transferring between boarding schools

Valdog
Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:17:13 +0000

We have a child who transferred between B schools after 9th grade, partly due to poor fit, partly because of some odd developments at the school once there. I agree with the above posters: if you and/or your child don’t love a school going in, don’t do it. There is little worse than knowing your child is miserable but stuck in a situation away from home (thousands of miles in our case). If you are speculating now that the “back-up” won’t work out or isn’t ideal, straight out of the gate, then your child has a one-foot-out-the-door cloud hanging over his head as he’s trying to adjust and establish himself academically and socially during fall term. Sounds awful to me - and doesn’t give him or the school a fair shot. If you’re that sure about the “back-up” now, I’d wait. Tons of kids apply fresh for 10th grade - it’s a perfectly valid option and will give your child time to make his/her stats and application even more attractive to his first-choice schools.

If you go forward with the “back-up” now, bear in mind the timing and logistics of a potential transfer. Fall semester clips along pretty fast. Yet it takes awhile for a child to get into the groove and really know whether a school is a solid fit - and, again, maybe the “back-up” will surprise you and prove an excellent fit - he applied there, after all, for some reason, right? October, with parents weekend, etc., was too early to know in our case. We had a sense by Thanksgiving that our child wasn’t completely in love with the place, but we certainly felt it reasonable to encourage him to stick with it, keep an open mind, and see how things progressed with new teachers, winter activities, etc. Of course, then we were already into December. When he came home for break, we all knew for certain that this wasn’t going to work. But at that point our child faced a very compressed schedule for transferring. He spent his entire December break registering and studying for the next SSAT offering in January (for which he had to skip classes and take a costly private taxi from his school), researching schools and contacting coaches, writing essays and filling out apps, pestering the office to fed ex official transcripts, politely contacting teachers over their holiday break to write unexpected transfer recommendations on tight deadlines, setting up interviews at schools on short notice (some couldn’t accommodate given the late date and he had to miss more school to travel to the ones that could mid-January), and more. It was a terribly chaotic and stressful time (not to mention expensive!) and impacted our entire family’s Christmas holiday. Even if you’re able to start the process earlier (and, again, why would you want to or know you’d need to?) I would think long and hard about a transfer mindset going in. Our son had a few friends who wanted to transfer out come December, as well, but just couldn’t get it all together in time. It was a daunting process, though I will say he is beyond thrilled with his new school so we are glad to have supported him through it.

Lastly, I agree that teachers generally won’t (shouldn’t) hold it against the student but, in our child’s case, there was some awkward discomfort. Even worse, the head coach of his fall sport actually refused to look at or speak with him for the rest of the year once he got wind of it. When the teams faced each other on the field this year, he was the only coach and player who didn’t shake our kid’s hand or give him a hug. Oh well.