Is it worth it???

GnarWhail
Wed, 11 Nov 2015 06:01:32 +0000

The worth in a proper elite boarding school experience and education does not come from a college admission.

The hard truth which most families not intimately involved in the workaday world of expensive private secondary education do not understand about prep schools: your kid’s only gettin’ into Harvard from Hotchkiss if he or she was gettin’ into Harvard from any other high school. Maybe 1 or 2 times in a thousand kids is the particular elite prep school the thing that gets you into Princeton when that kid would not otherwise have been admitted.

(And there’s always the belief from some folks that competition from soooo many jacked-in legacy type kids at Exeter kept their mundane Exeter graduate outa Yale…)

Beyond that, for the right kids, the experience of an elite boarding school is beyond amazing. The opportunities in the classroom and in athletics and beyond are unique in all the world for kids that age. Work hard, play hard, and learn in ways most other kids could not even imagine.

After all that, the elite boarding schools are pros at finding fantastic colleges for their kids, with relationships and influence with some colleges that many families may not have considered. Or not even heard of. St. Paul’s knows they ain’t sending every qualified kid to the Big 3 or Little 3, but they will help get you into a fantastic college for premed or engineering or international relations or whatever. That’s what they do. There’s the “worth it” for many families.