Were there any boarding schools you initially considered or ranked highly but later decided to remove from your list after further research or visiting in person? Why?
Many years ago,family member crossed Exeter off the list due to the athletic facility. Too cold, sterile & unattractive.
Berkshire. When my kids toured (8 or 9 years ago, so things could have changed) day students were very poorly integrated into the community. So, did not apply after touring.
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Deerfield. My daughter was put off by the brands of bags hung on the wall of the dorm room she toured years ago. Channel, Gucci, the like. She was surprised that was the room chosen for the tour and assumed it represented the student body.
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Exeter â just not the vibe according to my daughter. Felt very stiff to her. It was the same day as our Andover tour, so I think she was just on a high because weâd had a fantastic tour guide and amazing admissions officer at Andover (with whom Iâm still friends, even now five years later).
Choate â Probably wasnât a fair visit â we could NOT get an official tour because they were booked, even though we tried for weeks and weeks starting early in the cycle. Since we were coming from California and had 12 other schools to visit, we had no choice but to keep the week we were in New England. So, we did a âself-guidedâ tour per the admissions officer recommendation. (meanwhile we called every few days to see if any avails had changed â I was kind of thinking at some point they will just hand us a student to take us around, but alas nope.) Anyway, we got lost on campus and tried to stop several students to ask directions, and they were all plugged into their earphones and kind of ignored us. After about an hour of walking around with a map in our hands, and no reciprocal warmth, we decided: letâs just chalk this up to âitâs just not going to turn aroundâ and we left. Again, Iâm sure another day, our experience would have been different. But it still kind of irked me that they couldnât be a tad flexible to find us an option given how often we checked in on any avails and how far we had come. Iâm sure itâs a wonderful school and we just had an off experience. We were overloaded with options so we were kind of looking for schools to eliminate.
Lville â This was the only school where we had an actively negative experience. The overall vibe was very different from any other school we visited, and I donât know that I can accurately describe what was the big turnoff. But some examples â The kids didnât walk in clumps as we had seen at other schools â like when class was over, they all poured out of the classrooms and were very individualized in their walks to their next classes, not groups of laughing kids, or kids hollering about homework or sports practice or whatever. Instead â they walked with their noses in their phones and several times literally tripped over us on our tour. Our tour guide checked her instagram while we were on our tour. When we toured a dorm, there were really harshly worded handwritten signs up like âCLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF!!â âWE ARE NOT YOUR MAIDS!! PUT YOUR TRASH AWAY!!â It was really a whole different feeling. Also, just kind of weirdly, when we asked the tour guide if we could see the dining hall, she told us no. It was too far. (Um. OK. Is it as far as California because thatâs where we just flew in from to see your school!!? ) Also, randomly, we ran into a student that my daughter knew from a summer camp she had attended. it was totally random and a âsmall worldâ moment. The way the friend acted though in front of her classmates was just not warm or excited at all â like no sense of âomigosh how cool you are touring! text me if you have any questions because I love it here!!â It was so weird. I am sure that the culture fits many kids, but we are kind of beachcomber flip flop wearing types â this culture wasnât a fit.
St. Andrewâs â we actually loved it! But decided it was too small and there was no study abroad program. (The irony: my daughter didnât ever pursue a study abroad program in high school at all.).
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When was all this â 5 years ago?
Yes! My daughterâs a freshman in college now.
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Choate, Loomis, NMH for no other reason other than as a kid living abroad, the distance from a major airport wAs problematic.
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The detailed descriptions of your observations at Choate and Lawrenceville are a fabulous articulation of what others simply state as âloved the vibeâ or ânot my vibeâ. So helpful to consider. Thanks.
We had a similar experience at Choate last year. We traveled east for visits but they were slow to open their calendar, so we had to assume that the date we needed would open up. It didnât. In fact, we didnât even get a response from the office when we asked about doing a self-guided tour so we just showed up. It didnât go well. We couldnât get into any buildings.
