My son got into 4 prep schools. 2 of them accepted him as a reclassing sophomore, the other 2 accepted him as a junior. He really wants to go to the school that is reclassing him because he likes it the most (The Peddie School). I personally don’t want to spend the extra year of tuition, but I want him to chose the school that he loves the most! Why do schools chose to admit a student and reclass them? It seems that they don’t really give you a straight answer. My guess is that they have a certain amount of spots for junior year and they usually give them to athletes. My son is not an athlete, he’s a musician. Anyone else know why they chose to reclass admitted students?
I don’t have the exact answer and can appreciate the tuition issue but I would say reclassing is extremely common a usually works in the students favor. It will allow him to grow and get involved more deeply in the community and activities, which can then lead to better leadership opportunities.
If he come is as a Jr, in December he will kick off his college process. The CCs at Peddie are truly great and take their time getting to know each student but it helps when they already have a sense of who the student is. A student who just arrived might still be trying to figure that out themselves.
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Sometimes schools do it because an applicant’s background is a better fit for the grade below - that could be socially, academically, emotionally, age, etc. Sometimes they want to admit a student and simply don’t have a spot in the older grade - especially for 11th grade where there are fewer spots.
Both my boys chose to reclass for boarding school. My younger one did so predominantly for athletics and he had one school that would have preferred to have him apply as a 10th grader (they asked us about it), and ended up WL him for 9th grade. I’m guessing that had more spots in 10th that year.
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My daughter is a reclassed sophomore this year at a school with a high workload and I would say that just now, 2/3 of the year in she is acclimated to what she needs to do academically to be successful in the environment. This was mostly a surprise to me, as she was an A student/ high honors/AP/Honors class at her LPS. So I’m very grateful she has the extra year, which she actually did for athletic reasons, but academically it benefits her so much. If your son begins as a junior, he is beginning the year with the most important grades for college applications before him, in a new school that may have very different expectations or workload than what he is used to. And even if not, he will be new. So that’s a lot of pressure. Every kid is different, but if you can pull it off financially, I look at the extra year as a gift.
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Actually that’s an amazing point about grades counting for college! Thank you for pointing that out. Brilliant!
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