Advice for Those Searching from Afar...

Prep School Admissions
1

Apologies in advance if there are previous threads on this topic, but I find the search function works best when searching for more specific keywords or proper names (like schools!)

What is the best advice for those who live far away and have limited travel budgets? It is easy to envy folks who can visit 12 schools to narrow their list to 6 :wink: We might be able to swing a single 2-4 day trip, but our current targets are too spread out – from Virginia to Mass and many points in between – to be covered easily.

I’ve heard conflicting advice, from “you MUST invest in doing in-person interviews on-site at your top choice schools if you want to get in, especially with FA”
 to “save your money so you can travel for revisits to any schools that offer your kid a spot.”

Care to weigh in?

2

Many boarding school admissions reps are on the road doing visits. Have you checked websites to see their schedules? Maybe they will be visiting near you.

For example, here is the current schedule for SPS: http://www.sps.edu/Page/Admission/On-The-Road

3

There are often boarding school fairs held in/near major US cities
 often held at schools, sometimes at hotels. And some schools (esp smaller ones) hold “admission receptions” at a hotel or at the home of an alum or current student’s family. Those events usually require RSVPs. If you contact the schools in which you have an interest, they’ll be happy to let you know if there will be opportunities for you to connect with them in or near your area.

4

Great to hear about other options for meeting admissions staff.

What about getting a better sense of “fit”? Isn’t that why locals visit so many schools? Should we use our limited travel dollars to only visit schools where our kid is accepted? How does one figure out cultural “fit” from afar, beyond school size, offerings, and other info readily available on their website?

5

Many schools are happy to connect you to current parents/students
 after you’ve expressed a serious interest in the school. I have spoken to a number of long-distance families on behalf of my daughter’s school, usually after the kids have been admitted and they are trying to decide. Not everyone is able to visit schools in person, and the schools want the right fit as much as the families do, so they are usually very supportive in the process. (Even though we are relatively close by, every school that admitted my daughter gave me a long list of parents I could call and talk to about the school(s).

6

If you really can swing a 3-4 day trip, you can see a remarkable number of schools. It would be hard to do the entire northeast and mid-Atlantic, but you could do everything you wanted (with some careful planning) between New Hampshire and New Jersey, or do Virginia and then fly up and hit Massachusetts and New Hampshire or Connecticut. It’s doable, and you can probably hit 80% of your targets.

That said, my suggestion would be to do as much pre-work with parents and alumni to get a flavor before it starts so you are visiting the right schools. You should be able to cut the “12” number down and visit schools that you are very serious about. Maybe that number is only 7 or 8 and you will wind up applying to most of them. That much culling you can do without much risk of “missing” the one you really wanted. And if after the fact something pops up that you missed, so be it. You’ll do the best you can and you won’t miss the schools that you value the most in each competitive category (reach, likely, safe).

I certainly understand the financial and time constraints, but in the context of the overall process and importance, I don’t think you can replace a campus visit especially when school is in session.

It’s not the interviews–(although obviously interviewing in person is preferable when possible) because I do think that AOs are pretty understanding and most are now adept at video interviews. But to get a sense of the place, the rhythms, and the student body–how do people behave towards each other campus–it’s critical. Do kids seem rushed? Does your kid have comfort with the dress code, diversity, library, coaches, music practice spaces? Most importantly: Do I fit in? That’s all about envisioning yourself in that community. Friends, current students, a webchat, a local reception–they can’t really give you that information. They are data points, not the whole picture.

All of that said, obviously there are plenty of people who have highly successful outcomes and only see the school on revisits and have great experience wherever they enroll. But I would weigh in heavily on the “do whatever you can afford to get yourself to places that you are serious about, in person.”

7

I have to agree with MrWendal. We had a number of really good visits (and one awful one)
 but when we got to the final school on the list, it was obvious that it was her clear favorite. Almost immediately, she connected with “her people” and said she could picture herself there. (Hats off to the AOs who arrange for applicants to connect with kids who have similar interests!) It is harder to get that authentic vibe from just the school’s website and social media sites (and yet, there are many families who cannot make a pre-application visit, and things work out just fine
).

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@calimex, do you think that you’ll be able to do the re-visits for admitted students in the spring? I totally agree with everyone here about the importance of being on campus to “get the vibe”, but you’re probably fine doing shorter visits on this first trip (and possibly skipping a few if you can make connections in other ways) as long as you’re sure that before you enroll, you’ll have a chance to visit in person for at least a full day.

