We applied to Choate, Hotchkiss, Loomis, Taft, Blair, Deerfield, Middlesex, Andover, Lville, and Exeter. Other than Andover, Blair, and Middlesex, the rest of the schools have portals. I believe the ones with portals will announce admission decisions in their portals on March 10. I have two questions:
1)Based on the previous years, around what time results are revealed? I remember reading some applicants receiving UPS notifications in past years. Do admission decisions of some schools come in the mail?
2) Would you know the amount of FA received on the portal simultaneously with the admission decision? If not, does anyone have any experience if schools let you know about the FA amount if you call the school on March 10?
I can speak to some of your questions. The various emails (either âcongratsâ or âgo to the portal to seeâ) all arrived to us by 9 a.m. and if memory serves most were in the 7 - 8:15 sort of time frame (I remember waking our kidsâŠ)
Non-covid, schools like to get physical packages to admits right on M10. Itâs basically a nice letter and some swag (we got t-shirts, banners, maybe some other stuff). So, if you set up a UPS and Fedex account with alerts, you can get texts any time a delivery is scheduled to your name and/or address (or other names at your address). You can then click through to see where theyâre from.
You wonât get a package on M10 unless youâre admitted. I could be wrong about this but I donât think so, IOW they donât UPS/Fedex rejection letters.
Itâll be interesting to see whether and to what extent schools are able to get packages to admits right on M10.
Went through this last year alongside @DroidsLookingFor.
We learned a few things.
- Fedex/UPS notifications are NOT necessarily reliable indicators. We had zero notifications, and 8 acceptances.
- It would seem from experiences of others, that the studentâs name might be the trigger for notifications, so even if you have address notifications, (which we do for work reasons), we suspect that our daughterâs name on the fedex/UPS package did not flip the switch. Zero notifications for us.
- Only one (physical) package arrived on M10 itself. The others trickled in over a couple of days.
- FA and merit awards were included in all but one online acceptance we received. However, we often did have to click something like âsee the contractâ or âclick here for the contractâ to see the FA or merit award. It almost felt like we were âaccepting the offerâ the way some of the buttons were worded.
- Andover was the only one that did not include award in the online acceptance. It arrived in physical package which we got later that day on M10.
- Most schools release decisions in the morning, but in any case, youâll get an email about a week ahead of time confirming the time, and confirming how (email or portal) and confirming you have the link all set up and ready to go for M10. If last year is any indication, this group will surely have a thread where we will all add the info so we all know EXACTLY WHAT TIME things are happening. Itâs actually kind of fun, IMO.
- If itâs the same as last year, Iâll share that George and Taft both came at midnight, so 9 pm on March 9th for west coasters like us. Groton and Hotchkiss were the latest at 5 pm Eastern M10. The rest we had (which will cover most of your list) were all between 6-9 am eastern, so we woke up to them all at once early morning west coast M10. It was a crazy hour of getting news!
- There was much to-do about the portals but if I recall, we also received congratulatory emails from the schools, the AOâs and such. In fact, they are what alerted my daughter, who was at school at the time, that she had gotten in. (ahhhâŠremember the days of being in school??)
- One tip: if possible, donât make huge plans for M10. It was a far more exhausting day than I imagined. I donât mean you have to clear the whole schedule and become laser focussed on prep school decisions, but itâs just an emotionally big day, lots of papers to look through. Emails start flying in from AOâs, etc. And it was just a strangely busy and exhausting day. I originally had a big presentation that day that got moved and I remembered being so grateful I was somewhat available to the project of digesting and sifting through everything.
- Iâd avoid calling any Aoâs on M10. If you havenât figured out the FA piece in a couple of days (and we canât as a group figure out where you need to click), then I would reach out then.
- I can confirm that no school sent any snail mail of any type for a rejection or waitlist.
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Thereâs a folder on this page called â2020 M10 Decision Release Timingâ, itâs in the top section of the home page.
Iâm not sure how much the schools will change what happens on M10 2021 compared to last year, but thatâs probably a good place to start. It shows the list of schools, the expected timing, and method.
Hopefully we can resurrect and update that folder for this year.
For those who got UPS/Fedex notifications, did you get the notifications before M10 like a day or two before M10?
I like Taftâs midnight decision release! It is also good to know that most FA decisions are released simultaneously.
Do you get emails from AOs before the portal decisions announced or later in the day?
I hope Hotchkiss announce the decisions in the morning like others this year!
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Callie is correct RE name for the notifications. We added the names (and nicknames) of our kids to our UPS and Fedex accounts because weâre ridiculous. And when the shipments were initiated on the 8th and 9th we did indeed know. We did not tell the kids, and in fact werenât 100% confident bc we didnât know that rejections were not sent in hard copy.
