<p>Talkative IS GOOD!</p>
<p>These schools are not holding the hands of ANY applicants. </p>
<p>That is the fundamental culture that your child and you will deal with if child goes there.
Yes, there are advisors and lines of communication with the parents. But this is not home or a day-school with ties to the families and folks in the local community.</p>
<p>At one school the director of admissions (also our interviewer) told me that my S had done “as well as anyone possibly could, and had done everything perfectly”…he was waitlisted.</p>
<p>Another school told us to keep in touch as we left. When i asked the AO for advice on other schools to consider (less competitive ones) the AO said “well don’t rule out (name of school)” or something like that… and he was accepted. We were shocked since this school is more competitive than the first one! I wonder if they liked our humble approach since we all thought he wouldn’t be accepted lol. </p>
<p>You just never know!</p>
<p>Back to the point, no matter what the AO said, he can not make the cut by himself. There are so many factors that contribute to the success. If you got nice words from AO, you may just have a good interview. He may or may not advocate for you during the decision process because there are so many applicants and he might say similar things to others as well.</p>
<p>Agree with f2000, I think the AO’s all play it pretty close to the vest. They are there to do their thing, and keep you interested, not to tell you the result one way or the other, until all the data is in. </p>
<p>After all is said and done, I go with the folks who say the committee is putting together a class. It’s possible the AO at the time of the interview thinks your son is the one oboe player they need that year, come to find out 3 more just as good or better oboe players were interviewed by his colleagues in the same round.</p>
<p>Also, because so many kids have great grades and scores, it comes down to the recommendations. Keep in mind that the AO does not have those yet at the time of the interview.</p>
<p>We are finishing our 5th of 5 schools today. My daughter is not applying to HADES schools… but it is still nice when the director of admissions (who said he would speak with daughter for 20 minutes and then spent 45) says ‘Not only will she do well at this school, she will be good for this school. If she speaks to the right people she will have a lot of very nice admissions.’ Basically, though my daughter has a very unconventional school background, our educational consultant seems to have done a very good job of finding great matches for her profile, and all the AO’s have raved about her maturity, insight, self awareness, intellect etc. </p>
<p>She says of the admissions process ‘They have no reason not to accept me, but I know there are factors that are outside my control.’ </p>
<p>She wrote brief thank you notes by email, everyone replied within an hour of her sending them!! Fingers crossed that she has a few choices in a few weeks.</p>
<p>Congratulations, TTT. A good ed consultant can be so helpful. We didn’t use one this time around, but have done so in the past with very happy results.</p>