Having just done an exhausting round 2 of this (the college admissions), one of the things that I would say at this point is that while there are some places that you’ll eliminate or love based on the first visit, the more important investment of time and energy is the schools that have admitted you. At this point, you want them to know you are interested, but if you convey that (and that you have budget constraints), they’ll understand. Especially if you ask if you can connect with local families (and current students during breaks.) These schools DO tend to be on the road. The only exception may be if you are trying to connect with coaches.

As for figuring out fit, beyond being there (which is best), you may be able to access a fair amount online. Whether it’s a weekly slide show of events on campus, blogs of student writers, a “news and events” page – it’ll give you a bit of flavor for what the school is emphasizing. The schools’ FB pages are also somewhat revealing.

9

lol after typing everything i realised how long this is sorryyy

I’m an international student who has been accepted by the boarding school that I believe is the best fit, without ever stepping foot into America for revisits nor interviews. I’m gonna start my first year there this September so I don’t know if I will regret my decision BUT based on what I have seen online and my personal experience with the school I believe the fact that I chose to attend this school is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Here are some takeaways from my experience. Take this with a grain of salt bc I haven’t attended yet but I believe its something good to know.

I applied to MANY schools (i’ll let you guess how many but its a two digit number) because going to boarding school has been my dream and even though I’ve always been drawn to Andover I didn’t want to take the risk of not being accepted anywhere. Looking back I probably should have applied to less, but it’s really been a learning experience for me. The whole process of applying has also helped me discover which school is the best fit for me so if you’re worried that you can’t find out which one is the best for you, you and your child probably will during the application process itself.

One of the most important things to do if you can’t actually visit the school themselves: Always, ALWAYS sign up for ALL of the events that the school has in your area. I learned a LOT about these schools from these events, and its not just the things that the school representatives tell you but also the way it is organized and obviously you can ask a ton of questions to get a better understanidng of the school’s culture.

Some examples:

  1. one of the schools that I felt was absolutely gorgeous from pictures and I've heard good things about from other applicant's parents whos been to visit held a reception in my country. Around that same time, there had been a scandal at the school (which I only found out about a few weeks before the reception), and I wanted to find out how the school is handling it since it concerns my safety, and the environment and culture that I would spend two years in. When a parent asked the school official, the official gave what was admittedly a good answer that addressed the basic safety of the students BUT what I wanted to hear - the handling of the culture and "tradition" that caused the scandal in the first place - was not mentioned at all. Even though the parent asked the official why would such a terrible thing happen in the first place, the official only answered with things like "we're adding new security measures" I knew then that it wasn't the kind of school I wanted.
  2. The interviews made a big impact on how I decided which school was the best fit for me. For example, the interviewer of the same school as above was half an hour late for our Skype interview, and honestly I may be biased against it but it felt like he didn't care about the interview at all. I was asked questions like what kind of subjects I would take, whats my favourite sport, what ECs I enjoy etc, but I was not asked things like whats my favourite book, what about the school makes me want to attend, which are some of the common questions that require a lot more thought and would probably reveal a lot about the student and asked during most of my other interviews. It might not prove anything but it just didn't give me a great vibe.

On the other hand I have schools that I was kind of meh about at first but after the interviews I completely fell in love with. There was an alumni interview where the alumni assigned has actually stopped living in my country but offered to meet me when he came back for a business meeting. I was also really impressed by him because it was one of the few interviews that felt more like a discussion between adults sharing opinions than an interview. He asked me what my favourite book was and why, and I told him it was Americanah and then after that we launched into a discussion about feminism vs intersectional feminism and how that was reflected in the book, and when I asked him whats his best takeaway from that school he said it was the ability to talk in paragraphs and not sentences, and honestly that bumped the school even higher on my list.

Another interview was held in a hotel, like in those afternoon tea places in the hotel? Anyways I was really cold (like shivering and everything lol) because the aircon, man, the aircon was ridiculous. the interviewer actually bought me tea to warm up.
I didn’t get into the above two schools but the things that happened during the interviews made me look at the school in a completely different light and made me admire them a LOT.

