For those folks who are now beginning to think about the next admission cycle, I want to say it again: looking beyond New England could be in your best interest. Too often families only consider the reputation and location of the schools in MA, NH, CT & RI, but this year I watched some eyes get opened after a tough season last year. The NJ trio of Lawrenceville, Peddie, and Blair can and will impress many if given a chance–plus they are perfect if you want the opportunity for swimming and crew. Mercersburg, no crew, and St. Andrew’s are a bit farther in you’re local to Andover or St. Paul’s, but if getting in somewhere is important, those schools along with the other, mostly smaller schools in PA and NJ should at least be considered. (I’m betting one of the kids my kid swam with who got waitlisted by the only two schools to which they applied last year, Hotchkiss and Deerfield, winds up at Peddie this year after a breakout swim season and a bit of wisdom. Or Andover. They love Andover now, too. The kid’s mother flat-out admitted she had never even heard of Peddie last year and considered schools like Loomis Chaffee unworthy of her kid until they didn’t get into Hotchkiss and Deerfield.)
It gets repeated all the time, but for good reason: cast widely your net and find your school.
Good advice! @GnarWhail Except your bet on Andover (or Peddie to a slightly lesser degree) for the kid is quite bold! How can one have a better than random chance in Andover than in Deerfield or Hotchkiss? These are all very selective schools. Stick to your point and suggest folks to cast a wider net to include some schools outside their home area!
Agree, Gnar! Mercersburg, though somewhat remote, is an amazing community with fantastic facilities and a superb swimming program. When I was there in the mid 80s, it was THE place to be, and a perennial Easterns champion. From what I understand, they’re still very competitive.
Well, @panpacific the kid would have gotten into Andover last year, I bet. Perfect fit for a school with just a wee bit more flexibility in who they CAN take in comparison to Deerfield and Hotchkiss. I’m thinking it would have happened. Maybe not.
But a kid who went from 89/90ish on the SSAT to very high 90s as a 9th grader, with astounding swimming improvement and an interesting–and also outstanding–academic and family background WITH the wisdom gained from having been clocked upside the head last year, well, Peddie is going to drop all the love on that kid this year. For that school to pass on that kid would be a huge mistake, and I trust Peddie doesn’t make that mistake too often. We’ll see, but I’d take the bet. (Peddie also would have been a great fit last year, as the swimming improvement this year shows, but the narrow focus on two schools, well…)
Regardless, those good people learned their lesson about misplaced feelings of entitlement, and that should be a lesson for us all.
Hmmm… When a school has an admit rate in teens, let’s say things quickly become “fluid”. Look at the results posted on this site on M10, you’d know how brutal and bloody the game could get. No one is “spared”. And, even Peddie makes that “mistake” you mentioned all of the time but I give you that Peddie may be a safer bet for someone who is highly competitive for Deerfied. @GnarWhail
There are actually many schools in MA & NH besides the top few frequently mentioned here. I know the point is to look beyond the top schools, just mentioning that there are some hidden gems in New England.
The NE schools get more looks, I think, though, than the beyond-Big-6 schools not in NE. Heck, when you live in NE, you might live relatively near a boarding school. If you live far away from it, then New England is the hackneyed boarding school fantasy land, and I honestly believe it gives an advantage to those schools over schools in other locales. The sad fact is that some prospective boarding school families only look at schools in MA, NH, CT & RI because they don’t really know any better. Is that changing? It appears so, slowly, so that’s good.
I’ve heard of HADES and GLADCHEMMS, but not Big 6. At the risk of perpetuating the very issue of concern on this thread, which schools count among the 6?
I do think the proximity issue you hint at is a big one for families. I know of many folks for whom a 2-3 hour drive is the max comfort zone. There’s also lots of logistical issues that are avoided when you stay within this radius. While we live quite far away, the NE schools and mid-Atlantic ones were within our comfort zone because we have friends and/or family in both areas. We felt better with the assurance that someone we know and trust can get to our kid easily within 2 hours. We also decided that the logistical challenges were worth the cost and trouble for our kid to have the BS experience, but that’s not practical or desirable for everyone. I guess I would’ve thought that folks in NE would be more familiar with the great number of schools that are close by and include more than just the oft-mentioned ones to their application lists. But I must be wrong.
