Is this a new trend?

Prep School Admissions Prep School Parents
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<p>I don’t know how to do the quotes here but this was interesting from Italianboarder:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/881695-my-tid-bit-bs-acceptance.html#post9894686[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/881695-my-tid-bit-bs-acceptance.html#post9894686&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>My tid bit on BS Acceptance
Feel free to skip to the last three paragraphs if you don’t want my life’s narrative.</p>

<p>Last year I was accepted to Andover, Hotchkiss, Choate and Kent. I had applied as a “true” student and not a repeat, but during my interviews the coaches at HK, Andover, Exeter all wanted me to think about being a repeat. I was able to apply to HK as both a repeat and true student(BASICALLY I was notified that there was room in the class of 2012 for me when my letters came). Kent was originally my second to last choice, but the way that FA worked out Kent would be almost 10 grand cheaper with the possibility of an addition 10 grand of scholarship money floating my way if I got the grades. I was accepted to HK as a repeat, and the coach at Choate wanted the same… I could go to Andover as a 2011 graduate, but it didn’t happen.
Andover was my dream school, and my amazing visit only hurt me even more when I couldn’t attend. Going to Kent was cheaper and I have a little brother that is applying for the class of 2014 to think about. </p>

<p>I was still bitter about my situation until November(Last year). I hated the fact that I had done so much to get in and was held back by the almighty FA distribution that seems to be more like a lottery than a formula… I also had this idea that I would become 2nd rate, and if I had gone to Andover I would somehow continue to be perceived as a 1st rate person. </p>

<p>This didn’t change until I met people that were in my situation. I met another junior in my dorm that had the same situation his freshman year, and chose Kent b/c of FA(Instead of Lawrence). Again, I met three people who opted out of Exeter after their soph years because they just weren’t happy. I almost expected them to be Gods of knowledge(This board gave me good reason to believe that also…). Granted Exeter was harder, but all of them agreed that their workloads at Kent were at least 90% as challenging if not as challenging. The main difference was the environment for them. Kent was much more focused on learning instead of competition and constantly raising the bar. </p>

<p>I’m on the math team at Kent and I really expected to be a top scorer considering I picked little old Kent instead of Andover. I almost got moved to the B team my fall term. As a team, we have captured our divisions title. We were ranked higher than Hotchkiss, Taft, Loomis and Choate. When we went to Harvard we earned 3rd and 5th as a team, which surprised the hell out of me. </p>

<p>Andover would be my road to Wharton or Babson or Tufts or wherever. I thought Kent would kill my chances anywhere… I can happily say that my grades and scores at Kent put me on par with Columbia, Tufts, Colgate, Babson, Dartmouth, U Chicago, Cornell and a bunch of other great schools(My grades fluctuate, so this is from my current average plus how much I think they have moved up)… I thought my value as a student would go down if I went to Kent… Kent even pushed me to apply to college early, and I have my own acceptance letter right here with a 10,000 scholarship offer if I skip my senior year(it is to USC and I am not going to leave Kent). My grades at Kent would be a bit lower at Andover, and maybe I would not be able to get into such good places with only average Andover grades. My Kent grades are in the top 25%, but my SOS is ranked in the top 10 in my class(Out of 150ish). Kent wasn’t the death of me, but a test of if I would find the motivation to still push myself even in the face of my misguided ideas.</p>

<p>You can still go to a good school. You are still you. Going to Andover won’t turn a smart kid into a genius. Going to Kent won’t cause a Harvard caliber student to have to pick community college. </p>

<p>Now, I don’t know if I would necessarily pick Andover over Kent… I wish I saw the value in Kent from the beginning as well. You’ll find smart kids everywhere, and the “big tier gap” really doesn’t even exist. My time here has been amazing and the opportunities I have had are too good.(I went abroad for the very first time for free with Kent, I’m working with the schools financial consultants to learn accounting+finance and I am getting an internship with Kent’s recommendation). Kent has given me the reigns to expand to my heart’s content, but with the prerogative to choose how hard I want to push it and where I want to delve into.
Wherever you find yourself, BE HAPPY and don’t view it as the end of the world. You are still you, and you have no idea where that road will lead.</p>