  1. the little things that the school does. Andover drew me in from the interview (again, a great alumni interview that was very informative. One thing I appreciated her doing was that she told me not to worry about her taking down notes and that she's only doing it for the AOs to read and I shouldn't be nervous about it. I knew that but I really liked that she told me nonetheless. ) and the websites and everything, but the only other school I was accepted by was honestly great as well, and if I hadn't been so enamoured with Andover I would have gone there.

Upon indicating my interest in that school, the AO emailed me and told me that she was so excited for me to apply, and told me that they welcomed the first student from my country just this past year and she’d had a great time and she’d be willing to tell me all about the school. It was the most personalised welcome email I’ve received and it really touched me. Even before decision day, the parent of the student called my mom and told her how great the school is. Before the call, my mom and I agreed that if I wasn’t accepted to the top few choices on my list I wouldn’t go at all (the school, despite being great wasn’t near the top as it was a girls’ school and I wasn’t sure about that), but my mom told me after that even if this school was the only one I was accepted to, she’d let me go. (and I would have gladly gone because of how I was treated by the admissions committee)

  1. Another great way is to look at their student-run FB pages. For example, many schools would have humans of New York style FB pages/OOTD pages where you can have a good feel of how the students interact and the culture of the school based on the short interviews and pictures. It might sound kind of stalker-ish but even looking at the comments helped. E.g. Faces of Andover always has the funniest, most touching interviews and the most supportive and hilarious comments, which is something else that drew me to the school. College Confidential is obviously a great source too.

I admit, these things might not be completely telling about the school and you really have to be very perceptive to a lot of the little details during the admissions process to decipher anything, and honestly I may be completely wrong and end up regretting my decision (i hope not!), but when there are no other options available (i.e. for me I couldn’t fly to america for interviews or visits) and its the only thing you could do, I suggest that you pay a lot of attention to these small things, and you’d only gain more insight into the school. For me revisits weren’t an issue because I’d already decided to go to Andover before acceptances were out, and I was only accepted there and the other girls school, so I didn’t have to go for the revisit days (the timing would have clashed with my school schedule anyways) so I don’t know if you’d have difficulty choosing after you were accepted, but honestly i think even if I was accepted by more schools I would have still stuck with the decision I’d made during the application process. p.s. omggg this is so long sorry.

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@JHblue, you could randomly substitute schools’ names and be left with just the same impressions. Or not. For every person that has happened upon a good interviewer from school XYZ you’ll find three who haven’t, and vice versa. Not being able to visit is an understandable limitation, but building an argument of school quality or fit on coincidental evidence can be very misleading. Aren’t we expert in justifying our decisions! I do hope you have a wonderful BS experience. I’m just offering a word of caution (mostly to @CaliMex) against inferring too much about a school from an interview, an AO, one alumni, etc. Our Andover AO, for example, was as cold as a snake, but that doesn’t make PA a bad school. (It doesn’t make the AO bad either - for all I know, maybe she was just having a bad day!) Tomorrow, she may be hired by the school my DD has chosen to attend. It changes nothing about either school.

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Yeah, Guess should have been clearer w my explanation. Obviously an interviewer being late wasn’t why I didn’t feel like I would enjoy being at that school - there were a myriad of other factors- school size, certain school rules that I disagreed with, the way that scandal was handled- I’m sure it’s a great school, but it just didn’t give me a good vibe, or to put it more accurately, the vibe I was looking for. Honestly the only thing one can infer if you can’t visit the campus is the vibe you get. While I say you definitely should do more research based on hard stats if you can’t visit campus and reading student experiences, and you should definitely visit in person if you can, the only thing you can do is base some first impressions on your interaction with a member of the school community- in my case being the AO. It’s like if a student’s revisit host was cold or just a bad fit, it might form a bad impression of the school on the student who may choose not to accept, or if they’re much more broad-sighted (which I admit I’m not tbh) they might ignore it and end up accepting, but it’s a very personal opinion at the end of the day. While you shouldn’t say yes to every school who sends you a nice email, it certainly does help to know that you’re wanted as an applicant which is always nice- after all isnt that what revisits, receptions and tours are supposed to do anyways- to project a good impression of the school, or to showcase their culture and environment that may be a good fit for some and not for others? But then again, I’ve not actually been so I may not know how differently it would have ended up if I did go, so I may wrong.