Editing to add: if I could do it again I would not have set up the notifications. Took away some of the fun and anticipation (though it may also have saved some anxiety)
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@chemsider
Seconding @DroidsLookingFor thinking about not doing the kids names on the account. I know I read some folks saying they had done that and still didnât get notifications which caused a lot of stress. Also keep in mind, some (most of ours actually) schools send out on or after M10. So there you are, stomach all in knots thinking you now KNOW FOR A FACT YOU DIDN"T GET IN on M9, totally unnecessarily. As someone who sat through that UPS/fedex stress on M9 until I found out about the student first name issue, I can assure you: it was way more pleasant once I realized that I did not have reliable inside scoop info and would have to wait. (@DroidsLookingFor may have talked me down on that one back on M9 if I recall correctly. And while we are at it, let me just say one manâs âridiculousâ is another manâs âbrilliant.â)
Also: it really is exciting when the decisions all come out. Itâs no fun to think you are rejected slowly, painfully due to the absence of any communication, whether it ends up being true or not.
Even if you are rejected, wouldnât it be better to be quick like a bandaid? And surrounded potentially by some acceptances?
And then if you are accepted, itâs truly a magical moment to open that portal and see the electronic confetti fly (or whatever) and see the congratulations note! Itâs really a fun time. Iâm so glad we didnât have any hints.
FYI â I think HK has been 5 pm the last couple of years so donât know if there is reason to believe that will change.
Fun side note: Taft was my daughterâs only rejection, but it arrived on M9 at 9 pm our time, which led us to believe that M10 would not be a super happy day. We went to bed very happy to have received an (M9 9 pm) acceptance from George, but also fully expecting a bunch of rejections the next morning. And, no fedex/UPS notifications (and we get ALL the notifications in our house!), so we were feeling a bit nervous. All that to say: itâs an exciting time with both ups and downs possible.
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So if packages are sent, potentially one student could receive swag from every school that accepted him/her?
Yup.
We are debating to set up or not notifications alert on our sonâs name.
It could take away the excitement from M10 and give some peace in mind ( or stress if notifications donât work!).
I just did it. I donât know if I will even check to see where they are coming from. Mostly I will have a better chance to sleep the night of the 9th if I get an alert that something is coming. Really she would be happy with all of her choices for different reasons. They 2 that I think she will get at midnight, Taft and George, for different reasons I think may be her least likely 2 that she applied to. So it would be nice if I had something better to look at before I go to bed than 2 rejections.
A couple of things to keep in mind.
1/ From being here for a few years, this trick seems to be less and less effective each cycle.
2/ Depending on the schools and their current protocols and people working remotely, my guess is that sending hard copies and swag is not at the top of the priority list this year.
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Hotchkiss changed their time to 8am,thank God because idk if I could wait till 5.
I will second @skieurope - the physical mail/swag is becoming less and less of a standard. From what I have seen in the past few years, more and more schools are doing the electronic notification and then Revisit Days are where the schwag (remember my post on Misc Ramblings? 
) will be distributed. I have a funny feeling even with COVID, schools will wait to distribute schwag until Revisits, and only to people who register. Before, there were plenty of logistical reasons not to be able to attend Revisit Days, but with most, if not all going virtual this year, schools will not see a reason for someone not to register unless they are not considering accepting the schoolâs offer.
And yes, every year in mid-to late- February, the M10 Decision time notice thread seems to get created. It is not a recycled from last yearâŠit is usually a new thread.
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I think we got âschwagâ (thanks @buuzn03 for teaching us all something a couple of weeks ago) from every acceptance. I still sip coffee from a deerfield mug and my daughter still wears her Kent t-shirt as PJs.
@dadof4kids Just a heads up â I actually donât think any of the schools on your list (IIRC) do the overnight fedex package on M9 for arrival M10. (My guess: itâs pretty expensive to do that â much cheaper to do the 2-3 day delivery, in which case too hard to target exact M10 delivery so why not send on M10 instead and not risk the giveaway?). I could be wrong. Maybe youâll get an alert or two. But my best guess is you will not. I havenât heard of any of your schools doing overnight packages that trip the alerts on M9. (Except Kent â canât recall if on your list, but they send out t-shirts several days before M10 â I think we got it on M6). Anyway, so donât freak out. (as if, right?). I think the more likely scenario is that you wonât have any alerts and you will be saying to yourself âis this because she had no acceptances or because the schools didnât do an M9 drop-ship?â It will probably be the latter. I feel really confident your DD will have options due to your savvy job of creating her list.
Iâll go a bit further here and say that I think very few schools do the M9-overnight-drop-to-time-perfectly-on-M10. Iâve seen Exeter and Andover reports. Maybe Iâve seen SPS and Choate, but I donât know personally about those. On the other hand, Hotchkiss and Deerfield I know from experience that the packages arrived later than M10, and we DID get notifications from them at least one of those two, maybe both IIRC (yes, the first name thing is a bit messy and unreliable), but we got them after we had already received online acceptances, so it didnât matter. In other words, they didnât ship on M9 and give us an early headsup.
