<p>Hi All ~ Brand new to this site. Not even sure where to post, but this section seemed appropriate. I have a daughter currently enrolled in 10th grade at a California public high school. Her father and I are divorced, and every summer for the past three years she has traveled to Maine to visit her aunt and uncle for one week each summer. During these visits, she became good friends with a nice circle of what we both call
her "east coast friends." . This summer she was out in Maine for six weeks. Upon returning home she told me that she absolutely had to go to boarding school. That boarding school was the only way she could "achieve her dream of attending a college like Dartmouth or Georgetown." School started back on 8/14 and she is now telling me the teachers are horrible, the kids at her school don't want to learn, and that she HAS to apply to boarding school in order to succeed.</p>
<p>My daughter attended a private school K-8 and chose to go to this public school where almost all of her private school classmates were going. She is a great student and athlete. 9th grade year in high school was very normal. She made new friends, did amazing with her grades and played a varsity sport. But after the extended stay in Maine with a group of kids that all attend boarding school, she has come back a changed kid. Her dreams can only be achieved if she attends a boarding school on the east coast. Her uncle is a graduate of this boarding school and he spoke with her about it, even emailing her links to various schools on the east coast and offering to speak to both her dad and I about the subject. </p>
<p>I am hesitant to act on her request, as I still want to be an integral part in her daily life for the next 2-3 years. In addition I feel that if her end goal is to simply guarantee entry into a prestigious college, that in and of itself is not a good enough reason to want to move across the country for 11th and 12th grades. Can anyone please offer some insight and guidance? I am struggling with this one. I would be so very thankful for any input. </p>
<p>There are many public school students who attend Ivy League and other high profile schools.</p>
<p>Your daughter needs the best possible GPA, and the best possible SAT scores.</p>
<p>Also, unless money is no object for your family…you might want to save your money for college…if her high school is a good one.</p>
<p>Her complaining should not guilt you into sending her to private school (which quite frankly could already have full classes for this school year anyway).</p>
<p>ETA…some of these private schools are outstanding. But your kid doesn’t have to go to a boarding school to get an excellent education. There are plenty of private day schools, and public schools that provide excellent educations as well.</p>
<p>Do you have access to Naviance at her current high school? Some public high schools fare better than some boarding schools in matriculation results, so I would start by evaluating this claim.
You may find it helpful to review some of the threads in the boarding school subforum (under Pre-College) about factors to consider (like cost, impact to family, athletic implications).</p>
<p>Your daughter is either misinformed or trying to manipulate/guilt you into something she simply wants. There’s no reason high-achieving students from public schools can’t get into those colleges. One of my daughter’s friends from her public high school is now at Georgetown and I’m pretty sure there are others as well. Don’t know about Dartmouth–it doesn’t seem to be popular at our school and I don’t know of anyone who applied there. Also consider that her ideas about where she wants to go to college may change quite a bit after she’s done some visits and thought about it some more. I wouldn’t spend money on boarding school on such a flimsy idea.</p>
<p>What does she want to study? Georgetown and Dartmouth seem like rather different schools to me. This all sounds like an impressionable young girl just repeating what she heard other kids saying rather than a well-thought out goal for herself.</p>
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This all sounds like an impressionable young girl just repeating what she heard other kids saying rather than a well-thought out goal for herself</p>
<p>This post should be moved to the Prep School Parents forum where your question can be can be answered by current prep school parents.</p>
<p>Boarding school will NOT increase your child’s chances at a prestigious college. In fact, if your child does not graduate at the tippy top of one of these very, very competitive schools, the chances of matriculating at some of the most selective colleges may be lower than if she graduates at the top of her local school. The best boarding schools are filled with stellar students from around the world; that is the pool your child will be competing in. Is she ready to handle coming into that environment with top grades only to find that everyone else did, too, and that the local all-A report card may not translate to the same in the global pool? If everyone coming into a particular BS is a “top” student, that becomes average. It is a rude awakening for some.</p>
<p>I am in the camp that college will take care of itself if your child focuses on taking advantage of the best education s/he can consume–anywhere. If you choose a boarding school, choose it because it is an excellent academic and personal high school fit for your daughter. You can be certain that BS will provide her with a outstanding education and prepare her very well to hit the ground running in college, but she might thrive just as well or better in your local school. Only you and she can determine that.</p>