Another curious issue for me is why folks whose comfort zone extends across the country, and even the world, limit their lists to those few schools in NE, and of greater interest, what can reasonably be done to change that, if anything. I’d like to think that most are unaware as we were. From what I can tell, people who live where we do find out about boarding schools from the letters and brochures they receive after their kids take the SAT/ACT as part of one those talent search programs. We decided not to have DC do this so we never received those materials. I am curious as heck about them because from what I’ve heard people read them and believe that they practically guarantee admission and free tuition. Once people started finding out that DC was applying to BS I must have heard from at least a dozen people that Exeter wanted their kid so badly they could’ve gone for free, or that their kid briefly considered going to Andover because the school was “really recruiting” their kid! Somehow these materials convey that it’s pretty easy to get into Exover, so why in the world would they think they’d have to cast a wider net, even if they knew there was a wider net to cast?
I’m guessing that the wide net schools don’t have the budget and/or inclination to make lots of off-site visits or send a bunch of targeted mailings. I also think that in evaluating the value proposition of sending their kid far away to boarding school, people place an enormous value on the perceived name-recognition/prestige of the school. And I further suspect that the kids who are likely applicants come from good schools in the first place so if you’re sending the kid away you may as well get the brand value that your good local school doesn’t have. Lastly, for folks who live far away and don’t go visit the schools, the big brand might provide assurance that a school is a tested and trustworthy place to send your child; they are perceived as known quantities. And that’s not a little thing for parents of young teenagers! The lesser-known schools therefor have the double challenge of getting on people’s radars in the first place and then surviving the image comparison with the more well-known schools.
It seems that in the absence of bigger (costly) advertising and outreach efforts, the greatest advertisement for the hidden gems all over the country is the personal reference of the parents and alums. It would be great to know how many people have @twinsmama to thank for leading them to Mercersburg (to name but one example on this forum alone)? It also seems that educational consultants would tend to expose families to broader opportunities for those who are willing and able to invest in those services. What else can be done @GnarWhail ?
Outside CHADES and GLADCHEMMS, think of St. George’s most beautiful campus oceanside, and MIddlesex, Concord Academy in Massachusetts (lesser known), and Rocky Hill (day school) in RI. All fantastic for those casting a wider net.
I’m sorry, but these schools have a history, and that short story is that what we know of boarding schools started after coeducation when the schools went from warehouses for the sorry sons of privilege and started to experiment with being truly (more) broadly rigorous and began to expand the franchise to (more) talented and deserving students. Not very much at all of that happened before ~ 1970. (That’s not entirely true, but works for this discussion.)
The stupid acronyms may be made up nonsense, but as the most famous schools really got rolling in the late 70s and began transforming themselves into the sorts of schools we see today, the Big 5 were clearly demarcated within the boarding school community.
That is a fact. By the time the NYT magazine wrote a cover story about those five schools in the early 80s, it was old news to the folks working in that broader boarding school world. That was the story of how the old money and insular institutions were quite rapidly living up to reputations that they had but would not have deserved 20 years earlier. The most famous schools had the most dramatic transformations first.
There really aren’t many schools in our world and most of the people in them, especially back then, were completely anonymous, but they knew the score and were quite honest (at least behind closed doors, away from the parents and the students and the donors) about where their particular school fit in the larger scheme.
I understand that most people are new to this pocket universe of American boarding schools, and you drift in and drift out as you or your children move on, and that your experience is naturally limited, but the history is real.
Today we live in a (small) world where many more of these schools have grown into dynamic institutions with money and facilities and opportunities. These are the best of days for so many schools, but no one should misunderestimate how much influence those traditionally top-tier still have.