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@CaliMex, I wouldn’t worry too much about not visiting or interviewing on campus, even when you need signficant FA (especially then!). I know that anecdotal examples don’t prove anything, but let me mention that of the schools that my kid was accepted to, two she didn’t visit and had Skype interviews instead. One of them offered a full scholarship, the other nearly full FA. Conversely, three schools that she did visit and interviewed at waitlisted her. Of all factors taken into account during the admissions process, the mode or medium of interview and the completion of a campus visit seem to be of little importance for applicants who live far away. In fact, many schools mention it on their websites and do not require a tour and on-campus interview for applicants living more than 600(??) miles away (I think
 not sure I remember correctly the mileage). So I am in the “save your money and go for revisits” camp.

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@GoatMama Thank you for chiming in. I really appreciate your advice.

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This thread, and @GoatMama 's comment, remind me that confirmation bias is real. We look for the data that supports what we’ve (mostly ) decided already. No harm in that, but it’s an important filter when you read these posts.

I love DS’ school so much for who he and his friends became while they were there, but it’s not everyone 's cup of tea. And I have no way of knowing who he’d be if he’d gone somewhere else. Almost definitely not the same person he is today, but probably one I’d love just as much. We’re highly adaptable, we humans!

It’s been said before, but BS often know - because they do it hundreds of times every year - who will fit and thrive and who won’t. (Colleges care less about this.) You, on the other hand do it once. Maybe a sibling has done it before, but you are less experienced than the adcoms. Looking helps you figure out more about who you are and what you want, but I’m going to guess that in the end, a very high percentage end up happy with where they ended up.

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@gardenstategal thanks for this. Families making a choice about where the kid is going to spend some very formative years is scary for many reasons, one of which is knowing that the kid (and your family) will have a different future depending on which path is taken. This was such a leap of faith for us! Letting go of the known, and making a best guess among the unknowns. We tried our very hardest to gather as much info as we could and then we had to let our kid take the leap and then we followed.

I think the choice about visits depends on what your family needs to feel comfortable to make a decision–to take that leap of faith. In our case we needed to visit each school at least once–I think that’s true for both our kid and for my husband and me. IOW, DC wouldn’t have gone to a school that wasn’t visited, and DH and I wouldn’t have let DC go to a school we had not seen. But that was US in THIS case. I think that there can be a variety of factors for each family that will determine if a visit is needed in order for the leap of faith to be taken.

The one reflection I would add regarding on-campus tour/interview vs. revisit day is that you might find that scheduling the on-campus tour/interview more convenient than making the trek on the revisit days because those revisit dates are set by the schools. And DC mentioned that at one school there were 2 kids at the revisit day that were there alone without parents. I’m not sure how I feel that would have worked for us, but it certainly could have saved us some $$$ and days off from work.

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Our experience was similar to GoatMama’s-we made an effort to get to most schools from far away- but DD was accepted with FA to the one school we didn’t visit. She had an off campus interview with an AO. Schools will list their travel schedules in the fall. We believe DD success came down to ‘fit’-

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@calimex – We have done it both ways. With DS we attended local fairs and only went back for revisits. He was accepted to all five schools he applied to, with all Skype interviews. With DD, we were back there anyway to visit our son, so we managed to visit four schools for her and interview at each. She was wait listed at two of those four schools. I am in Goatmama’s camp that in person interviews do not matter as much as people make them out to. HOWEVER, it was really beneficial for my daughter to tour the campuses and get a feel for them. One school we landed there during their Open House, which was especially helpful (also had tour + interview). I do on some level wish that we had been able to also do this for my son the year prior.

Feel free to pm me–I see you are in CA? We are too :slight_smile:

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There are actually two distinct questions that should be addressed separately: one relates to application outcomes, the other to fit. The consensus seems to be that 1) while visiting is unrelated to outcomes, 2) it is essential for determining fit. Similarly, most everyone agrees that pre-application visits are easier than school-scheduled revisits.

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@GoatMama What I got from the thread is that there is much more flexibility in scheduling pre-application visits, but that it may be more cost effective to only visit those schools that have admitted the student in order to determine best fit. It is the rare candidate that gets accepted to all of the schools to which they applied. Your kid is the exception, not the norm! Maybe one should save $ and just revisit if one is torn between two schools that have offered admission
 Or to double check that one’s only BS choice is preferable to local options?

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I agree with your summary, but to set the record straight, my kid actually had a 50% success rate. Her multiple admissions had more to do with the fact that she applied to so many (too many!) schools.