<p>Choose a BS for the high school education it offers, not for college results. No BS will guarantee matriculation to any college. The BS will provide a top-drawer education and living/learning environment that will help your daughter become independent and ready for the rigors of college, but it will not determine which college she attends.</p>
<p>I encourage you to go over to the Prep School Parents forum and use the search tool to find discussions on questions that you have. If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the archives, feel free to post, and the wonderful group of BS parents there will be happy to share their experience.</p>
<p>She may very well be hanging out with more ambitious students in Maine who have bigger goals than say UCSB or Pepperdine, you know. Dartmouth and Georgetown are both favored by east coast “preps,” so her Maine peers are likely the sailing type. My biggest question is who would be paying? Is this boarding school close to the aunt and uncle’s home? If money isn’t a factor or she’ll qualify for some scholarship, I’d tell her she needs to 4.0 everything this year and she can go. If boarding school an uncle went to can motivate a child to get into an Ivy, why not. The transfer from California to Maine, bring a part from mom, etc. will play very favorably in admissions essays.</p>
<p>Repost your message on the prep school forum on CC. There are lots of parents and kids and info on boarding schools. Going to boarding school is not an easy path to elite colleges, however, for some children it is a life-changing experience in itself. There are many considerations, academic, financial, athletic and EC and family dynamics. Look at some of the websites, read the threads on CC, it may help you determine if you want to continue the discussion. Encourage your DD to do the research too. She may decide it is really not for her anyway, particularly coming in as a junior (toughest academic year). Also, getting in to the “top” boarding schools is as difficult as getting into a selective college - acceptance rates less than 15%</p>
<p>Plenty of people from my school go to Ivys–I think we had around 7 go to Princeton last year (not to mention the 5 people who went to MIT, the 2 people for Harvard and another 2 for Stanford, the 5 for MIT, the 30 for Berkeley)… Oh, and did I mention my school is public?</p>
<p>You can get a very good public school education if you find a good high school. In fact, some publics (although they are generally in high-cost living areas; the median house price in my area is probably 900k) give you an education equivalent to that of a private school.</p>
<p>Going to boarding school, living with a mass of other kids, and getting out from under the parental thumb can be very appealing for teens. I know I enjoyed it! On the other hand, I know people who have hated their experience at such schools with a passion, even though in some cases they did extremely well there.</p>
<p>If she were able to go to one of the elite prep schools, she would certainly get a superb education. But she does not need to be in prep school to gain entrance to Dartmouth or Georgetown, or any other top college or university.</p>
<p>I agree about the potential concerns for a junior transfer. That’s the make or break admissions year, and if the course content or environment presented a challenge, it would immediately put her Ivy dreams in doubt. Junior transfers do happen, but the top preps usually want to see something pretty extra ordinary in your child. That said, being from California and the alum uncle are decent hooks.</p>
<p>Your daughter will have to take and submit her SSAT scores, along with her 9th grade transcript, letters of recommendation, essays, and application. The process is pretty much just like college. Top grades and test scores do not guarantee admission to any boarding school. Just like the college pool, the BS pool is full of “perfect” applicants and perfect scores are rejected all the time. The boarding schools use a holistic process and are looking for students that will fit a part of the class puzzle they are trying to complete. Each school’s puzzle is just a bit different, though.</p>
<p>If you need financial aid, you will need to complete the appropriate forms which are reviewed by a third party which submits your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) to the schools your daughter applies to, and the schools will independently determine an aid package if they choose to offer admission to your daughter. Note that most of the NE boarding school student bodies are split roughly into a 70/30 ratio of full pay to financial aid students. Applying for financial aid puts your child’s application into a much more competitive admissions pool. Currently, only Andover continues to state that their admissions process is need blind (Exeter and St. Andrews have backed off into more “need-aware” language), but there is a lot of controversy on what that means as Andover seems to somehow magically maintain that 70/30 ratio, the same as most of its peers.</p>
<p>Again, you can find a wealth of information and get any questions you have answered over on the Prep School Parents forum. See you there.</p>
<p>I do agree that junior year is a tough year to start at a BS. Many students choose instead to repeat tenth grade. It’s common and doe not mean repeating course material; repeat students are placed in classes appropriate for their level, but it does mean another year of tuition. Also, there are very few spots for incoming juniors, so many apply for tenth grade to increase the acceptance odds.</p>
<p>Do BS schools require contributions from NCP’s as well? What does dad say about this anyway? </p>
<p>I’m not sure if going over to the BS forum is going to be that fruitful. Aren’t those mostly parents clamoring to get their kids in? Not the same as this lady.</p>
<p>BTW…does she only want to apply to the ones where her “Maine friends” are attending? If so, that speaks volumes.</p>