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<p>Quite a lot of wisdom already posted above, but I’d just like to mention that there’s a highly personal element to which kids will succeed at which schools. Different degrees of advisory oversight and structure are just part of it. Another is how a child fits in intellectually as part of a school’s spectrum of students. Just as in sports, some students need to be around kids who help set the pace in order for them to perform optimally. For these kids, being in a highly competitive environment provides a huge benefit that cannot be obtained if that child is the biggest fish in a smaller pond. Other kids, can perform close to their capabilities at any school with sufficient resources (teachers, curriculum, facilities).</p>

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<p>@mhmm
Seriously get a life and stop calling a kid out when your an adult for gods sakes. Grow up</p>

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<p>SPSSPS, you are behaving in a juvenile fashion, which is age appropriate for a middle schooler. On the other hand, if you’re going to insult someone on the parents’ forum, take care to punctuate.</p>

<p>Given a choice between SPS and NMH, St. Paul’s is the easy answer. If you choose NMH, be prepared to defend that choice to those who know the history of both schools.<br>
Northfield Mount Hermon has made radical changes in the last decade. It once had two campuses, and now has one. It has decreased the size of the student body.</p>

<p>NMH is not yet an elite school. It may be the right school for you. Attend revisits at both schools, and make an informed decision. </p>

<p>Do not follow posters across forums to berate and insult them. That action in itself makes one doubt your maturity.</p>

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<p>@Periwinkle</p>

<p>ROFLOL-I am still in stitches at your first paragraph!!!</p>

<p>Flowers</p>

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<p>kentschoolie - Wonderful post! Thanks for sharing that with us!</p>

<p>I am now wondering, though, if we couldn’t please bring this thread back to its original focus: anticipated trends in boarding school applications and admissions. It’s an important conversation, and one that I don’t recall seeing in this forum previously.</p>

<p>The debate over HADES vs. non-HADES is always interesting, but it’s nothing new, and I hate to see this really important thread get sidetracked. This year was a particularly disappointing one not only for legacy families, but also for families with no prior bs experience who thought they “covered their bases” and still received only denials and waitlists on March 10. Can any of us afford to say that “next year will be better” - or is it likely that next year will only be more difficult?</p>

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<p>@kentschoolie!</p>

<p>Awesome, awesome, awesome post!</p>

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<p>Like I always say, you are going to find geniuses at all these schools, and those that make you scratch your head and wonder how they got it in. Ditto for college, grad school, and jobs. I really do like SevenDad’s “more famous school vs. tier system.” Makes sense, larger schools will have more alums walking around the world, but can one say they are the best of the best, all of the time? Check out the matriculation records (not taking into account FA packages), famous alums, etc. they all look pretty equal after awhile. Otherwise, what is the point of thinking outside of the Philips family?! Let’s remember George Bush went to boarding and Bill Clinton went to a one room schoolhouse. Both have a lot of critics and admirers</p>

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<p>In regards to Dodgersmom, i think a big mistake might be to apply to a sibling school.</p>

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<p>There are many posts in this thread which are spot in response to Mhmm’s questions and statements. It’s all I can do to say thank you for your rational thought.</p>

<p>During a conversation with my son over spring break, he shared the following thought. “Peace isn’t important because it is nice to have or because it makes people feel good; it is important because it is the key instrument in our survival toolkit. So you may not be the nicest person in the world or you may have no interest in being kind. That’s your choice. But you should at least be pragmatic enough to know that without peace, our destruction is staring us directly in the face.” Then he proceeded to break down the four phases of peace… </p>

<p>As a result of this passion, the school allowed him and a friend from Loomis, by way of Israel, to deliver a school-wide assembly yesterday on this very topic that was incredibly received. This was all in the backdrop of big-brained experts and pundits debating war strategies. I cannot imagine him at any other school.</p>

