Application questions: SAO, Gateway, other

Prep School Admissions
1

I am confused.

Some schools my child is applying to are on Gateway only, and some are on Gateway, but also on SAO, and some also have a school specific application option as well, and allow you to choose.

I can see through both SAO and Gateway that you can request the teachers’ recommendations, the transcript, and the principal/counselor recommendations. Gateway has an option for an additional recommendation, but I do not see an additional recommendation as an option for SAO. Am I missing it or is it not an option to send an additional recommendation for SAO? I googled and I see some references to being able to send an extra recommendation through SAO, but I don’t know if this was in the past and is not an option now.

If my child has someone writing an extra recommendation for Gateway, can we, perhaps more importantly, and should we, also request this recommendation be sent individually to each SAO school? Should we ask each SAO school if they accept additional recommendations first and ask about the process for submitting it?

Some schools say they prefer their own application or Gateway (where I guess they can ask their own questions) but will also accept SAO. If this is the case, is it a disadvantage to use the SAO? It seems to me to be easier for my child to do the Gateway applications for the schools that only accept Gateway and then use SAO for the others, but easier is not always better, I guess.

Any other logistical application tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

I found this to be confusing too. Ultimately, we ended up using Gateway only, as 4 of the 5 schools TheNextKid applied to took Gateway, and she WANTED to write targeted essays for each school. Then she submitted the 5th app right on the school website and didn’t bother with SAO (even though they were an SAO school).

The SAO application usually isn’t 100% for any school - they all seem to have some kind of “extended” or “additional” essay requirements. So your child may be able to write 3 generic essays, but still have one major non-shared essay to send to each school independently. I don’t know if that’s true for the parent responses as well, but I do recall that the parent questions we had through Gateway had very little overlap school-to-school.

We did find many similarities in the Gateway student essays, and TheNextKid was able to overlap a lot of her content. We copy/pasted ALL the essay questions into one Google Doc, and she wrote the whole set at roughly the same time. When all were done, she copy/pasted back into the Gateway site. Having everything in one file helped her see similarities and simplify the essay writing. I showed her how to set a table of contents so she could navigate quickly between essays, which also helped to maintain her efficiency. It’s a LOT of essays.

I don’t think there’s a disadvantage using SAO. It really boils down to how much work your child will need to put in using one format vs. the other. This time last year, it felt like D had a whole other extracurricular that we had to build into the weekly schedule, and that included parents too! So if SAO appears to be less work, overall, then go for it.

In Gateway, after the Part 1 items are complete, we were able to see which recommendations were required by which schools. They’re not all the same. Due to D’s interests, we had one rec that we really wanted to share with schools, yet only a few schools had an “additional” option for unsolicited recs.

So, we went to each SCHOOL’s website, activated our applicant portal, and submitted through the school’s online upload tool. If you’re applying to lots of schools, it’s lots of work, as those applicant portals are often time-consuming to set up, and all of them have different password rules! The good part is, if you take the time and set these up prooperly now, recording all those passwords somewhere you can find in March, then you’ll see the decisions right away in the applicant portals. This is also the best way to share music or video clips, photos of artwork, or other additional “portfolio” materials that you want to make sure they have in her file.

3

Thank you.

I think the other part that confuses me is that you cannot see the essay questions on Gateway until you pay for that school, right?

I guess I am wondering whether it looks very flakey to pay to see the questions in Gateway, which is essentially starting an application, and then decide to do SAO instead. My guess is yes - but how can we make an informed choice without the information?

I didn’t realize the option about making an account on each school’s portal. I think we had to do that for some schools to schedule an interview, although now I cannot remember which ones. And I didn’t realize that you could submit those supplements through the school’s portal instead of through Gateway or SAO. So I guess I need to go back and look at that more carefully too.

I would appreciate any other logistical application tips!

4

Oh - that’s a good point! You can also see applications from the school portals - but the essay questions can be different than what’s on Gateway!! This actually happened - before we paid for the Gateway appication, we must have seen (and copied) one school’s essays on their own portal… and then D had to rewrite later! She was NOT happy with me that day.

Yes, you do have to pay to move on in the applications. But the school portals may show the full app. Even if it isn’t the same on Gateway or SAO, it should give you some idea of what to expect. How many of your schools use Gateway, and how many SAO? Are there any that use neither? I can’t quite recall, but it seems to me that we were able to see Parts 2 & 3 in Gateway - we just couldn’t enter any text until we paid. I could be wrong about that though.

It can get very confusing - intially, you’re just exploring - does this school have my kid’s sport? What advanced math classes are there? Then you decide to fill in the form to get your name on the mailing list - no plan to apply, just a “why not”? Then you do that 10 more times. And suddenly, you find you’ve put your name in for some, but not all. Some schools have started emailing and sending you postcards for open houses. Other schools are silent even though you KNOW you filled in the form. Should you fill it in again (yes, you should)? And now you have to choose which to apply to - but you still haven’t seen a viewbook from what you think is your #1…

Let me assure you, it gets worse. :slight_smile:

Take some time to write down everything you do for each school. Some use a spreadsheet, some have a special notebook, some use a note app like OneNote. Write down whether you filled in a form, and what it was for! Some schools have seperate forms for interest (viewbooks) and open houses (as in, signing up for an open house does not sign you up for a viewbook - go figure). Keep track of passwords. Note the day of the interview, who the interviewer is, and who the tour guide was. If you do open houses or class visits, note down those dates too - it all blurs after a while.
Keep all the upcoming due dates tidy - we had 3 different due dates for applications, and we got a late start, so we had to be strategic in setting up interviews. Get in the habit of keeping tabs on when recommendations were submitted - Gateway will show you when it’s done; I would expect the same from SAO. And set up a planned follow-up date to check up on late stuff. We had a weird thing happen with the elementary transcript - the guidance counselor didn’t tell me she wasn’t including 6th grade and I panicked last minute when the transcript was still showing as not complete! Christmas vacation is not a good time to email teachers about urgent requests.

It may feel like you have plenty of time, but Jan 15 is coming FAST. Be as organized as possible and it will be far less stressful. Even if you do use both Gateway and SAO.

5

You are able to see the questions in Gateway before paying you just cannot actually input anything. Just click on Part 2 and you will be brought to a screen from which you can view the questions.

6

Thank you! I just figured this out myself the other day.

I am finding the logistics of the application process very confusing and I am usually good with logistics!

7

I understand, it is overwhelming! Nothing like typing an application on an actual typewriter which is the last school application I did.