Placement Office List of Schools

Sue22
Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:29:44 +0000

The schools want a good outcome for each child in the class. Overall this may not be the optimal outcome for your particular child. IOW, if the school knows Exover will not accept more than 4 kids from your child’s school they may not put their full weight behind your child’s application if they think your child is the 6th strongest applicant. They may try to steer you toward a school where your child will be among the stronger candidates or where kids from your school have been particularly successful in admissions. This is as much to protect students from disappointment as it is to make the school’s placement look good.The worst outcome for everyone would be if your child got in nowhere.

Schools no longer have the pull to decide who will or not be admitted. That’s up to the admissions committee at the secondary school. That said, it doesn’t take much to send a school a message as to the relative strength of candidates from the same class. It’s the difference between “Strongest student in this year’s class” and “Extremely strong student”. This is the reason I recommended making a case to your placement person if you think they do not see your child as a good fit for a particular school.

My child’s school asks parents to indicate a first choice when they have one. This allows them to advocate strongly for a student at their first choice school. We chose not to do so because our child is split between 3 schools.

After the decisions come out a school may try to pull some weight for kids it thinks really should come off the waiting list. Sometimes it work, sometimes it doesn’t.

BTW, this really applies only to schools which traditionally have a relationship with prep schools-usually private K-8/9s or LPSs located in the same town as the prep.