Letter from Andover and Exeter? Is it important?

ExieMITAlum
Wed, 08 Dec 2010 02:01:43 +0000

Neato - PTP has been. A lot - especially when it came out that they were sending letters to dead children and pets. At one point they were using the names of neighbors as people who recommended a child.

A friend of mine is an investigative reporter who has been following them for the death of a student in Japan (PTP is being sued for that too). My daughter was on the PTP trip that overlapped it. She had a good time (we priced the trip separately and vetted the chaperones and it was favorable - other PTP trips are a complete rip-off). But knowing what I know now about the organization and it’s inner workings (the group that actually organizes the trips is a multi-million dollar “for profit” corporation) I wouldn’t do it again.

Both my kids are gifted and we have been bombarded with “stuff” for years based on test scores. As one child’s junk mail ramped down, the other’s junk mail was ramping up.

Still - while I agree with DAndrew that marketing may open a parents’ eyes to boarding school who wouldn’t otherwise know about it (my family didn’t), I think the increase in marketing is to replace the cost of Adcom travel. I think that’s a mistake. If we’d gotten a solicitation in the mail, my parents would have ignored it. Because the Adcom had a relationship with my Jr. High, my parents trusted the counselor’s recommendation that I apply.

These days - if I didn’t know better - an Exeter solicitation just sounds too much like the fly-by-night stuff also being aimed at the same children.