Choate also does not do in-person interviews. They say it is an equity thing, but we couldnât help but think that they just didnât want to meet the kids in person, and are hiding behind an excuse of equity.
Finally, we had an interviewer who was a new teacher (not an AO) who clearly didnât want to be there and couldnât answer any admissions questions.
Overall, it was the worst admissions experience of the 6 schools, and by a large margin. We didnât complete the application.
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Thatâs going to be the case everywhere. Or at least it should be.
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I loved Brooks. But my son did not get excited about it.
That was the day I realized he was looking specifically for the intersection of amazing facilities/coaching in his sport and a school with few or no day students. As it turns out, this intersection hosts a very short list of schools. My son applied to four of seven possibilities.
Brooks simply clarified for him this information that applied to dozens of schools and narrowed his list dramatically.
But they won the most beautiful boathouse award from us!
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Especially at Choate which is not âwalled offâ from the town. That is what my child loves about it but it is not for everyone.
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I had a similar experience with my interviewer she was an AO but she was eating and drinking during my interview as well as on her phone. I tried to brush it off, but it really hurt my feelings and turned me away from Choate. I ended up submitting, but I honestly dont think I will end up going there.
Have heard of numerous poor Choate admissions experiences. Nevertheless, I would not let this deter you from seriously considering the school and attending student revisit days if youâre admitted. A lot of great staff at Choate. Admittedly, their Admissions department can be a bit hit or miss with respect to interview scheduling, campus tours, the quality of the interview. But not worth writing off the school, IMO.
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I totally agree with this. Itâs important not to put too much emphasis on the admissions team in your decision. The fact is that you may never interact with the admissions team once you are at a school. So be careful writing off the school over a bad admissions experience. On the other hand, be careful not to attend a school just because you really liked the interviewer.
I have no doubt that Choate is an excellent school. They have excellent teachers and facilities, and Iâm sure it is the perfect school for many students.
In truth, our decision to not apply wasnât all about the admissions office. If we didnât have a preference for Boston-area schools, we may have applied despite the admissions experience.
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This.
Iâve probably posted 20 times that our son never met any of the Choate admissions staff, never set foot in the admissions building, never took a tour, and didnât see the campus until revisit days. He interviewed with an alum at a Starbucks close to our home, and that was it. From posts like those above, I guess that was a good thing. It sure would have been a huge mistake to have passed on Choate due to a bad experience with a tour or admissions.
Interesting. This must be new as the school certainly did in-person on-campus interviews when our son was applying. He was granted a local alum interview because we live more than 250 miles from the school.
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I wouldnât be unduly bothered by eating and drinking (but I would probably assume that the interviewer might mention it and apologize in advance). She might have been stepping in to cover someone elseâs interview slot, or just working so many hours during the interview season that she doesnât have time to eat lunch. Eating, drinking, and also on the phone though seems quite rude.
As other posters mention though, keep an open mind, and if you receive an offer and the school is on your shortlist, go to the admitted student day and see if itâs a âfitâ.
My kid received a few offers on M10 and we were actively looking for reasons to cross schools off the list. One interviewer at a HADES school had been quite aggressive in their interview questioning (it was during covid and only offered virtual interviews, husband listened outside kidâs door and reported back to me that it felt more like a job interview post-college than interviewing a 14-year-old). Kid thought that they werenât going to get an offer so had given that school barely a passing thought in the few months from the interview to the offer. I tried, in vain, to get the school back on kidâs shortlist for consideration after M10.
Iâm guessing Choate is aware of its shortcomings when it comes to the schoolâs admissions process.
In response, Choate is building a â14,000 sq. ft. Admissions Center (Carr Hall) that will include a welcoming reception area and a conference room that will accommodate 40-60 people with flexible setup options for meetings, information sessions and events. The second floor will house the admission team, providing ample office space for the team.â
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And if they didnât know before, they do now. No way do the schoolâs not occasionally pop on here for a read.
My kidâs identity is obvious to them from what Iâve written, but I havenât said anything here that I wouldnât say directly and politely in their presence. Transparency is important.