Late Application Experience - international students

catsmum
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:41:17 +0000

I’ve read messages in this forum since last year, at that time, my elder son was in the process of applying for US boarding schools. I loved this forum very much as I could get a lot of information here. Therefore, I would like to share my experience with the members of this forum, it maybe useful. We are Asian, during the first round, my son did apply for five schools which including Andover, Exeter, all top tier schools, but all failed.

We are very eager to leave the current school as most of the experienced teachers were leaving and the standard of teaching was going down, so we tried the second round in April as late applicants. Finally, we applied three more schools, NMH, St. Paul and Peddie. I do not expect the three schools will have any shot, but still tried and paid the application fees. The followings are their response and results:

NMH - very responsive, they opened an account for my son, and we could check our application status easily. Finally accepted within four weeks and my son has enrolled.

St. Paul - received my application fee, sent us an application package and informed us at that moment no place was available. Only acknowledged receipt of my son’s application documents after I had sent them an e-mail for confirmation. However, they did not open an account for my son, like normal applicants whom apply for admission before their application deadline, so we could not check for our application status on-line. Afterwards, no news from them.

Peddie - even received my application fee. We DO NOT recived their application package (i.e., enclose their brochure etc.) OR any letter telling us whether or not any place was available. Only acknowledged receipt of my son’s application documents after I had sent them an e-mail for confirmation. Afterwards, no news from them. However, in Boarding School Review’s which states that Peddie do accept “Rolling Application”.

Moreover, I had also sent my son’s TOEFL and SSAT scores to Hotchkiss School and The Hill School. Both schools did send their application packages to us even though we did not pay any application fees to them.

Therefore, very disappointed on the application administration on St. Paul School and especially Peddie School.

For your information, my son’s profile is as below:

Appying for Grade 10 (Fall 2008)
Overall SSAT scores: over 93
IBT TOEFL scores: 110 out of 120
We do not need Financial Aid