I did some research on here and saw a couple of posts saying boarding school can actually hurt your chances of getting into near ivy’s and ivy league colleges. I really doubt it, but if someone has an opinion or knows something about this please respond. Thanks 
The theory goes that at the very top boarding schools there are so many qualified students, many of whom are hooked in some way (e.g. sports, legacy), that for many very qualified students it is very hard to stand out among their peers and that (another theory) highly selective colleges and universities will only accept a limited number of students from any given boarding school so there may be some students who might have received acceptances from their LPS or a good but not tippy-top boarding school where they would likely have stood out.
Can anyone also weigh in on the geographic diversity factor and Boarding School. Let’s say your from Montana and go to a NE boarding school. When you apply to college, will you then be considered as a student from Montana (home state ) or a student from Academy X from NE :)? Second scenario can be if you’re from a place with a great in-state university system ( Virginia, California, Michigan, U of You, etc)… You can go to BS come back to your home state as a competitive student and get in-state tuition. That happened to our nephew who had a great BS experience and then got great tuition $$$ package at a UC school :)…, just saying because he was FA for both.
I think the way it usually works, at least at the smaller colleges, is that the college admissions rep who is responsible for your kid’s school’s territory would be their advocate in the process however I am sure that they would note the geographic diversity from the application. In a way, it’s a win - win. I don’t know how it works at the larger schools that do not put as much emphasis on holistic review.
From an interview perspective, the interview will be according to where you are attending school. And NMSF, of course, is based upon the location of the school.
From a pure admissions perspective, since intl students attending BS in the US are considered intl for college admissions, I would think that from a geographic diversity perspective (which I’m not sure how meaningful that really is), the college would consider the applicant as from MT. However, it probably varies by college.
@ekstatikk you can doubt it all you want but it is true. You will be coming from a school with far more applicants to those schools than there will be from generic public and those applicants will all be tremendous.
And, it is very hard to be at the very tippy top of a rigorous BS class. Remember, all of the kids admitted to those schools are high-achievers and mostly all-A top-scoring students, but 50% of those excellent kids will find themselves at the bottom of the class even though they are no less excellent than when they matriculated. You will be competing against your peers in a VERY, VERY top-heavy pool. And that pool will also include students who were destined to go to those tippy top colleges before they even got to BS for genetic reasons that aren’t acquired by attending BS.
Anyone looking at BS thinking that it will give them an edge in college admissions with “those” schools should think very carefully. There have been many posters here who learned this lesson the hard way.
Of course, the stellar education received at BS WILL help you hit the ground running at the excellent college you attend, but there are hundreds of excellent colleges. Right? 
The Stella bs education will more or less compensate any loss of admission chance if there is. It will also enrich the student’s life much beyond college admission.
If you apply ED, you will not be in the same pool as the rest of your BS class since you can only choose one ED school and it is unlikely that everyone will choose the same one. For EA and RD there will be significant overlap between applications.
I understand it might hurt your chances when it comes to being top of your class, but I’ve read that AO’s at colleges like to see kids making an effort to better their education (boarding schools like Andover do that in the sense of requiring participation in clubs, sports, etc…). Opinions?
Center stated it perfectly. It is JMHO and based on my informal observations but I truly believe no matter where you are applying, if you can be a unicorn or contribute to some type of diversity for the school (ethnic, racial, wealth, geographic, talent, interest, ability), you will have an advantage. Boarding school kids tend to be rich and that’s great for the ability to be full pay. But really, that’s about it. I know someone who actually took their kid out of an elite private school and transferred him to a public school because the parents realized colleges were not looking for the boarding school type kid. (don’t shoot the messenger) So when applying from top (often private/boarding) high schools, you have given yourself a level of competition (your own school) as an additional hoop to try to get through. Gone are the days when schools are looking for students from the most elite places. Now schools are looking to diversify their student body.
I agree this is true for the Ivy/Stanford etc elite colleges.
But the fact is, that most of the students at any of these BS attend excellent, selective colleges. Ivies are not the only excellent colleges. I do think it’s extremely hard to get into Ivy/Stanford from anywhere, unless you are a recruited athlete.
My concern is more about FA. Do you think BS students get into selective colleges if they need merit aid, or are the schools assuming BS applicants would be full-pay? Is this playing ground level with public school students?
