<p>comus, i pretty much disagree with you. totally apart from bs interviews, our kid is always under “pressure” from us to be a nice kid. </p>
<p>imho, there’s nothing more important. </p>
<p>remember the old saw - long after you’re dead and buried, almost no one will care how much you knew but they will know how much you cared. a good credo to live by.</p>
<p>“Nice kids” – “Good person” – “Mensch” and so on…</p>
<p>Can’t define it, can’t measure it, but you know it when you see it (with the occasional exception.) It drives people who can only appreciate quantifiable attributes nuts. On this site especially, LOL, there is an abundance of kids/parents trying to measure, parse and quantify, to compare these measurements against others, to unlock the special code for admittance into the pearly gates of a top ten BS. </p>
<p>The “nice, good” measurement is a maddening judgment call. Like it or not Comus, it’s core to the admission’s decision. There are hundreds of examples every season where top kids quantitatively crash and burn and an equally large number of kids who are admitted, often surprising even to them, on the basis of an AO’s gut feeling that they’re going to be a positive force on campus.</p>
<p>Might as well get used to it now. It gets really rough later during the adult job interview process when decisions get made by hiring managers often in the first 60 seconds about whether there’s going to be a good fit. Brutal, but true.</p>
<p>In some ways, it’s a referendum on the parents, not the student. Nature plays a part for sure, but nurture is most important. Are the parents good role models?</p>
<p>What does AO mean? I have been seeing it on alot of threads recently.</p>
<p>My guess is that AO either means admission office or admission officers.</p>
<p>honestly, i’ve met plenty of not-nice kids at boarding school. i’ve also met plenty of crazy kids.
i mean, anyone can SEEM nice… so, yeah. i think the point is to just not act like a ****** during your interview or something. but that’s just common sense. you don’t really have to go out of your way to be nice in order to get into boarding school. believe me.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s in the recommendations, not just the interview or essays. Teachers who have known you a while, seen you interacting with your peers, may be better at recognizing “nice.”</p>