@mondaydevil , you win the honesty prize!
Personally I just want to say: I have fallen in love with so many of you amazing kiddos over the past few months. @mondaydevil is at the top of that list, and I cannot WAIT to see where you land!! But back to this thread – I think a school not appearing anywhere in any ranking is actually a reasonable yellow flag to consider. Not being in the top five is one thing; not being anywhere is a whole different animal. (That said, I do wonder: how was it on your original list if you had never heard of it and it wasn’t on any ranking?)
Ok…back to the OP and silly (or not) reason you didn’t apply to a specific boarding school…some of you may remember our tour with the head janitor at one BS. Great insights and stories about issues at the school. Sometimes you just meet people “in the know”.
@Calliemomofgirls Thank you so much! You’re pretty much my cc mom at this point and you’re wonderful and thank you for being awesome.
I found it through Boarding School Review and there’s a chance it is on rankings, I just didn’t notice it.
@mondaydevil – that’s one of the kindest things I’ve read. I treasure your words deeply.
Because I’m a mom (and a writer)I have to point out to you young folks: treasuring something implies “deeply” so just so you know that was bad writing. But I couldn’t decide which word to remove so I left them both in because that’s HOW MUCH I treasured your kind words. xo.
@Calliemomofgirls im crying (mentally) 
DS was also in the “No Saints” contingent. I started to feel adverse to one after we learned about the “Happy Birthday” game which we witnessed there. Then there was the school were I saw cough medicine on a kid’s desk and got a “that’s not cough medicine” vibe.
But, I also fell in love with schools based on the faculty dogs, so I’m not very reliable…
No Saints here, too. Dogs on campus were a must.
At the end of the day, I am pretty sure kiddo chose his school because it had the best french fries. Really.
I think the best school mascot award goes to Westminster. A bird with no feet called the Martlet.
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@vwlizard The Happy Birthday game made us not apply to one too.
From the second Happy Birthday, it all very much reminded me of when on Gilmore Girls all the boys at at Chilton kept calling Rory “Mary” other first day!
It was weird the first Happy Birthday, then it was awkwardly embarrassing. It made me feel like an idiot that we had cheerfuly wished our guide “Happy Birthday” when the first classmate said it, like I must’ve looked so stupid & gullible to him. I was already insecure because we are middle class & this was a new world for us (it was our first ever official tour & interview). I started to feel like maybe the kids were making fun of me & my son.
I feel kind of right now tight in my chest just remembering & typing this, and it was seven months ago! It was the only time on our journey to be a BS family that I felt like these were a bunch of rich kids, and they didn’t want us, and we didn’t belong.
Plus, it really embarrassed our guide, every time. He blushed so red. It made him mess up saying some of the stuff he had practiced, and then he got embarrassed about that. The whole Happy Birthday thing took me out of the experience of learning about the school.
By the end I felt judged, mocked and gross, like I wanted to go take a shower. I hated that place.
@LeeLeeB That sounds awful. I could feel my blood pressure rise just reading your story. I’m so sorry.
When our oldest was considering BS we happened to be in another state at the same time as an open house for a BS that had been sending our son marketing material based on his talent search results.
The campus was lovely and the kids seemed friendly. When we got a chance to mingle with the students, we asked each why they chose this particular school. Each and every one said because they didn’t get into their top choice schools (all acronym schools). It was quite sad and we immediately removed it from our list.
@Calliemomofgirls yeah it was awful. They said it like 15 or 20 times to us. It felt like 30. And it was a spirit or game day, so many of the boys were in sports jerseys and they seemed so big and strong. It was mostly boys who said it. Maybe exclusively. As a woman, I felt, like vulnerable.
Thank you for your kind empathy. Thankfully, we had many many wonderful experiences at other schools. It was just that one.
@ens2006 Often, kids will wish a tour guide “Happy Birthday” when it’s not their birthday. It’s a type of inside joke. I remember even posting about how welcoming a school was and how nice it was that everyone knew it was our tour guide’s birthday… and then I found out it was all BS. Totally changed my view of the school and even made me angry that we were duped.
I think the best mascot goes to Marvelwood. They have a pterodactyl.
Two kids from the particular boarding school that I met in college happened to be not too impressive to me. One of them received mostly Cs in his first semester - he taped it on his dorm room outside for everyone to see. The other was a similarly proud underachiever. They did not have to worry much because both were planning to help family business after college - kinda like George Bush. Silly reason because gross generalization and I do not know how they improved after their freshman year.
A friend of mine told me that his son did not apply to one top boarding school because the kid thought its school name was more apt for certain wildlife animals than human. He also imagined there could be lots of waste released by the same species on the campus. Now, try to top this.
Our DC is a sports recruit and we ended up not applying to one school as for 2 hours they only spoke to us about he/she would help make the team competitive. They did not seem to care who our DC was as a person, they only wanted the athlete.
I did not apply to a school after, while at an open house, a current student told me that “You don’t have to be smart to get into [said school].” Worried me just a little bit. (Also, while this didn’t happen to me, they misspelled a friend’s name wrong in an admissions email).