Boarding school students can definitely get merit aid. Merit aid is often used by colleges to attract attractive students who don’t qualify for need based aid. It doesn’t matter whether you come from public or private. In some cases, colleges would love to attract a student from a top boarding school.
It also depends on what your public school options are. Where we live, the public schools have just about as many tippy top candidates as the private day or boarding schools. My son probably wouldn’t have done any better if he’d gone to the local public high school. Would he have stood out more at the local public high school if we lived in Podunksville, USA? Yes, but we don’t, so that was never part of the comparison for us. But more to the point, I totally agree with @SculptorDad that the value of attending a BS is about the educational experience, not about the college results. I would pick the experience he’s had at BS over greater certainty of “top” college results (assuming that’s even true) all day long.
I’d like to think that admission game for the ultra selective is like the stock market. All that has an impact is already factored in, and therefore there’s little room for individual investors to speculate. Look closely at the schools you are familiar with. School selectivity, academic rigor, school reputation locally and nationally, legacy, diversity, athletes… are all factored in the outcome. It’s true that matriculation stats are “exaggerated” by the existence of the hooked, but don’t you think they are exaggerated in ALL schools proportionally? The school that has two Harvard admits may still have one of them a hooked applicant. The school that has 10 could have 4 unhooked… It’s not easy to make it to top in rigorous prep schools, but it’s not easy to do so in an academically challenging magnet school or a competitive public high school either. Where you can easily make to the top, you don’t get much of a chance anyway because of its rigor perceived by AOs. There are 36,000+ high schools just in the US. It’s not difficult to find a school where you can make to the top, but it doesn’t mean your chance of getting in the ultra selective is any better. So, buckle up and work hard where you are, don’t try to find that magic bullet or shortcut, and stop whining!
p.s. If there’s any hook you can “create” out of “the thin air”, it may be the geographic area diversity hook. Then you run the risk of moving to Montana and end up still not getting in your dream college in the end!
I thought that starting a thread to discuss the topic of small fish-big pond vs. big fish-small pond might be relevant right now given the recent posts on several existing threads including this one, but then I found this gem and I thought it might be better just to share this and encourage folks to take a look at it:
Among the many good posts is this:
Thanks for sharing the link to the thread @AppleNotFar . Choosing the right home is how my DD is approaching the process. That is why she checks out the bathrooms, the dorm, study spaces, gym, the wifi & hotspot situation, the potential “family” she will be living with, and how happy the students & teachers appear to be at the school. We also look ahead a few years - is this where you can grow? Can you see yourself here at 17 or 18 years old? Will you have the opportunities for travel, community service, connections for summer internships, and research opportunities? Does the school see itself as a home to students?
People on CC often write about AC’s building a class – I think this is difficult to accomplish unless you are really building a class on stats. Many BS view books will write that the schools wants students who have strong leadership, moral strength, pass ui for learning, ( you fill in the blank…). On a side note, do you notice how so many of the BS admissions videos look the same, have similar scripts, and music ? Our kids BS two thousand miles away looks the same as one for a NE school! Do they all hire the same company? ;). I. Waiting for some creative BS student to make a fake admissions video and post it on YouTube . Please post the thread if it’s been done.
Remember , the BS works for you too! Those are 50-60 Grover Clevelands they are holding. So do look at the BS “class” of AC & faculty. We read the bio’s on the faculty and review the school’s stats on their faculty. Where did faculty go to school? How long have they been at the school? Good faculty retention? Who is on the Board? We view the process from both sides. We are interviewing the school, also. We want to know their philosophy on nurturing a healthy environment at school, not only education and college placement. My DD didn’t even mention college hopes in her interview – she knows that her BS experience will be more “collegiate” than the experience she sees her friends & cousins getting now in college.
We want to know who will be, in large part, raising our children for the next 4 years-- and which school appears open in working in partnership with us parents. Some do, some don’t. I think the thread posted above provides many insights and experiences that prove helpful, as well as validating for
Sorry- typo - “validating for us parents”…
See you soon on the tee box
Interesting question though I think it extends beyond strictly boarding schools. Same issues apply to urban magnet public schools, academically selective private high schools and prestigious, affluent suburban public schools and wherever else “Top 10%” excludes many, many kids who are just as bright and accomplished.
As to the statement that classmates will not be in the same ED pool: 3 of 5 prefects for my daughter’s dorm all applied ED to the same Ivy. 2 admitted ED. A fourth applied to that Ivy RD and was also admitted.