<p>@ Exie: Post #59 should be a sticky.</p>

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<p>Schools will automatically think you will want to go there, esp. in need of FA. Although let’s face it, it does make it easier to get all the kids in one place if possible. I think we need more threads around smaller schools. I don’t have a daughter but I think Emma Willard, Ethel Walker, Westover, Miss Porter’s etc need more exposure, along with CA schools and Canadian schools. And there is a great boarding school in Montana I just read about, along with Simon Rock School.</p>

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<p>Kraordrawoh: <<another is=“” how=“” a=“” child=“” fits=“” in=“” intellectually=“” as=“” part=“” of=“” school’s=“” spectrum=“” students.=“” just=“” sports,=“” some=“” students=“” need=“” to=“” be=“” around=“” kids=“” who=“” help=“” set=“” the=“” pace=“” order=“” for=“” them=“” perform=“” optimally.=“” these=“” kids,=“” being=“” highly=“” competitive=“” environment=“” provides=“” huge=“” benefit=“” that=“” cannot=“” obtained=“” if=“” biggest=“” fish=“” smaller=“” pond.=“”>></another></p>

<p>Nicely said. I struggle quite a bit in wondering which is better, being inspired by an environment chock-full of highly qualified peers, or having the chance to be a bigger fish in a little pond. Surely the answer comes down to the child at hand, but I am not really sure where to even start on this one.</p>

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<p>My husband and I were thinking about serendipity today. How does one child get a coveted spot and another with similar experience be left on the sidelines? I keep coming back to that “darn” Superman video which has increased focus on how many urban schools are failing and sent parents researching charters - which in turn may have also revealed the BS option. </p>

<p>Boarding schools don’t carry the stigma they did in the past, there are more national organizations/scholarships funneling students toward that path, and the internet made “shopping” a lot easier from the comfort of ones homes. </p>

<p>A few years ago, when my daughter insisted on BS I remember stumbling on this board and reading the “chance me” posts and chatter about schools I’d never heard of. This year I’m talking to other CC parents offline and finding myself researching the school’s mentioned on the internet in a separate window.</p>

<p>I can do virtual tours, download videos from Youtube, and apply online. My daughter was able to find current BS students from her summer school roster and she got up to the minute information through Facebook.</p>

<p>So it’s a combination of a lot of things:</p>

<ol>
<li>More access to information for people who haven’t ever considered BS in the past</li>
<li>An economy that converted many “haves” to “have less” which upset the Financial aid availability for incoming students.</li>
<li>Discussion boards and major newspaper articles that dramatically increased demand for limited resources and caused some schools to underestimate their yields.</li>
<li>Constant discussion in the media about the deterioration of public schools - combined with massive budget cuts in many municipalities.</li>
</ol>

<p>I also wonder if - in the case of siblings and legacies - if there isn’t a sense of “spreading” the wealth to new families.</p>

<p>It’s kind of a black box. Would I tell families to apply broadly again next year? Sure. But the fear I have is that relying on stats and “awesome” EC’s is no longer enough to stand out because so many students have them.</p>

<p>So it’s about needed or unusual hooks, and/or making personal connections with the staff in a way that they instantly say “I want that kid” on campus with us. </p>

<p>And how does someone determine what an Adcom is looking for? I really, really don’t know since it’s a crap shoot who you get for an interview. The needs are sometimes subjective, different at every school, and different every year because the applicant pool is different. It could come down to your family moved from NY to Montana and the new state became the thing that tipped the diversity scale.</p>

<p>This year may be an anomaly. The same students, if they applied next year (or last year) might have risen to the finalist pile.</p>

<p>The best we can do is love our children and keep trying to find them a home that “loves” them. After grieving the rejections the first year, we found ourselves a bit more “steeled” for the process on the second go round.</p>

<p>I just hope - as a community - we can support each other (differences aside) because a lot of parents are in pain and I remember what that felt like.</p>

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<p>@Exie, #1 through 4 is so spot on. I was thinking the same thing.</p>

