<p>14% is just kind of an estimate. The numbers always seem off. Groton wrote to me “We received over 1,000 applications for only 82 places”. So if their acceptance rate is 14%, their yield is like “only” 58%. That can’t be right! Most schools that share its rank has 70-80% yield.</p>
<p>The turn of this thread has reminded me of another very good thread about selectivity from last year.</p>
<p>Enjoy (or not 
) : <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/655247-rejection-important-you.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-admissions/655247-rejection-important-you.html</a></p>
<p>Benley,
You know, yes and no.</p>
<p>Frankly, what I’m seeing is some kids so “driven” to succeed they forget that qualitative is just as important as quantitative. Not all of them, but a large percentage begin setting their sites on college by the second day on campus. One young lady, in an attempt to impress me, raved about her favorite books - it would be akin to me recommending War and Peace to you. Who reads that for pleasure? There was no sense she had any interests typical of an adolescent even when I probed because she was too busy looking to give me the “right” answers. </p>
<p>So it depends. Hard to stereotype. I do think “reputation” both helps and hurts. Helps it attract the most competitive student but some of those students are amazing on paper and amazingly uncreative or uninspiring in real life. Sometimes the “best students” can’t be quantified and are sitting in Joe Schmoe school waiting for the right climate to spread their wings and soar.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the schools I originally thought of as “next tier” had students who were equally bright, and like my own daughter - gave me a sense that there was life both inside books and outside of it. Clearly when I look at competitions the top schools aren’t always coming out on top.</p>
<p>So I don’t think it’s a bad thing for kids to hold on to their youth a little while longer rather than transition into mini-adults by the end of their first week and then burning out early in college. I don’t think it’s bad for students to learn success isn’t always about being the “best” or “winning.” Our best leaders learned to experiment, fail, and push forward. To make something out of nothing. </p>
<p>I think the admissions officers at BS’s try hard to discern and get a healthy mix. They have a tough job sorting through it all. But you are right - every school has a distinct style and a personality established over hundreds of years and the kids either fit or they don’t. Said an Admissions Officer at one of the schools that interviewed our daughter, “The school and the child will both select each other. Let’s see what happens next.” I was smitten.</p>
<p>Amen. Viva la difference!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I did. When I was in high school. It wasn’t for a class. Then I read Anna Karinina and found it a great disappointment - totally predictable. I read War and Peace again a few years ago - again for pleasure. Why is it so hard to believe that a 15 y/o would read Tolstoy for pleasure. (I also read everything by Herman Hess during the second semester of Trig., Crime and Punishment during AP Bio) </p>
<p>But maybe I’m just weird. Or maybe my engineering high school wasn’t a good fit. ;)</p>
<p>That’s hilarious.</p>
<p>AK was actually the book she mentioned. I was being facetious and used a euphemism. I was a big reading nerd too (shhh!). I think my problem is that my daughter and her friends are reading contemporary YA and adult fiction as well as the Iliad. So when BS kids only tell me they read within a narrow range, I wonder whether it’s preference, or training.</p>
<p>Just once I want to see a boarding school student that admits to reading Young Adult fiction on their own time - or Tess Gerritsen, or . . . . :-)</p>
<p>I mostly read YA and Adult Fatasy with a lot of Fanfiction. The YA generallly isn’t of the angsty vampire kind though.I admited to reading the YA and AF but not the FF at my interviews 
I have read a lot of those classics though. When I was reading the Illiad and some kids were making some disparaging comments my homeroom teacher told me that apparently that’d be cool in college… I"m not sold on the idea, I think she was just trying to make me feel better. My math teacher looked at me like I was the weirdest person on the planet when he saw me reading The Scarlet Letter at the start of the year.</p>
<p>I read AK in high school. The ending was not memorable. It took me a while to figure out that our high school’s copy was a two-volume edition, and I had only read the first half of the book. I still remember all those shocked adult faces, when I’d say, “I didn’t think the end was sad at all.”</p>
<p>Has any parent encountered the young adult genre of Tragedy!, such as those novels in which the parents die? I think there’s a novel of that name, something like, “one of those awful books in which the mother dies.”</p>
<p>Haha i take the road less traveled also…i have a thing for orcids, love to read, watch cnn 24/7, and like listening to classical music…while still coming across as a normal teen :)</p>
<p>Totally off topic bu that IS weird not that I can call weird… I’m not a fan of pop but I like Rock/Alternate not…classic :p. Wow my PM box is full again; as soon as I clear my PM box, it fills up again within a week or so.</p>
<p>“It took me a while to figure out that our high school’s copy was a two-volume edition, and I had only read the first half of the book…”</p>
<p>Hilarious. I’ve done that before. It reminds me of a young man who wanted to impress me with his reading and mentioned a book. I asked about a character and a particular plot point and he said, with much sadness, that he had not read that far yet.</p>
<p>Only the thing I asked was on the first page of the book. :-)</p>
<p>Hahaha i have normal interests too people! i lovee one republic, ke$ha, alternative in general, pop, and some rap etc…yea…i love fashion lots and lots. i have lots of friends lol. and i’m not from social siberia but i have a very strong inner nerd :)))</p>
<p>OneRepublic! Justin Timberlake, T.I, Timbaland, Drake</p>
<p>also, i love reading…i have a bizarre library…dan brown, harry potter, and then some ditsy novels…right now im reading a book called Prep…reminds me of SPS :/</p>
<p>Prep is supposed to be about Groton I think</p>
<p>what about HADES…prep for prep should be inclusive of top tiered schools</p>
<p>I’m not following mainstream stuff. But people here are just pretending to be cool by saying they have some unique interests.
I hate harry potter(the books and the movies). And I like this short story writer who aren’t even famous in America(he’s from Oregon).
Tolstoy wrote some great stories. Russin/USSR authors are really big here(I’m from China). But anyone who jumps up and down when hearing Tolstoy is obviously not a fan.</p>
<p>Sorry, I stopped reading after you said you hated Harry Potter. :p</p>
<p>Ditto. tenchar</p>
<p>Plus neatos an adult, I doubt she at least felt the need to appear cool to a group of mainly anonymous middleschoolers. I havn’t read any Tolstoy but CC makes me feel underead; I plan to delve into more of the classics over the summer.</p>
<p>to go on to the previous topic…
I usually read authors from the early (kind of) 20th Century. Like right now I’m reading This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night (the latter is however not my cup of tea) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s one of my fav authors. I also read Crime and Punishment last month (kind of, I wasn’t really focused on it) and A Farewell to Arms. (Fav Books of all time: ANIMAL FARM!!! TKAM, Great Gatsby, Catalyst,…) I like these kind of books more than the light fluffy type of books. Though some YA fiction is actually really good, I’m just not that into it.</p>