doesn’t really end up helping just confusing me. When I really need help I ask my dad. I generally do like discussion based classes because I like intellectual diversity within my classes. It makes it easier to bounce ideas of people and created a formulated and concise answer. Maybe I phrased my sentence wrong about the social stuff. I do like the community aspect of things and I did tell all of my interviewers that I am looking for a welcoming and accepting community. It’s just not the number one thing on my list, sorry if I confused you. I really care the most about academics first. Me being on the spectrum also doesn’t change who I am or my values.
OP: What are you looking for from this board?
You seem to have a rebuttal for everything.
Not sure what you are hoping to learn from posting here?
I posted here to learn my chances and if I could be denied from boarding school because of ASD
@CaliMex you also like judged my mom about schools that she let me apply to and I don’t think it’s fair to judge me or her based on the schools that I picked.
You sound like a wonderful kid.
Just want to point out that there is a meaningful difference between you wanting a welcoming and accepting community to accept YOU, and wanting to be part of a community so that you personally can be welcoming and accepting to others. And that includes staff, faculty, administrators, etc. As Mairlodi is pointing out gently and tactfully-- it might require a lot more effort on your part to be incorporated into a BS community than it does to be a functioning member of your current HS. And demonstrating that you’ve got the urge and commitment to do that is important.
Nobody wants to be bullied. Big hug to you. But you’re going to need to learn to ask for help and to accept the give and take that comes with living in close proximity to people you don’t know. I would encourage you to think about that before you accept an admissions offer.
I did not go to boarding school (and growing up, I didn’t know anyone who did). But I met dozens of kids who did once I got to college. There was no question that their academic preparation for college was superior to mine. Really off the charts. But the thing that shocked me beyond how rigorous their HS’s had been was their understanding of how to navigate the “grown up” world.
I had spent my HS years avoiding contact with administrators, teachers, etc. They were all fine people and some were extraordinary teachers. But my HS class had over 1,000 students in it, and you didn’t talk to teachers unless you had to. Then I got to college, and one of my roommates from an elite New England prep school would go to office hours for her professors (even when she didn’t need help understanding something!) or show a draft of a paper to a professor before she got too far along on the research, or bounce ideas off the professor before sitting down to even do a draft. I thought it was weird at first- who needs so much hand-holding? And she was so smart to begin with.
By the end of the year I saw how savvy this was. She wasn’t wasting time on endless drafts of a research paper which was going nowhere. She wasn’t getting excited about a topic which ultimately was a loser of a topic. She was developing relationships with the people who were going to recommend her for a grad level seminar as a sophomore, help her get a job editing a professor’s book over the summer, tell her about a fellowship in her field that nobody knew about but that would send her overseas for a semester AND pay her a stipend.
This was what she learned at her BS. That the faculty are there to help, to teach, to mentor, to guide, to inspire. Not to avoid the second class ends. I was treating college like HS- show up, do your work, study hard, expect good grades. She was taking every single opportunity to learn more, build bridges with the incredible teaching and research faculty, have them help her do more than just show up and wait for her grades to get posted.
Give some thought as to whether you want to be in an environment where this kind of connectivity is expected. I have always admired that aspect of the BS experience, not having had it for myself. But I don’t think it’s for everyone, and I don’t think everyone who wants the academic engagement of a BS is prepared to also have to participate in such an active way.
It’s not just about whether you know how to make friends.
I would like a community for myself, all the other answers were from my mom and honestly, that shows you about how much she knows about me. But that doesn’t matter I want supportive teachers because as soon as I developed a relationship with a teacher and I went to them when I needed help, they left the school. It’s really bad because all the good teachers are gone and I don’t feel supported anymore. That’s why I resist asking for help so much at my current school, I used too but after I started receiving pretty terrible advice I kind of had to figure out things on my own or suffer. It’s one of the other reasons I’m looking at boarding schools because I feel that you gain a deeper connection with the faculty. Living in close proximity with strangers is thankfully something I’m not worried about. I go to summer camp every year for over a month and am always put with random people. My first year my roommate and I got really close, so close that we’ve roomed together every year and text daily.
If my posts come off as rebuttals sorry, it’s more like an explanation
So there are two commingled questions in the thread: 1) does a spectrum possibility affect the admissions process 2) What would it mean for suitability of going to the school? We’re all kinda guessing with impartial information on these Chancing Threads but here’s mine:
- I think these schools are used to seeing candidates on the spectrum all the time (Zuck at Exeter perhaps most famously of late) since, as in your case, there is often a high correlation with intelligence. It’s also not hard to read between the lines that if you are on the spectrum it’s mild, or “high functioning.”
While the ship may have sailed, I’d suggest the risk was in the interview process. Sometimes someone on the spectrum can miss social cues. They will not see an interviewer’s question as, really, a conversational jumping off point. They may merely factually answer the questions asked instead, or worse, very factually answer: by exhaustively supporting whatever has been said with everything at their disposal. The AO isn’t fishing to hit any red “ASPERGERS - ABORT!” button, but they could think “Harkness tables aren’t going to work for this person.” Or the sometimes squash-coach sometimes-AO could misinterpret the literal interpretations of the answers one has given as disinterest. Or it’s simply a missed opportunity to showcase yourself in a highly competitive process.
If you nailed the interviews you should be good to go with admission to several of the schools on the list.
To try to give an actionable suggestion on January 24: if you’re disappointed with the outcome is Stanford Online a possibility again? Having already been admitted you might want to have that ready to go as the backup plan for their second round, closing in March three days after these decisions.
- Suitability. These environments whether large or small are highly structured, you’ve demonstrated social success away from home already. There’s nothing to worry about. Schools are only admitting kids they have high confidence will succeed. It will be a major upgrade from your current school.
Good luck, I hope my rambling is useful.
Did you all look at Masters, in Dobbs Ferry, NY?
@HarrietMWelsch , the OP is not open to adding to her list at this point, even with schools that would seem to fit her interests and have not yet closed applications. At this point, what’s done is done, and it’s in the hands off admissions.
Hopefully, she will have the chance to leave her current situation and hopefully, it won’t be a frying pan to fire move.
Closing thread. It has become too confusing when. multiple people are sharing the same account, which is a ToS violation. And I don’t think there is anything left to say.