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<p>Well I guess its lets dump on mhmm since we really dont want to analyze what she said time. I havent figured out how to quote and go back a page, so ill try to do this from memory.
SevenDad - no disconnect between my saying there are different tiers and not every kid belongs in a “top” tier school, and saying my kids go to “top” schools. I actually consider some of the academically less challenging schools as “top” for the jobs they are doing. In the second statement of mine that you quoted nowhere did i say “top tier”, just top.
Exie - please, you need to step back and relax, and no, you didnt read carefully enough. Taft is an incredible school. You know it, I know it, many people know it. However even in today’s competitive environment can you compare it to the more academically challenging schools? No. Would I personally send my kid there versus where I did? I think quite possibly yes. Would I try to hype it to the level of some of the others? No. And no Im not decades out of date. My kid graduated 2 yrs ago.
Periwinkle - I guess living in a large city, with the awful you take the great, so I didnt think of a possibility of a public where you cant be tested into an amazing gifted program, but I see how in some areas even the least challenging BS would be better than the local option. In which case, people really need to step up and organize and advocate for charter schools.</p>

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<p>@mhmm.</p>

<p>I suspect I have quite a bit of years on you and a lot more experience. You have your opinions, I have mine. What many of the parents on the boards have been pointing out - on this and other threads, is that much of what you’re saying doesn’t hold much water. That so many disagree with you (including those who are BS grads) should be a clue.</p>

<p>But keep treading. Your charter school example is telling since research shows that a large percentage of charter schools are performing no better than their local peers and simply drain dollars away from failing districts. But as long as we point to the few that succeed then represent them as examples of the whole (rather than - for instance - take public schools on the top 100 list and do the same) we’ll keep driving parents to the wrong goals.</p>

<p>Garbage data in - garbage data out, IMHO.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Even if someone is academically capable of doing the work at a top tier school it doesn’t mean he/she will be admitted. It’s been said many times on CC that 75% of the students who apply to Andover are academically admissible. Andover has a 14% acceptance rate. So where are all of those other 61% of students who are academically capable of handling the work at Andover supposed to go? If there are only a handful of “top tier” schools out there then some of the students who fall into that 61% will have to attend some of the “lesser schools”. </p>

<p>Also, I don’t agree with the part of your statement about how students who don’t attend a “top tier” school with “flounder” at a “lesser school”. Many applicants who apply to the “top tier” schools will have come from public schools where the academics are less than challenging. If they are to be academically admissable then one can assume that they were doing alright at their public school. Depending on the quality of the public school many of these “lesser schools” will be leagues above the local public school. If they aren’t floundering at their public school, which can’t even be compared to the education at a “top tier” school, then why would you believe that they would flounder at a “lesser school”?</p>

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<p>@mhmm: Well, you can’t post something “A lot of advice of thinking outside the box and going to lesser known (or absolutely unknown outside of a circle of parents with learning-disabled children). At least partially this advice is to legitimize their own experience.” and not think people might have an adverse reaction. Sorry it feels like a pile-on.</p>

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<p>I’ll say this…the insights on this forum were invaluable to my son’s college selection process and results. I’ve stuck around here long after BS admissions and even long after my son left BS. There is far better information here – information that can be applied to the college search and selection process – than on the college forums where the on-line community is more transient and much larger. So be kind to one another here! I’ve learned so much here, often from people I at first internally disagreed with. (Some of them I continued to disagree with, but I learned from them and appreciate the thought-provoking comments they shared and the insights they led me to.)</p>

<p>More to the point of this thread of conversation, my son had a rough admission season going into his freshman year of HS. If that was the case for you, take some time to learn from it. Reach out to the admission officers during this time, including those that turned your child down – and make it known that it’s not to ask them to reconsider or to challenge their decision but to understand their decision. (I explained that it was with an eye toward reapplying as a soph.) Some – nay, many – of the insights shared with me AFTER my son’s miserable* admission foray were profound and, as it turns out, extremely valuable this time around in the college process. You won’t get this perspective from college admission officers. They deal with numbers that are unimaginable. Consider the follow-up as part of the value you get for the fee paid on a rejected application.</p>