So the takeaway is: if you do go that route of signing up kids for the alerts, know that unless you are waiting for the few schools that would trip the switch, you might be sitting in an M9 purgatory, sure that you arenât getting in. So just remember this on M9, in case you donât have any notifications â it most likely means absolutely nothing. (on the flip side, of course, getting a notification means certain good news.)
@dadof4kids You getting an alert but not checking the city of origin just makes me laugh. You just signed up all the nicknames. You didnât come this far not to check the city, my friend. (And by âyouâ of course I mean âwe.â)
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We decided not to register our kidâs name for mail notifications. This way, we may have a more thrilling M10 ride! (hopefully, with a good outcome!)
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I post this every year and will say it again â feverishly checking Fed-Ex on M9 does not send a good signal to your kids. If any of you are thinking of doing that, please donât let your kids see you. Youâre sending the message that this is way too important to wait until the date you were told to wait. If that package doesnât come, no words or facial restraint on M10 will override the message sent beforehand.
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@ChoatieMom I didnât even tell my wife about signing up for the alerts. She and my D are nervous enough without me making it worse. This is just for me (probably I would let my wife in on the good news if it came early but would still let D wait to be surprised the next morning). But I plan on telling no one that I am doing this unless I have good news to share. Mostly Iâm trying to prep myself for M10 and how it will affect both of them. Donât get me wrong, Iâm impatient and want to know right now. But I try to keep my neurosis to myself.
@Calliemomofgirls thanks for the heads up. Hopefully someone will drop something on the 9th even if it isnât overnight. Iâm set up to get alerts now as soon as a pickup is scheduled, not just day before delivery. But it sounds like it may not matter anyway. Kent was one that we did the inquiry but didnât end up applying. Not a good reason really, she would have been happy with it. But I figured if the first 14 donât take her, Kent probably wouldnât either, and we were sick of the process. So a couple of schools that probably check most of her boxes but maybe have a slightly lower admit rate or some other non major ding didnât make the final list (Kent, Suffield, Cate, Thacher were all ones that were off and on and ultimately stayed off).
Of course you are right about checking the city. Today I feel like Iâm ok to not check. But there is no way I would have that much willpower on the 9th if I know I can find out where exactly she got the love with a couple of clicks.
I hope you are right about her chances. I think the list is fine, but we really werenât setting up for this at all, so her activities and grades arenât what they should be. Grades are good, but she is capable of better. Being the youngest, she has heard 500 times that middle school doesnât matter. So she still has all Aâs, but there are a few A-'s in there, and plenty of A+'s left on the table, because if no one cares why do that extra credit assignment to get the A+?
Plus her interviews were ok not great, and she didnât even try to take SSAT, even though I think if she would have studied just a bit she would do well. Probably not acronym school well, but good enough that she would be above the 50% number at most of her schools she is looking at Iâm guessing.
We have already talked about setting up better for next year if this cycle doesnât go well. She signs up for HS classes next week already, and we will have the dual idea of setting her up if she stays here, and also setting her up for a strong app next year and classes that would help if she transfers.
Is it March 10 yet?
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Wait a second. Iâm your friend and I would be a horrible one if I didnât call this out, both for you and for future parents. Your DD has all Aâs and you are actually saying âshe could do betterâ because she didnât get A+'s and you are already planning on how you could beef up her candidacy for next year?
Are you really under the impression that there is no room for A minuses (or Bâs) in the world of BS admissions? You said she has all Aâs, but then continued to lament that her grades might not be good enough. Either that is the worst humble brag of all time, or your are a really, really tough judge.
Prepare to feel better about yourself: My kids have all gotten Bâs, and even worse (an unfortunate PE situation â sigh). Yep even my âstar studentâ DD2 who got into Andover, Deerfield, Hotchkiss had a couple of (gasp!) Bâs in her academic career. And a 78/80 SSAT. My DD3 applying this year to a similar list as your DD has a very nice sprinkling of Bâs and even a B- or two perhaps.
Of course, Iâm not suggesting that kids can routinely get B minuses and not have it impact their opportunities. But gosh â your amazing girl got all Aâs. Itâs hard to hear a parent really believing that this isnât enough academically. If she doesnât get in, it has nothing to do with her not doing extra credit for an A+. (Again reiterating: you have a fantastic list of plenty of higher-admit schools. Yes, anything can happen, but you have done all the right things to have options.)
All said with love, I promise.
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While I do agree with you that saying Aâs are great and that their DD is doing amazing, but I do want to note that they might be focusing on being an academic recruit. Also, they might have an easier course load than your DDs.