<p>A quick correction on the financial aid info provided by Chotiemom in the above post. Andover, similarly to Exeter and St. Andrews, currently provides financial aid to about 47% of its students. Considering that they are not counting loans, work-study (no such programs) or outside scholarship in that percentage like colleges do, they are probably as or close as generous as some of the most generous colleges out there. I think the “controversy” surrounding Andover’s need-blind policy is more about: 1) how come the ratio of students on FA and FA budgets at Andover remain relatively stable from year to year if they are need blind? 2) How come Exeter and St. Andrews seem to have similar FA programs and they don’t claim they are need-blind while Andover does? That’s a whole discussion that should happen (and already in the prep school forum) somewhere else, but I just want to give you some background about Chotiemom’s mention of the “controversy”.</p>
<p>Back to OP, as with other school options (public, private day, magnet school etc.), there are fantastic, good but not great and mediocre boarding schools (in addition to the distinction of different feel and fit), so don’t think they are all the same. And because of that, there are great school options in every category. Boarding school in general is a different kind of beast though. On top of the cost, it takes a more mature and more resilient young kid with strong family support to succeed there. To make it a remote possibility, the family must be fully onboard with the idea as much as the kid, IMO. I agree you should look into the option and maybe visit a couple of schools but frankly if you think it’s essential to be “fully integrated” in your kids daily life at this stage, I don’t think you are ready. Just tell your kid it’s your bottom line and move on to explore other school options.</p>
<p>My dd wants to apply to Groton. Money is not going to be an issue as her grandparents would pay for school. And yes, there would be an impact to our family. DD has expressed an interest in International Relations. LOL her Maine buddies are the sailing type for sure. Mine surfs and plays club soccer. </p>
<p>This began when her uncle told her a story this summer about his childhood. He went to boarding school and told my kiddo that it was the best thing he could have done - given that his parents were divorced and did not get along. I’m sure there is more to story, but that is the part she told me. Sadly, I am divorced and co-parenting with my daughter’s dad has been a nightmare. For example, he refuses to communicate with me and takes our daughter to doctor’s visits and urgent care without telling me. He filled out school applications for different junior high and high schools without my knowledge or consent…and failed to include my information on the forms. Pulled her out of school one day to go tour another private school, and our daughter had to be the one to tell me about it. Appointments for testing were made without telling me. I could give many more examples. It’s frustrating. My point is that this behavior on his part makes me supremely leery of the entire application process for boarding school. I am already hesitant to consider boarding school, and his past behavior makes me know that I would be excluded from the application process as much as he could get away with. It’s tough enough co-parenting with him in the same town, I can’t even imagine what it would be like with our daughter across the country. And yes, I’ve asked my dd if she is running away from a less than perfect family situation…and she adamantly says no. But I think she is. </p>
<p>I just dropped my son off at Groton for the first time on Sunday. Some other parents have more experience with the school, but I can try to answer any questions you may have about the school.
I do know,that the next application cycle is going to be tough there. They enrolled more than expected this year and may affect numbers for the next one. Also, Groton is one of those schools that doesn’t admit many after third form (ninth grade). </p>
<p>Given the circumstances you describe, I wonder whether having your daughter at boarding school might actually be a great thing for both you and her. Perhaps she’s not so much trying to run away from an imperfect family situation as she is trying run to a situation that will have more stability for her. The wonderful thing about boarding school is that your child develops very close relationships with a wide range of peers and adults, which would give her a stable support network through the rest of her high school years. I don’t know if she’s feeling pulled between two parents who aren’t getting along, but if she is, perhaps being able to step aside from that and engage in a community with a different set of adults might relieve a lot of pressure for her. And while your ex may try to shut you out of the application process, once she’s at boarding shool, the school (including her advisor, teachers, etc) won’t let you be shut out and will view you as being an equally important part of the equation that is your child. So while you may find that you’re not as integrally involved in every day of her life if she goes to boarding school, you may end up feeling as though you have a bigger voice because it will be up to your daughter to choose how and when she communicates with you and her dad, and the school isn’t going to go along with just whatever her dad wants. Just something to think about.<br>
But I totally agree with Momto4kids that your daughter needs to look at more than just Groton, which is already the single hardest school to get into and is probably going to be even harder for next year.</p>
On the other hand, I know people who have hated their experience at such schools with a passion, even though in some cases they did extremely well there.</p>