Pro-tip: Always listen to the workers. Take what the trustees or the head of school or the dean says to you with an Everest-sized grain of salt. Those people are too often full of themselves and full of bull pucky. Wonderfully inspiring speeches made to impress the parents are useless. If you have the opportunity, get to know the folks who might have been there a while. Not the ones collecting giant checks. The ones who have been working to keep the place running a little more beyond the spotlight. Not always possible, especially if you’ll be long gone in 4 or 3 years, but if you live in NE or a similar area, you might know or know of someone working at a boarding school. If you attended and now your kids do, you might still recognize someone. Maybe you live nearby and spend more time on campus than most parents or grandparents. These schools all have little quirks of history and personality but on a much smaller, more personal scale than a college or university, and if you can get some ground-level info about the institution with which you are associated, you might get your perspective broadened in unexpected ways.
@AppleNotFar I’m not sure there’s much to be done to broaden the view for some folks. Horse water drink and all. With the internets now and spots like this, some people will get some perspective, but the bigger the school, the bigger the pull of gravity even before marketing and recruiting. The fact will always be that the smaller schools have more local reputations, but that’s human nature. I got into a rather insane discussion with a parent a couple of months ago because they didn’t think anything other than Hotchkiss, Choate or Andover was worth paying for and that their local high school would be better than likes of Loomis Chaffee or Peddie. We have known the kid for ages and I dearly hope they get in as they are lovely and talented and would be great at boarding school, but that parent is sadly lacking in perspective. Willful ignorance is human nature, too.
@GnarWhail I agree with you at lest partially that some schools are indeed better known than others and are leaders of the industry, just like there are some leaders in almost every other industry. But what is the big-6 you mentioned earlier?
" Went from warehouses for the sorry sons of privilege … " OMG- @GnarWhail - I am sitting on my hands.
FWIW- Most BSs were all-boys, but when Jimmy Carter was President enrollment was down ( like through the cellar floor down ), and money was scarce. Most schools HAD to become coed in order to survive. If you’re looking for someone to thank for all the beautiful BSs we have today, thank the Sorry Sons of Privilege . It was that generation of alums who rallied and kept the lights on.
I understand that many folks have a very limited understanding of the true history of these schools. Facts are fluid things. History is all opinion. Reading, hard. Pre-coeducation, which began before Carter and often through the merger/absorption of sister schools, and lead of course by those biggest/richest, these schools were drab and dreary places for many of the students AND staff. But what all the students did have was familial wealth, on that you are certainly correct @PhotographerMom That is in fact exactly what I said. That is also the key to all this. Those sorry sons of privilege had a vested interest in the ongoing reputation of their schools. They did what they did as much (more) for themselves than they did for you or me. But what they did worked, and again, I said as much. The transformation to more broadly rigorous schools which were also (somewhat) more inclusive came as the schools (somewhat) changed their perspective. The money was always there, but finally in the early 70s and on onward, due much to the broader changes in education and society, the wealth and privilege and cash money were put to what many would consider a (somewhat) more noble purpose. Very few of the new families entertaining the thought of sending their kid to a boarding school in 2017 would have bothered in 1957. For good reason. Coeducation and a recognition of academic ability did wonders. We are living with the results today. Lucky us.
Not all were “sorry sons of privilege.” Some were the beneficiaries. Often these schools were affiliated with a branch of a Protestant church. My grandfather was the son of an Episcopal minister. He and his two brothers attended an Episcopal school for free as was the custom at the time. He became a successful businessman and when the school discontinued the practice of free tuition for children of the clergy he endowed a scholarship that covers the tuition of many children of ministers every year. I attended a different school, Kent, that was founded by an Episcopal monk who introduced a sliding scale tuition so that access was not limited to the rich. The amount of financial aid granted today, relative to the size of the endowment, remains among the highest of all boarding schools.
@GnarWhail - Are you suggesting that the " Sorry Sons of Privilege " just handed over enormous sums of money without requiring a say, strings, and a nonnegotiable path/ vision forward? If that’s what you are saying, you’re completely wrong. The people who stepped up back then were the architects/ visionaries, and to suggest that they did so solely because their identity/ego was at stake, is patently false, ridiculous and just a little offensive .
and suggest folks to cast a wider net to include some schools outside their home area!