<p>I use the * above for the word miserable* because it turns out that it was a blessing and not at all as miserable as we imagined. We were seduced by the TSAO schools’ marketing and the hype that’s here. And I have no axe to grind with them because a couple of the admission people at those schools were very wonderful people and explained why S was not the right fit. He was, however, accepted at one school (it matters not so much where if you don’t already know) and it was phenomenal. For him. It wasn’t a TSAO school but an admission officer at one of those schools asked me where else he had applied and when she heard that S was accepted there she practically did cartwheels over the phone, saying that she was very familiar with that school and she thought it would be perfect for my S. She said she had hoped that he had applied there and knew that, if he did, he would be accepted there because it would be such a great fit. Nothing against her, but I doubt she would have shared this if her school had admitted S. And she certainly didn’t share it during the interview and tour, etc. So the lesson is that you need to find the right schools on your own. You can get some candid advice from the admission people – once they’re not stakeholders. Along with others we spoke to, we realized that we got lucky and the right choice was easy for us in the end, largely because of those many rejections we might not have refused had several of them been acceptances.</p>

<p>And as for it being “special needs” or being some subpar experience, I don’t think that’s the case. My S won’t be graduating from BS, but his BS experience definitely molded him as a student and pointed him in the direction he needed to be headed. He completely shifted his priorities and matured (and learned to do laundry because we didn’t pay for the laundry service). There was nothing second-tier about his school and the “fit” was 100% first tier. He applied to a slew of colleges, LACs and Ivies, all of which have miniscule admission rates, and right now he’s sitting on nothing but acceptance letters. So special needs he is not. This decision making process will be much trickier and more gut-wrenching than the one he had four years ago when he – and we – thought all he got were the leftovers.</p>

<p>Be careful of your goals because you might end up achieving them. If your goal (for yourself or your child) is an acronym-school, you might end up there. If your goal is delivering the best educational experience for your child, that might entail an acronym-school…or it might not. This is something that applied in the college search, too. One Ivy made it to my son’s list because he didn’t know it was an Ivy. The other got there because he knows some people there and they happen to be the people he most admires. If he ends up at an Ivy League school when all of this madness shakes out, it will be because of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Ivy “brand” or cachet…and that’s why I’ll know he’ll have made a wise choice and not a social-climbing choice or one based on reasons that are fully disconnected with his own best interests as a college student. Instilling some sort of artificial value based on the name cachet can only do a disservice to your child. You should avoid doing it now with BS and not let that creep into play when college admission time rolls along. Trust me, if your child is cut out for an Ivy and if it’s the right fit, it can still happen even if it is totally off-the-radar all through high school. And if it’s not the right fit, you do not want your child shooting for that and thinking it’s the brass ring, do you?</p>

<p>There’s no rationalizing going on when parents look outside the few boarding schools that aren’t among those force-fed and marketed as the cat’s pajamas. Those parents are the wise ones. It was dumb luck that we ended up outside of that – and I feel so grateful for the fact that my son ended up at the right place and not an easy-to-find, well-marketed place. Now the challenge is up to him. He has choices to make. I think he chose wisely when applying so he won’t go wrong, but now it’s a matter of selecting the best fit – and, thanks to our miserable* experience four years ago, I know that marketing and hype won’t take his eyes off that goal. Don’t let it take your eyes off that goal now, for BS, or later, for college. Acronyms and tiers be damned!</p>

<p>And to the several of you who, four years ago, counseled me on these lessons via private messages: thanks so much! I am ever grateful.</p>

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<p>^^Fabulous post. I hope we are as lucky in finding the right fit as your son when our son applies in the fall. If I may ask, how did it happen that your son found & applied to that one school where he ended up that fit him so well? Was it a recommendation from someone here on CC, or did he/you find it through researching his EC or sports interests, etc? Did both of you realize the fit when you saw it, or was it a process that had to evolve over time?</p>