6th Grade Applicant. Milton/Dexter/BB&N/Rivers/Thayer

Korean Native Speaker
Korean Public School Attending
US Citizen
ISEE Lower- 5/6/8/9
TOEFL Junior - 885 out of 900
Passionate Hockey Player (Goalie) : The first Korean player at the Brick Hockey Tournament history

Applied to (all 6th grade applied)
Milton
Dexter
BB&N
Thayer
The Rivers

I am worrying about his verbal score to get into Milton, which is the top wanna go.

What do you think about the chance of being accepted?

ISEE score repost

V : 5
Q : 7
R : 6
M : 9

This year will be an extremely challenging because of COVID. Note I am assuming your son has mostly A’s or equivalent and good recommendations from his teachers. As you probably know, he is too young to be “recruited” for hockey, but maybe a school coach will still drop a note to admissions. Everything helps when there are lots of applicants and not enough spots. Have you corresponded with any of the coaches - not too late? Thayer and Dexter, in normal years, would both go your way. This year, you may go 1 for 2. Sorry to keep talking hockey, but he may never see the ice at those schools. Their hockey is more competitive than their academics (which is somewhat competitive). Of course, he will have middle school options and maybe that is all you care about right now. Rivers will be more challenging than those two, but 6th grade does offer your greatest odds (about 25% admissions this year is my estimate), I give you a 1/3 chance at Rivers. BB&N would be slightly tougher than Rivers and there will be an extremely low likelihood for your son to gain admissions to Milton. I really hope this year goes better than I think it will for applicants.

In Korea, I heard the number of applicants to private schools is surging because of COVID, which means parents think their kids are not educated well for last one year. Similar trend is happening in US too? Even though there is an expensive tuition, are there many applicants to prep schools?

In the northeast, independent schools are seeing a record number of applications. It was difficult before, but COVID exposed a number of “public school weaknesses” for families. Lots of them chose to live in certain towns, “for the schools.” Maybe it is unfair but those people have been let down and many have no affordability issues, hence the increase in applications. If a grade has 20 spots and usually gets 40 applicants… now they have 80.