<p>Did anyone else start our with a few schools at the beginning of the school year and ended up with like 5-10?</p>
<p>DS cast a wide net, in the range you are ending up with. Some may feel that it is too many, and some are accepted at a fine school with fewer applications, but if you are dead set on attending boarding school, and have no reasonable fallback plan, 5-10 is a good number.</p>
<p>Since we had a a more than acceptable back-up, I always thought DD would apply to 3-5.</p>
<p>If you had asked me in July, the list would have been Miss Porters (all-girls, like our day school), SPS (medium to large co-ed, we loved our summer visit), and Groton (small co-ed, also loved summer visit).</p>
<p>Final apply to list was Choate (loved the kids we met on our visits, liked that it had archery team and fencing club), SPS, and SAS. </p>
<p>In terms of “to consider” schools, the following were added to our consideration set later in the game (yeah, still mostly “name brands”, but only Hotchkiss is mentioned with any frequency here):</p>
<p>Cate
Mercersburg
St. Andrew’s
Thacher
Westtown
Hotchkiss</p>
<p>When I started out, my parents only wanted me to be a day student, so my list was-
Taft, The Gunnery, and two day schools. Then it kind of turned into that grey area when we visited- Loomis Chaffee, and then we began looking at a bunch of other schools for boarding, even though we thought it probably wouldn’t happen- NMH, Lawrenceville, St. George’s, Berkshire. I would definitely say that through the process a lot of schools got added and crossed of of my list!</p>
<p>Knowing that we would need FA and that our “wants” were fairly specific, and not knowing anything about <em>most</em> of the schools on our list except what we could glean from their websites, catalogs and one or two friends/parents who’d had kids at a particular BS, we started with a list of 7 or 8 and ended up visiting/interviewing at 14! In the end dd applied to 8 (just because you interview, doesn’t mean you’ll complete an application—dd interviewed because while we were out on the road, it seemed the most sensible thing to do), was accepted to 4 of her top choices, and revisited two.</p>
<p>@Willem, I love your story. It sounds like you learned a lot during the process, and that your family was wise and open-minded enough to broaden their search. IIRC, you were accepted to Taft and possibly others, but ended up at NMH, which is quite a different enviromnent from Taft and The Gunnery, your two original BS ‘go-sees’. </p>
<p>It sounds like your research and flexibility really paid off, as I recall that you’re very happy with your choice. Applicants in this year’s pool would do well to follow your not-so-straight path.</p>
<p>A common theme being expressed here so far is that the process of learning about and applying to boarding schools really is just that - a process. Our journey was the same, and we learned a lot along the way. </p>
<p>Schools that were early favorites and others that were being considered dropped down the list, or off the list entirely, as our family became more familiar with them and as our son’s preferences became more defined. </p>
<p>One important take-away seems that it is ideal to start the process well ahead of time. There can be happy endings with more compressed circumstances, but it was less stressful to have time for things to proceed at a less rushed pace.</p>
<p>Girlsgeekmom- you are correct! I ended up being accepted to the majority of the schools I applied to- (exceptions were Loomis and St. George’s with wait lists). Having a lot of options is both a blessing and a curse. But in the end, you have to choose a school that feels like home. I want to stress that whatever school you choose WILL be your home- you or your child is going to spend most of the year there. Don’t go for prestige.</p>
<p>@Willem, I agree that having lots of schools to choose from is both a blessing and a curse! But the latter is only brief, since once you make a decision the other stuff seems to fall away. I hope other students are reading your wise words, which echo those of the many, many parents who post similar sentiments.</p>
<p>2013 applicants, are you listening??</p>