I have not heard of the DRT but from the Ten Schools site:
Founded in 2001, the Diversity Round Table (DRT) was established for admissions officers of color within the Ten Schools Admission Organization (TSAO). The primary role of DRT is to counsel, recruit and matriculate prospective students from a demographic range including, but not exclusively, racial, cultural, economic, and geographic.
The Diversity Round Table functions in the spirit of the TSAO, whose member schools strive “to cooperate, in their outreach to prospective students and their families.” Our mission is to:
Enhance the educational experience of all students by creating a diverse school environment
Implement strategies that create a diverse applicant pool.
Counsel families and talent identification program administrators through the boarding school admission process.
Act as an advisor to enrolled families once they arrive at our schools; over time, allow them to establish their own connections among our faculty over four years.
Because you say you are coming from an area where academic boarding schools are unknown, your son’s application might fit the “geographic” bucket.
We are in Arizona where, like you, no one in our sphere was familiar with boarding schools and, in fact, while our son attended Choate (2011-2015), he was the only student from AZ his last three years there (there was one young woman from AZ who graduated his freshman year). I feel strongly that geographic diversity was in his favor during his application cycle.
Because you received the invitation, I highly recommend you attend. When the TSAO conducted one of its annual road shows in Phoenix (not labeled as DRT then), we attended so our son could interview with two of the schools on his list which did not include Choate at the time. However, it was the Choate representative who spoke with him at length and encouraged him to apply and where he happily ended up. If we had not attended that session, he would not have applied. We learned a lot about those ten schools at that event as well as the application and admissions process, which we were totally unfamiliar with.
It costs nothing to attend but the payoff is high. Don’t miss it.